“The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.” William Faulkner, 1951, Requiem for a Nun
“The study of sport in changing times and places needs to continually address the interrelationship between three very simple questions: the substantive question what is going on; the analytical question how do we make sense of what is going on and the interventionist question what can be done to bring about change and future hope in sport in society”
Grant Jarvie, 2004, “Sport in Changing Times and Places”
Abstract Submission: https://conference.nasss.org/2026/papers/paper1.php
Click here to go to a pdf with session descriptions. The Open Session is listed under my name (Rachel Allison).
The 2026 NASSS conference in Calgary centers and explores the importance of time to how we imagine, experience, and make sense of sport and physical cultures. We often measure the body’s performance in increments of time, for instance in the seconds of the 100-meter dash or the basket scored just before the shot clock expires. Sport has a duration: the 90 minutes of a soccer match, for example, or the 80 minutes of rugby union. And sport often has a temporal rhythm, unfolding through seasons and off seasons that structure our investments of time, emotion, and (often) money. Here, time is a resource, and the ability to have and use time for sport or physical activity reflects broader structural inequalities of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, ability, and social class.
Beyond the timed nature of sport itself, however, the passing of time is integral to processes of change; what came before is tied to what comes next. Aging processes generate new reflexive attention to the meanings and experiences of sport and physical activity as they shift across the life course. Legacies of colonialism, imperialism, racism, and patriarchy remain evident in the contemporary landscape of opportunity and (in)equality in sport, as well as in dominant knowledge paradigms in our academic disciplines. Processes of contestation and resistance to domination both inside and outside of sport create new possibilities and forge new solidarities. And changes to broader political, economic, technological and cultural systems have direct implications for the cultures and structures of sport and physical activity.
Time is also foundational to the narratives we construct about sport. Consider, for instance, the prominence of progress in the stories told about sport past and present. While there may be kernels of empirical truth in these claims, conceptualizations of time as progressive and linear neglect swells of backlash, moments of loss and defeat, and the realities of continued injustice. The popular adoption of progress narratives points to the ways that we may selectively recall, use, or even reconstruct history, often serving a set of interests. Remembrance takes form in rituals of celebration and recognition but also begs a set of critical questions. What past, and whose past, do we preserve or recall? How do we now use it, and to whose benefit?
In Calgary, we also consider sport and physical cultures “in these times,” spotlighting a current moment in Canada and the U.S. characterized by rising authoritarianism, openly sanctioned sexism and racism, hostility to LGBTQ+ rights, the defunding of research, and banning of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs and policies in education. These developments are antithetical to the values and mission of NASSS. Consequently, our analyses of sporting and physical cultures should not and cannot be ahistorical; they must necessarily attend to the realities of the injustices we face, trace their historical antecedents, and use this contextualized understanding to chart the path forward. To a degree, we have been here before, and we can draw insight and inspiration from the organizers, activists, and scholars of the past.The discipline of sport sociology, too, has a past, present, and future. We are connected as a current community of scholars who teach about and study sports and physical activities to those who came before us and what we do here and now will shape the sport scholars of the future. How have we come to this moment? And what will we do with it? How will we draw on our knowledge of the past to work collectively towards the future we envision? And how will we welcome and include new NASSS members to join us in this work?We warmly invite you to join us for an exploration of these and other questions in Calgary in 2026 by submitting an abstract. Abstracts may be submitted to a thematic session or to an open session, and organizers will group abstracts submitted to open sessions.
Abstracts must include the title of the presentation (10 words maximum); a brief description of the presentations (150 words maximum), all author name(s), institutional affiliation(s), and email address(es), and the location of your planned attendance (Calgary or virtual).
Please keep in mind that you may present only one paper. If you are listed as an author on another paper, a different author must attend and present.
Please note: It will not be possible to change the conference program to accommodate individual scheduling issues. Submitting an abstract commits you to presenting any time from 8:00 am on Thursday, November 5, to Saturday, November 7, at 5 pm.
Abstract Submission: https://conference.nasss.org/2026/papers/paper1.php
Timeline information for those who will submit an abstract
- Deadline for submissions of abstracts: May 4th, 2026. Closing time is 11:59pm U.S. Central time.
- All presenters must be a member of NASSS as of September 1, 2026 and registered for the Conference by October 1, 2026 to remain in the program.
- Conference registration information, pricing, and hotel information is forthcoming on the NASSS website.
Direct questions to the Conference Program Committee Chair, Rachel Allison, at rallison@soc.msstate.edu.
Rachel Allison, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology
Mississippi State University
