CFP: Clerici Day III – Tennis in Literature and Film

Clerici Day III 

Tennis in Literature and Film  

Brescia, 16-17 April 2026 

While Sinner-mania is steadily growing in Italy, a measure of the global hype surrounding tennis is the proliferation in the past few years of literary and cinematic representations of this game. From Andre Agassi’s bestselling autobiography Open to the recent success of Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, tennis occupies a central place in contemporary pop culture. Yet these are only the latest 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 Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest) and commercial fiction (such as Sophie Kinsella’s debut novel, The Tennis Party, and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Carrie Soto Is Back), life writing and journalism – not to mention tennis fanatics like Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, and Martin Amis. 

This conference aims to investigate the forms and modes of representation of tennis – both in its modern version and in its early manifestations – in world literature, cinema, and TV series. It will also be the opportunity to promote the impressive tennis library and archive built by Italian TV commentator, journalist, and writer Gianni Clerici (1930-2022), now held at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Brescia (https://brescia-raccoltestoriche-gianniclerici.unicatt.it/?lang=en).  

We welcome 20-minute papers in English or Italian from academics as well as journalists and tennis experts. Topics may include, but are not limited to:  

• literary narratives about tennis 

• traces of tennis history in literature 

• writers who play tennis and tennis players who write 

• Gianni Clerici’s literary works about tennis 

• tennis on stage 

• cinematic representations of tennis  

• tennis in TV series 

• tennis (auto)biographies 

• tennis biopics  

• tennis and authorial journalism 

• tennis in contemporary commercial fiction  

The proceedings will be published in a volume. 

Send an abstract of max. 300 words in the language of your proposed paper together with a short biographical profile to valentina.varinelli@unicatt.it and franco.lonati@unicatt.it. Submission deadline: 31 October 2025. 

Organising Committee: Giuseppe Cosio, Valentina Varinelli 

Scientific Committee: Pierangelo Goffi, Franco Lonati, Francesco Rognoni