Heather L Dichter
Biographic Data
| ID | 1245687 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Heather L Dichter |
| GIVEN NAMES | Heather L |
| FAMILY NAME | Dichter |
| SIGNATURE | DICHTER H L |
| AFFILIATIONS | De Montfort University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6538-7109 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 31 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Introduction
Sport diplomacy scholarship has continued to grow in recent years. This new literature builds on earlier ideas but moves beyond the studies as a battle between superpowers or the hosting of mega-events. Moving beyond these countries to consider regional rivalries, minority or oppressed groups, and middle powers brings greater insight into sport diplomacy and how it has functioned, particularly as a form of soft power. The Olympic movement and foo…
Sport in post-colonial Zimbabwe
Chamonix 1924
Local, National and Global Histories of Field Hockey
The Aborted Project for the European Games in the 1960s and 1970s
International audience
A Cultural History of Sport in the Renaissance . Vol. 3 of A Cultural History of Sport
Alessandro Arcangeli edited the third volume in Bloomsbury's A Cultural History of Sport, which Wray Vamplew, John McClelland, and Mark Dyreson oversaw as the editors for the entire anthology. Arcangeli's A Cultural History of Sport in the Renaissance focuses on the period from the mid–fifteenth century to the mid–seventeenth century. The two hundred years covered in this volume is significantly shorter than the approximately one thousand years a…
Ice Hockey's Globalization
When most people think of globalization and sport, the world’s most popular game, soccer/football, or second-most widely-played sport, basketball, come to mind for their global reach in recent decades. The earlier spread of sport in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can also be considered part of the globalization of sport. Sport played a role in empire-building, both formal (such as the spread of cricket and rugby through the Bri…
The Diplomatic Campaign Against the Short-Lived 1968 Berlin Olympic Bid
In 1963 the West Berlin mayor proposed a joint bid from West and East Berlin to host the 1968 Olympic Games. West Germany's closest allies sought to persuade the West German and Berlin governments to stop the bid, which both supported but had largely kept secret from their allies. This episode demonstrates not only the significance which foreign ministries have long attributed to international sport, but also their clear involvement to actively e…
Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games
Canadian Government Involvement in Calgary’s Failed 1968 Winter Olympic Bid
In the early 1960s the Canadian government in Ottawa saw international events, including major sporting events, as a way to bolster Canada’s position globally. To support Calgary’s bid for the 1968 Olympic Winter Games, the Canadian federal government formed an interdepartmental committee to work with the Calgary Olympic Development Association to try to improve the Canadian city’s chance of winning the Olympic Games. The inclusion of sites withi…
The Diplomatic Turn
With an increasing amount of diplomatic archival material being declassified, scholars are now finding not only more instances of governments, and especially diplomats, involved in sport matters, but also different ways in which sport and politics have been intertwined historically. The past two decades have thus seen what can be called a diplomatic turn in sport history. This type of research has led to the development of a new strand of sport a…
Olympic History and Legacy
Legacy research has grown in the last decade, particularly within the field of sport studies, with numerous books and articles examining the physical, social, and environmental legacies of mega-events, including the Olympic Winter Games. As a result, an increasing amount of research on the Olympic movement can fall under the category of Olympic legacy research, despite the boundaries remaining blurry of what exactly Olympic legacy research includ…
The Whole World Was Watching
Book Review| April 01 2021 The Whole World Was Watching: Sport in the Cold War Edelman, Robert, and Christopher Young, eds. The Whole World Was Watching: Sport in the Cold War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020. Pp. xi+334. Index, notes. $65.00, hb. $65.00, eb. Heather L. Dichter Heather L. Dichter De Montfort University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Sport History (2021) 48 (1): 77–79. https://d…
Soccer Diplomacy
Soccer Diplomacy
The book explores the nexus of the world’s most popular sport and diplomacy, as a tool of the nation-state–based diplomacy, as diplomacy of soccer as a non-state actor, and via the relationship between soccer and a variety of diplomatic actors in the subnational, national, and transnational context. Over the past century any number of states have sought to conduct diplomacy via soccer games, tournaments, and the sport’s governance structures, inc…
The Winter Olympics
The Olympic Winter Games, although younger than their summer counterpart, nonetheless have a long and storied history. From the first iteration in Chamonix, France, in 1924, through the first off-set games in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994, to the most recent edition in PyeongChang, South Korea, the Olympic Winter Games are truly a mega-event. This introduction to a winter Olympics anthology considers the nearly one-hundred years of the Olympic Win…
Grassroots diplomacy through coach education
Two coach-to-coach sport diplomacy exchange programmes run between 2012 and 2015 in Jordan Tajikistan, funded by U.S. State Department’s International Sports Programming Initiative, used soccer to promote grassroots diplomacy. These programmes focused on leadership, tolerance, diversity, and citizenship, as well as training coaches to design sport for development and peace programmes in their local communities while learning more about other cult…
New Dimensions of Sport in Modern Europe
This collection offers new perspectives on European sport history in the ‘long twentieth century’ designed to challenge and deconstruct what might be considered ‘traditional’ or more familiar Euro-centric conceptions and geographies of sport and leisure—especially those deriving from the leading hotbeds of European sport history. This special issue introduction adds to the growing corpus of explorations of sport and leisure in late-modern Europea…
We have allowed our decisions to be determined by political considerations’
Like other international federations after the Second World War, the International Ski Federation (FIS) received an application from the Soviet Union and both German states for recognition. As one of the earliest international federations to recognise East Germany separately – and as a full member – alongside West Germany, FIS was then forced to confront the Cold War numerous times over the next two decades. Actions taken by FIS as Cold War lines…
Animalympics , Or How I Became a Sport Scholar
While at first unintentional, the author’s path to becoming a sport historian has incorporated her academic trajectory of sport and German/European history along with working in the sport industry. These experiences have benefited both her scholarly research and her teaching and experiential learning opportunities for students in sport management programs
Aspirational Reflections
This article provides a scrambled form of SWOT analysis of the ideas contained in the various contributions to this special issue on sport historians and the field of sport history. The market for sport history, pure and simple, is not in good shape in many places. Yet we must be careful not to confuse trends in employment prospects with shorter term fluctuations in demand. Nor should we conflate national issues with the international situation. …
Aspiration and Reflection
Following the series of Presidential Forum conversation pieces instigated by Kevin Wamsley on the NASSH website, this piece places the context of the collection of comments and criticisms by 29 contributors to this special issue on sport historians reflecting on the field of sport history
Sporting Relations
Germany’s post-war return to international sport was not uniform across all federations. The nature of each sport—summer versus winter, team versus individual—influenced the speed with which each international sport federation dealt with the issue of Germany’s return. Some federations allowed German participation even before they formally re-admitted the country to federation membership. However, sporting relations were not the only issue conside…
Prologue
In attending the London Olympiad of 2012, competitors and visitors at each venue were greeted with four flags; from left to right, they were the International Olympic flagand the International Paralympic flag subsequentlythe flags of the United Nations [UN] and the London Olympic Organising Committee [LOCOG], and the British Union Jack. 1These flags represent polities with a number of identities, but their most straightforward were as the foremos…
Corruption in the 1960s
Most scholarship about improprieties surrounding Olympic host city selections starts with the Salt Lake City scandal, which television reporters broke in 1998, after which more details emerged revealing similar actions by previous Olympic hosts (as well as unsuccessful bid committees). Yet, the actions of these post-Los Angeles bid committees were not new, with local newspapers from the cities bidding for Games in the 1960s regularly reporting on…
The Diplomatic Turn
With an increasing amount of diplomatic archival material being declassified, scholars are now finding not only more instances of governments, and especially diplomats, involved in sport matters, but also different ways in which sport and politics have been intertwined historically. The past two decades have thus seen what can be called a diplomatic turn in sport history. This type of research has led to the development of a new strand of sport a…
Sporting Relations
Germany’s post-war return to international sport was not uniform across all federations. The nature of each sport—summer versus winter, team versus individual—influenced the speed with which each international sport federation dealt with the issue of Germany’s return. Some federations allowed German participation even before they formally re-admitted the country to federation membership. However, sporting relations were not the only issue conside…
Kicking Around International Sport
In 1948, the American Military Government worked with Swiss soccer officials to organise Germany's first post-war international matches, three simultaneous German-Swiss intercity games. The American occupation authorities viewed these games as part of their broader efforts to help teach Germans about democracy, as a way for the international community to begin the process of reaccepting Germany and as a way to raise funds for charitable purposes …
Olympic History and Legacy
Legacy research has grown in the last decade, particularly within the field of sport studies, with numerous books and articles examining the physical, social, and environmental legacies of mega-events, including the Olympic Winter Games. As a result, an increasing amount of research on the Olympic movement can fall under the category of Olympic legacy research, despite the boundaries remaining blurry of what exactly Olympic legacy research includ…
Prologue
In attending the London Olympiad of 2012, competitors and visitors at each venue were greeted with four flags; from left to right, they were the International Olympic flagand the International Paralympic flag subsequentlythe flags of the United Nations [UN] and the London Olympic Organising Committee [LOCOG], and the British Union Jack. 1These flags represent polities with a number of identities, but their most straightforward were as the foremos…
Diplomatic and International History
The methods of diplomatic and international history present additional approaches to sport topics which can allow for more nuanced understandings of sport organizations, their events, and relations between countries. This study explores diplomatic and international history methods and how they can be utilized by sport historians
Canadian Government Involvement in Calgary’s Failed 1968 Winter Olympic Bid
In the early 1960s the Canadian government in Ottawa saw international events, including major sporting events, as a way to bolster Canada’s position globally. To support Calgary’s bid for the 1968 Olympic Winter Games, the Canadian federal government formed an interdepartmental committee to work with the Calgary Olympic Development Association to try to improve the Canadian city’s chance of winning the Olympic Games. The inclusion of sites withi…
The Winter Olympics
The Olympic Winter Games, although younger than their summer counterpart, nonetheless have a long and storied history. From the first iteration in Chamonix, France, in 1924, through the first off-set games in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994, to the most recent edition in PyeongChang, South Korea, the Olympic Winter Games are truly a mega-event. This introduction to a winter Olympics anthology considers the nearly one-hundred years of the Olympic Win…
New Dimensions of Sport in Modern Europe
This collection offers new perspectives on European sport history in the ‘long twentieth century’ designed to challenge and deconstruct what might be considered ‘traditional’ or more familiar Euro-centric conceptions and geographies of sport and leisure—especially those deriving from the leading hotbeds of European sport history. This special issue introduction adds to the growing corpus of explorations of sport and leisure in late-modern Europea…
We have allowed our decisions to be determined by political considerations’
Like other international federations after the Second World War, the International Ski Federation (FIS) received an application from the Soviet Union and both German states for recognition. As one of the earliest international federations to recognise East Germany separately – and as a full member – alongside West Germany, FIS was then forced to confront the Cold War numerous times over the next two decades. Actions taken by FIS as Cold War lines…
Corruption in the 1960s
Most scholarship about improprieties surrounding Olympic host city selections starts with the Salt Lake City scandal, which television reporters broke in 1998, after which more details emerged revealing similar actions by previous Olympic hosts (as well as unsuccessful bid committees). Yet, the actions of these post-Los Angeles bid committees were not new, with local newspapers from the cities bidding for Games in the 1960s regularly reporting on…
The Internationalization of European Sports Teams and the Issue of National Citizenship
Heike C. Alberts and Kazimierz J. Zaniewski, Lewiston, Edwin Mellen Press, 2011, xix+158 pp, bibliography, figures, index, US$129.95/£89.95 (paperback), ISBN 0-7734-3941-2/978-0-7734-3941-2 With th
The Chicago Sports Reader
Book Review| April 01 2010 The Chicago Sports Reader: 100 Years of Sports in the Windy City Riess, Steven A. and Gerald R. Gems, eds. The Chicago Sports Reader: 100 Years of Sports in the Windy City. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Pp. 384. Notes, illustrations, and index. $24.95 pb, $75.00 cb. Heather L. Dichter Heather L. Dichter University of Toronto Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Sport Histor…
The 1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany
The Internationalization of European Sports Teams and the Issue of National Citizenship
Heike C. Alberts and Kazimierz J. Zaniewski, Lewiston, Edwin Mellen Press, 2011, xix+158 pp, bibliography, figures, index, US$129.95/£89.95 (paperback), ISBN 0-7734-3941-2/978-0-7734-3941-2 With th
Kicking Around International Sport
In 1948, the American Military Government worked with Swiss soccer officials to organise Germany's first post-war international matches, three simultaneous German-Swiss intercity games. The American occupation authorities viewed these games as part of their broader efforts to help teach Germans about democracy, as a way for the international community to begin the process of reaccepting Germany and as a way to raise funds for charitable purposes …
Sport and British Jewry
Book Review| July 01 2014 Sport and British Jewry: Integration, Ethnicity and Anti-Semitism 1890-1970 Dee, David. Sport and British Jewry: Integration, Ethnicity and Anti-Semitism 1890-1970. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2013. Pp. 258. Notes, illustrations, and index. $100.00 cb. Heather L. Dichter Heather L. Dichter Ithaca College Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Sport History (2014) 41 (2): …
Diplomatic and International History
The methods of diplomatic and international history present additional approaches to sport topics which can allow for more nuanced understandings of sport organizations, their events, and relations between countries. This study explores diplomatic and international history methods and how they can be utilized by sport historians
Sporting Relations
Germany’s post-war return to international sport was not uniform across all federations. The nature of each sport—summer versus winter, team versus individual—influenced the speed with which each international sport federation dealt with the issue of Germany’s return. Some federations allowed German participation even before they formally re-admitted the country to federation membership. However, sporting relations were not the only issue conside…
Prologue
In attending the London Olympiad of 2012, competitors and visitors at each venue were greeted with four flags; from left to right, they were the International Olympic flagand the International Paralympic flag subsequentlythe flags of the United Nations [UN] and the London Olympic Organising Committee [LOCOG], and the British Union Jack. 1These flags represent polities with a number of identities, but their most straightforward were as the foremos…
Corruption in the 1960s
Most scholarship about improprieties surrounding Olympic host city selections starts with the Salt Lake City scandal, which television reporters broke in 1998, after which more details emerged revealing similar actions by previous Olympic hosts (as well as unsuccessful bid committees). Yet, the actions of these post-Los Angeles bid committees were not new, with local newspapers from the cities bidding for Games in the 1960s regularly reporting on…
Shaping the New Man
Book Review| July 01 2016 Shaping the New Man: Youth Training Regimes in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany Ponzio, Alessio. Shaping the New Man: Youth Training Regimes in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015. Pp.vxvi + 315. $65.00 hb; $75.00 eb. Heather L. Dichter Heather L. Dichter Western Michigan University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Sport History (2016) 43 (2): 24…
Skiing into Modernity
Skiing into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History, by Andrew Denning. Oakland, University of California Press, 2014. xiv, 236 pp. $65.00 US (cloth), $29.95 US (paper). In Skiing into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History, Andrew Denning traces the development of (downhill) skiing and the sport's growth in the European region for which it is named, as well as the changing understanding of both from the nineteenth century throug…
We have allowed our decisions to be determined by political considerations’
Like other international federations after the Second World War, the International Ski Federation (FIS) received an application from the Soviet Union and both German states for recognition. As one of the earliest international federations to recognise East Germany separately – and as a full member – alongside West Germany, FIS was then forced to confront the Cold War numerous times over the next two decades. Actions taken by FIS as Cold War lines…
Animalympics , Or How I Became a Sport Scholar
While at first unintentional, the author’s path to becoming a sport historian has incorporated her academic trajectory of sport and German/European history along with working in the sport industry. These experiences have benefited both her scholarly research and her teaching and experiential learning opportunities for students in sport management programs
Aspirational Reflections
This article provides a scrambled form of SWOT analysis of the ideas contained in the various contributions to this special issue on sport historians and the field of sport history. The market for sport history, pure and simple, is not in good shape in many places. Yet we must be careful not to confuse trends in employment prospects with shorter term fluctuations in demand. Nor should we conflate national issues with the international situation. …
Aspiration and Reflection
Following the series of Presidential Forum conversation pieces instigated by Kevin Wamsley on the NASSH website, this piece places the context of the collection of comments and criticisms by 29 contributors to this special issue on sport historians reflecting on the field of sport history
Grassroots diplomacy through coach education
Two coach-to-coach sport diplomacy exchange programmes run between 2012 and 2015 in Jordan Tajikistan, funded by U.S. State Department’s International Sports Programming Initiative, used soccer to promote grassroots diplomacy. These programmes focused on leadership, tolerance, diversity, and citizenship, as well as training coaches to design sport for development and peace programmes in their local communities while learning more about other cult…
New Dimensions of Sport in Modern Europe
This collection offers new perspectives on European sport history in the ‘long twentieth century’ designed to challenge and deconstruct what might be considered ‘traditional’ or more familiar Euro-centric conceptions and geographies of sport and leisure—especially those deriving from the leading hotbeds of European sport history. This special issue introduction adds to the growing corpus of explorations of sport and leisure in late-modern Europea…
Soccer Diplomacy
Soccer Diplomacy
The book explores the nexus of the world’s most popular sport and diplomacy, as a tool of the nation-state–based diplomacy, as diplomacy of soccer as a non-state actor, and via the relationship between soccer and a variety of diplomatic actors in the subnational, national, and transnational context. Over the past century any number of states have sought to conduct diplomacy via soccer games, tournaments, and the sport’s governance structures, inc…
The Winter Olympics
The Olympic Winter Games, although younger than their summer counterpart, nonetheless have a long and storied history. From the first iteration in Chamonix, France, in 1924, through the first off-set games in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994, to the most recent edition in PyeongChang, South Korea, the Olympic Winter Games are truly a mega-event. This introduction to a winter Olympics anthology considers the nearly one-hundred years of the Olympic Win…
Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games
Canadian Government Involvement in Calgary’s Failed 1968 Winter Olympic Bid
In the early 1960s the Canadian government in Ottawa saw international events, including major sporting events, as a way to bolster Canada’s position globally. To support Calgary’s bid for the 1968 Olympic Winter Games, the Canadian federal government formed an interdepartmental committee to work with the Calgary Olympic Development Association to try to improve the Canadian city’s chance of winning the Olympic Games. The inclusion of sites withi…
The Diplomatic Turn
With an increasing amount of diplomatic archival material being declassified, scholars are now finding not only more instances of governments, and especially diplomats, involved in sport matters, but also different ways in which sport and politics have been intertwined historically. The past two decades have thus seen what can be called a diplomatic turn in sport history. This type of research has led to the development of a new strand of sport a…
Olympic History and Legacy
Legacy research has grown in the last decade, particularly within the field of sport studies, with numerous books and articles examining the physical, social, and environmental legacies of mega-events, including the Olympic Winter Games. As a result, an increasing amount of research on the Olympic movement can fall under the category of Olympic legacy research, despite the boundaries remaining blurry of what exactly Olympic legacy research includ…
The Whole World Was Watching
Book Review| April 01 2021 The Whole World Was Watching: Sport in the Cold War Edelman, Robert, and Christopher Young, eds. The Whole World Was Watching: Sport in the Cold War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020. Pp. xi+334. Index, notes. $65.00, hb. $65.00, eb. Heather L. Dichter Heather L. Dichter De Montfort University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Sport History (2021) 48 (1): 77–79. https://d…
Political science (24 works) · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts (24 works) · Sports, Gender, and Society (24 works) · History (20 works) · History (18 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (14 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · Media studies (9 works)