CFP: Sport History and Sport Studies in Southern Africa

SPORT HISTORY AND SPORT STUDIES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

** FINAL CALL**

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.