Call for Abstracts | “Bridging Academic Communities for Social Justice” | The 13th Annual Physical Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference, University of Maryland, Friday April 8, 2022. Call ends February 25. 2022

 

The Physical Cultural Studies (PCS) Graduate Student Association – located within the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland, College Park – will host their 14th Annual Graduate Student Conference on Friday, April 8th, 2022. This one-day conference will consist of a series of student presentations and panels related to current events and scholarly themes surrounding the relations between physical culture and society. We anticipate holding the conference in-person at a location to be announced later. This year’s conference is fortunate to have an alumni keynote presentation by Dr. Ronald Mower, PCS alumnus and lecturer in Physical Cultural Studies in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland, College Park.

This year’s conference will be organized around the theme, “Bridging Academic Communities for Social Justice.” As the uncertainty of recent times has highlighted the social injustices embedded within sport, physical culture, public health, and society, scholars across academic disciplines have emphasized the urgent need for the academy to contribute to social justice initiatives. However, the institutional structures underpinning the academy tend to limit the transformative potential of social justice work by incentivizing solitary scholarship that is created within strict and familiar disciplinary boundaries. To transcend these limitations and counter the creep of scholarly atomization within the academy, we contend that scholars must bridge the divides between disciplines, mobilize the strengths and opportunities generated by scholarly collaborations, and unite in collective and synergistic pursuits of structural social change. 

We welcome presentations that seek to identify and critically examine the role of sport, physical culture, and the body within this process of creating academic communities for social justice. We particularly invite presentations oriented around, but not limited to: the materiality of the (moving) body and embodiment; constructions of sociocultural practices of the body; structures and institutions of physical culture; political responsibilities of critical sports scholars; feminist, critical race, queer theories; and other critical frameworks. The conference aims to promote an inter- and trans-disciplinary dialogue, and as such is a space for work developing within or across academic disciplines. We welcome all submissions from a multitude of disciplines on a range of related topics, but encourage submissions interrogating physical cultural practices. 

The submission deadline is February 25, 2022. 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. PCS Corpus Blog: thecorpus.wordpress.com 

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