The Journal of Emerging Sport Studies (JESS) is proud to announce its first online sport studies symposium from October 16-18, 2020. The symposium theme, “Power at Play,” aims to examine ways sport acts as a catalyst of personal and community empowerment, while simultaneously reinforcing societal power structures. Our purpose is to bring together emerging and established researchers and professionals in an online, open-access forum. Here, participants can freely engage in active conversation and debate surrounding significant issues affecting the past, present, and future of sport in society.
We invite abstracts for papers from the following disciplines: history, sociology, philosophy, literature, psychology, law, marketing/economics, management, policy, analytics, or alternative fields. Abstract of approximately 300 words should besubmitted to symposium organizers, Andrew Pettit and Taylor McKee, at emergingsportstudies@gmail.com by June 30, 2020. Alternatively, video abstracts may also be submitted through email, twitter (either direct DMs or mentions) @Emergingsport, or facebook. Please include in your abstract institutional and contact information. Notification of acceptance will be sent by July 7th, 2020.
Symposium Format
Accepted participants will be asked to record their presentations and submit their video to JESS by August 15, 2020.Presentation videos will be organized into panels based on common themes, and will be published on the symposium website one week before the start of the symposium. Videos may remain on the website in perpetuity, unless directedotherwise by presenters.
Questions will be submitted and collected by symposium organizers via social media and email. On October 16-18, digitalpanels will allow presenters to engage with their peers and the wider public regarding their work. In addition to organized panels, each day of the symposium will feature a Distinguished Speaker address (see next page) whereparticipants can gather and engage in a wider group discussion.
More information will be provided to symposium participants after acceptance and the program is finalized.
Our mandate for the Journal of Emerging Sport Studies is to provide emerging and established scholars the opportunity to share their research by limiting barriers to both audiences and researchers. We believe this practice broadens our collective understanding of sport’s important role in shaping our local and global communities.
In keeping with this mission, and to limit the cost of this endeavour on our contributors, we only ask presenters to make a small donation, if possible, to help cover the cost of our website. For more information about the Symposium and the Journal, visit our website: www.emergingsportstudies.ca.
Distinguished speakers
Friday, October 16
Melissa Otterbein, M.P.H., USA Triathlon. Melissa is a former Global Health Corps fellow and a certified coach for U.S.A. Triathlon and U.S. Masters Swimming. Her published research focuses on critically analyzing and evaluating different public health initiatives and community based programs designed to promote and encourage physical activity within diverse communities. Melissa’s current work with U.S.A. Triathlon concentrates on expanding coaches’ and athletes’ mental health literacy particularly relating to empowering athletes in their transition to retirement. She is excited to open the symposium with a work that engages important questions on the intersections between physical activity and mental health.Drs. Sam McKegney, Robert Henry, and Jordan Koch Indigenous Hockey Research Network (IHRN)
Saturday, October 17
Drs. Sam McKegney, Robert Henry, and Jordan Koch, Indigenous Hockey Research Network (IHRN). Established in 2018 for the purpose of interrogating hockey’s ambivalent relationship to settler colonialism and Indigenous sovereignty in Canada, the IHRN’s mission is to investigate the sport as a site of both contestation and potential reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. The address focuses on on-going community-engaged research with the Beardy’s Midget AAA Blackhawks team in Saskatchewan, Canada. Building from player and parent interviews, McKegney, Henry, and Koch analyze the coercive manufacture of compliance with anti-Indigenous racism in hockey, considering the near ubiquity of experience for Indigenous players and parents of being pressured to simply ignore and put up with racism throughout their lives in Canada.
Sunday, October 18
Q&A with Dr. Janice Forsyth, University of Western Ontario. Janice’s research lies in history and sociology, where she employs different concepts of power to identify and analyze the conditions that gave rise to specific practices related to Indigenous physical culture in Canada. Janice focuses specifically on the way organized physical activities have been used as tools for colonization and how Indigenous people have responded to those efforts by taking up those same activities for cultural regeneration and survival. Janice frequently works with governments and non profit organizations to develop b etter opportunities for Indigenous people to engage in physical activities. This May, she published Reclaiming Tom Longboat: Indigenous Self Determination in Canadian Sport which recounts the history of Indigenous sport in Canada through the lens of the prestigious Tom Longboat Awards, shedding light on a significant yet overlooked aspect of Canadian policy and Crown Indigenous relations.
All addresses will take place online in the afternoon. More details to follow closer to the date of the symposium. Watch this space: https://emergingsportstudies.ca/symposium.