CONFERENCE: History of Sport and Sports Studies in South Africa

CONFERENCE ON THE HISTORY OF SPORT AND SPORTS STUDIES IN SOUTH AFRICA, STELLENBOSCH, SOUTH AFRICA, 29 JUNE – 3 JULY 2008


Sports 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, sports 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’. South 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 conference aims to provide a platform for a discussion of the state and future of South African and African sports history. It also aims to act as a vehicle for the consolidation of South African sports history research and writing inter alia through the publication of a volume/s synthesizing current and past work.


ORGANISING INSTITUTIONS

The conference is a collaborative effort between seven institutions, namely the History Department at Stellenbosch University, the National Heritage and Cultural Studies Centre at the University of Fort Hare, the Institute of Northern Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University, the International Centre for the Study of Sports History at De Montfort University, the Sport and Exercise Sciences Research Institute at the University of Ulster, the History Department at Michigan State University.

The conference is intended by these institutions to be a contribution to the overall preparations for the FIFA WORLD CUP 2010, 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, will be based in Stellenbosch, which will host the event.


CONFERENCE THEMES

The topics to be covered will be of a generalized nature, 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 the liberation struggle; sport on the African continent; the international dimension of apartheid and sport; sport and identity; sport in the re-imaging of the concept 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.



DEADLINES FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST/SUBMISSION OF PAPERS

The conference is open to both academic and popular historians. Those interested in participating must please contact Ms C Harmsen history-conference@sun.ac.za by 30 November 2007, with a 300 word abstract of the intended paper. Deadlines for the completed papers are 31 March 2008.