Call for Papers: Sport History and Sport Studies in Southern
Africa, 07/08
Final Call for Papers
SPORT HISTORY AND SPORT STUDIES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
International Conference at the University of Stellenbosch
Stellenbosch, South Africa, 29 June - 3 July 2008
Sport history developed as a recognized academic discipline in the 1970s.
Since then there has been a proliferation of international journals,
organizations and university courses dealing with the subject. As Martin
Johnes recently noted about Britain, sport history has reached a certain
maturity: "it has its own journals, its own society, its own research
centres and its own courses within both history and sports science/studies
departments . . . The subject even has the factions and animosities that
mark maturity--of a sort--in an academic discipline". Southern Africa
cannot lay claim to the same level of progress in this area, but a solid
body of research and publications has emerged in the past decade or so.
AIMS
This interdisciplinary conference aims to provide a platform for a
discussion of the state and future of Southern African and African sport
history and sport studies. It also aims to act as a vehicle for the
consolidation of South African sport history research and writing, inter
alia, through the publication of a volume/s synthesizing current and past
work.
CONFERENCE THEMES
The topics to be covered will be shaped according to the responses received
from academic and popular historians. It will include themes such as sport
and literature; biography; organizational histories; gender relations and
changing patterns in women's sport; sport and apartheid; sport and
liberation struggles; sport on the African continent; the international
dimension of apartheid and sport; sport and identity; sport in the
re-imaging of the nation; sport as a socializing and political instrument;
capitalism, class and elitism in sport, education and the construction of
masculinity; attempts at the massification of sport; and other more eclectic
topics.
NEW DEADLINES FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS & PAPERS
The conference is open to both academic and popular historians, as well as
scholars from other disciplines. Those interested in participating must
please contact Ms C Harmsen at history-conference@sun.ac.za by 1 March 2008
with a 300-word abstract of the intended paper. Deadlines for the completed
papers are 30 April 2008.
ORGANISING INSTITUTIONS
This international conference is a collaborative effort between six
institutions, namely the History Department at Stellenbosch University; the
National Heritage and Cultural Studies Centre at the University of Fort
Hare; the History Department at Michigan State University; the Institute of
Northern Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University; the International Centre
for the Study of Sports History at De Montfort University; and the Sport and
Exercise Sciences Research Institute at the University of Ulster.
The conference is intended by these institutions to be a contribution to the
overall preparations for the 2010 FIFA WORLD CUP, which will be held for the
first time in Africa.
Preparations will be supervised by a Co-Ordinating Committee from the host
institutions and the Conference Co-ordinator, Ms C Harmsen, at Stellenbosch,
which will host the event.
Page Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D.