On behalf of the Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal (WSPAJ), we are pleased to announce a call for abstracts for a Special Series entitled, Engaging Conversation in Women’s Sport and Physical Activity: Traversing Generations. This series will explore a range of cross-generational framings, understandings, and visions for sport and physical activity that excavates, recognizes, critiques, and celebrates contributions and experiences of women across diverse and intersectional identities, including generational differences.
Background and Context
Taking intellectual, cultural, and activist cues from publications such as Linda Jean Carpenter’s (1993) essay entitled Letters Home: My Life with Title IX, as well as non-sport-specific analyses of women, embodiment, and navigating everyday spaces, such as This Bridge Called My Back (Moraga & Anzaldua, 2015), Colonize This! (Hernandez & Rheman, 2002) and How We Get Free (Taylor, 2017) we invite authors to submit papers that put thus far “erased” ancestors into conversation with early career professionals in the ever-diversifying field of women in sport and physical activity. In this era of often unactualized calls for “equity, diversity and inclusion” we cannot merely count the representative “others” in the room, nor can we rely on corporate institutions in sport or academia to bring about equity, once and for all. We are engaged in an ongoing struggle and we have a chance in this series to document more accounts of that struggle within the field of women in sport and physical activity. One aim is to recognize and reconnect to practitioner and scholarly leaders in the broad field of women in sport and physical activity whose contributions feature experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPoC), and to link their work to current experiences and demands for early career BIPoC professionals involved in women’s sport and physical activity. Featuring conversation is another intentional aim toward cross-generational re-membering and mentoring, as well as a strategy for moving beyond corporate institutional questions of access, equity and productivity. It is expected that these conversations will uncover hidden histories, bring BIPoC leadership and other historically under-represented sporting women into view, and model the types of conversations that will keep us moving toward more equitable sporting spaces.
Suggested Topics
We welcome submissions from authors in a variety of career stages and roles, who are able to collaboratively reflect on a missing or seldom discussed aspect of women’s experience in sport and physical activity. We especially encourage submissions from BIPoC authors, those working in a transnational context, and those working in queer and non-binary framings of womanhood.
More specifically, we encourage submissions that feature critical, cross-generational conversations focused on:
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- navigating the field, career, physical training spaces
- experiences of and responses to community erasures in the framing of professional sites (academia, sport governance, physical training sites, )
- cross-disciplinary analyses of women’s sport and physical activity engagement
- transnational contours of elite sport and physical activity for women (fanship, coaching, participation, )
- critical engagement with local legislation, tradition, or ordinance that may dis/invite women in specific sport and/or physical activity spaces
- established and emergent sites of fanship, especially in transnational contexts
- experiences of retirements and transitions for women leaders in sport and physical activity (faculty, coaches, athletes, community leaders, )
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Types of Scholarly Work
In this series, we encourage submissions that feature critical, cross-generational conversations that may utilize any of the following methodologies, or others not listed here:
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- Epistolary analysis of women sport and physical activity
- Case analysis
- Descriptive analysis
- Informational interviewing
- Document analysis (e.g., a conversation with a governance or legislative document)
- Prose and creative non-fiction
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Guest Editors
Year One:
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- Kathy Jamieson, California State University, Sacramento
- Akilah Carter-Francique, San Jose State University
- Judy Liao, University of Alberta, Canada
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Year Two:
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- Kathy Jamieson, California State University, Sacramento
- DeAnne Brooks, University of North Carolina Greensboro
- Yeomi Choi, Korea National Sport University, South Korea
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Submission and Publication Deadlines
We intend to publish the manuscripts as a WSPAJ Special Series on Engaging Conversation in Women’s Sport and Physical Activity: Traversing Generations. The series will include two manuscripts in each issue of WSPAJ during 2022 (Volume 30) and 2023 (Volume 31) for a total of eight manuscripts. Therefore, there are two sets of deadlines corresponding to each volume.
Volume 30 (2022)
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- August 2, 2021 to October 1, 2021 – rolling submission of abstracts (500 words) emailed to Guest Editor
- October 1, 2021 to December 1, 2021 – rolling submissions of full manuscript based on invitation fromabstract
- February 1, 2022 – deadline for final, revised manuscripts
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Volume 31 (2023)
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- March 1, 2022 to July 1, 2022 – rolling submission of abstracts (500 words) emailed to Guest Editor
- July 1, 2022 to October 3, 2022 – rolling submissions of full manuscript based on invitation from abstract
- January 16, 2023 – deadline for final, revised manuscripts
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500-Word Proposal Abstract First
We are accepting eight manuscripts (with two manuscripts appearing in each issue for Volume 30 (2022) and Volume 31 (2023). If you would like to contribute, please email an abstract (less than 500 words) to Dr. Kathy Jamieson (katherine.jamieson@csus.edu), who will forward these to the remaining guest editors. The abstract should include: author’s name, title, and affiliation and a description of your proposal (i.e., rationale, methods, including conversational strategy). The guest editors will review the abstract, provide detailed feedback, and recommend if the ideas fit the special issues and should be developed into a full manuscript.
Writing and Publishing Guidelines for this WSPAJ Special Issue
Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal (WSPAJ) is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal devoted to advancing the understanding of women in sport and physical activity. WSPAJ is the official journal of the Program for the Advancement of Girls and Women in Sport and Physical Activity, housed in the Center for Women’s Health and Wellness at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The Editor in Chief of WSPAJ is Dr. Lori Gano-Overway. Submission to this Special Series does not guarantee publication. All submissions must meet WSPAJ standards and comply with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition. The final disposition of all manuscripts is decided by the Editor in Chief.
References
Carpenter, L. J. (1993). Letters Home: My life with Title IX. In G. Cohen (Ed.) Women in sport: Issues and controversies (pp. 79-94). Sage.
Hernandez, D. & Rheman, B. (2002). Colonize this! Young women of color on today’s feminism. Seal Press.
Moraga, C. & Anzaldua, G. (2015). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. 4th Ed. SUNY Press.
Taylor, K. Y. (2017). How we get free: Black feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Haymarket Books.
