Eracle Journal of Sport and Social Sciences

Special Issue 2021 - Call for papers

"GLOBAL MARADONA: man, athlete, celebrity, idol, hero, myth"

Editors​:
Luca Bifulco (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II),
Stefano Bory (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II),
Gianfranco Pecchinenda (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II)

It is hard to find, in the champions pantheon of the history of the sport, a person who has experienced the same public consideration as the one for Diego Armando Maradona. Always on the stage, always drawing everyone’s attention, never an ordinary man.
He was a great footballer, a big athlete. His biography was full of extraordinary achievements and falls both in sports and in life; he was a celebrity, with constant planetary notoriety, totally integrated into the realm of spectacular and commodified sport; he was and still remains a catalyst for conflicts – cultural, political, juridical or plainly material (like those related to his economic legacy or to the image rights exploit); he has been for various fan communities and generations the idol and the hero in which to find identification, aside from the sporting aspects; plus, especially after his death, he definitively stands as a myth, a significant exemplary inspiration, but also a model of human contradictions.
Ultimately, if both in Argentina and in Naples the “pibe de oro” has easily become a significant icon of popular culture and tradition, on an international scale the resonance of his figure and the planetary roar generated by his death, lead us to reflect upon a global cultural phenomenon full of facets, interpretations, and multiple considerations.
The FUNES (​www.serena.unina.it/index.php/funes​) and ERACLE (​www.serena.unina.it/index.php/eracle​) journals joint special issue, therefore, aims to investigate, along a comparative spectrum, the global and local extent of the Maradona phenomenon.

There are two thematic domains for requested articles:
a) Maradona, narration, imaginary and memory
b) Maradona as a sports phenomenon and celebrity in his social, identity, economic and political dimension

Proposals can be written in ​Italian, English, Spanish and French​, and must be sent to the following email addresses:
luca.bifulco@unina.it;
bory@unina.it

Closing date for abstracts submission: ​Apr 10th, 2021
Notification to the authors: ​until May 10th, 2021
Articles submission deadline: ​Jul 10th, 2021
Articles assessment: ​Aug 10th, 2021
Final version submission: ​until Sep 10th, 2021
Publication: ​Dec 2021