CFP: The 9th Annual Physical Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference

Call for Abstracts:

The 9^th Annual Physical Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference:

“Engaging Health and Physical Culture:

Power, Politics, and Possibilities”

Friday March 4^th, 2016

Physical Cultural Studies (PCS) – housed within the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland – will host their 9^th Annual Graduate Student Conference onFriday March 4^th, 2016 at the School of Public Health Building on the College Park campus. This one-day conference will consist of a series of student presentations commenced with an alumni keynote address by Dr. Oliver Rick, PCS alumnus and current assistant professor of Sport Management and Recreation at Springfield College, and a PCS address by Dr. Dave Zang, professor of Kinesiology at Towson University. Dr. Rick’s work currently focuses on developing innovative theory to better engage with physical cultures in contemporary urban settings. In particular this includes a focus on the urban as assemblage, as well as affect theory and non-representational dimensions of interaction. Dr. Zang’s research has focused on sport history, sports literature, and history of popular culture.

This year, the conference will be organized around the theme, “Engaging Health and Physical Culture: Power, Politics, and Possibilities”.  Given the increasing focus on physical activity and culture as a means of health promotion-- as well as our particular location in a School of Public Health -- engagement with health practices, discourses, and possibilities, is vital. We seek to strengthen the critical scholarly connection between physical culture and health, utilizing this year’s conference to explore and examine the complex landscape of critical public health.

We invite papers that reflect upon these and other relevant questions and topics:

• Possibilities for the study of health as an empirical site for Physical Cultural Studies
• What are the political responsibilities of critical scholars as well as health practitioners within a School of Public Health?
• What exclusions are produced by dominant health discourses and practices? How are these being accommodated and/or resisted within physical cultural practices?
• How can the materiality of the body be engaged within PCS? What theories, methodologies, and epistemologies can be used in this study?
• How can we incorporate feminist, critical race, queer theories as well as other critical frameworks into our understandings of physical culture and health?

The conference aims to promote an inter- and trans-disciplinary dialogue, and as such is a space for work that develops from within or across multiple academic disciplines.  We welcome all submissions from a multitude of disciplines on a multitude of related topics, but encourage submissions interrogating physical cultural practices.

The submission deadline is January 29^th, 2016

Please e-mail abstracts (300 word limit) to umdpcs@gmail.com

Within your email, include as an attachment (in .doc or .pdf format) the following: Paper Title, Abstract, Keywords, Author(s) contact information, and institutional affiliation(s).

For more information about PCS please visit http://www.umdpcs.org; for questions please contact PCS Graduate Conference Committee at umdpcs@gmail.com