Giugno 2025

While Sinner-mania is steadily growing in Italy, a measure of the global hype surrounding tennis isthe proliferation in the past few years of literary and cinematic representations of this game. FromAndre Agassi’s bestselling autobiography Open to the recent success of Luca Guadagnino’sChallengers, tennis occupies a central place in contemporary pop culture. Yet these are only thelatest expressions of an artistic tradition as old as the sport itself, encompassing film and theatre,‘high’ literature (think of Giorgio Bassani’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis or David FosterWallace’s Infinite Jest) and commercial fiction (such as Sophie Kinsella’s debut novel, The TennisParty, and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Carrie Soto Is Back), life writing and journalis – not to mentiontennis fanatics like Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, and Martin Amis.This conference aims to investigate the forms and modes of representation of tennis – both in itsmodern version and in its early manifestations – in world literature, cinema, and TV series. It willalso be the opportunity to promote the impressive tennis library and archive built by Italian TVcommentator, journalist, and writer Gianni Clerici (1930-2022), now held at Università Cattolica delSacro Cuore in Brescia (https://brescia-raccoltestoriche-gianniclerici.unicatt.it/).We welcome 20-minute papers in English or Italian from academics as well as journalists andtennis experts. Topics may include, but are not limited to: