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Session and Submission Details

Updated 1 Aug 04

Submission Procedure:

Please read through the session and poster abstracts listed below to determine which session best matches your paper/poster theme. After you have determined the session to which you want to submit your paper, go to the Abstract Submissions page and follow the instructions to fill out the submission form. Once you submit via the web, a copy of your abstract will automatically be sent to the session organizer and the program chair. If you are unsure about which session you should submit to, or you believe you have a topic that does not easily fit one of the identified sessions, please submit your abstract to the Open Session.

Proposing or Adding A Session:

Please be aware that the paper sessions listed on the web are guideposts, not to be construed as the final program. If you have an idea for a session that is not presently listed, or if you are unable to submit your abstract via the web please contact Mary G. McDonald, Miami University, PHS Department, Oxford, Ohio, Ph: (513) 529-2724, Fax: (513) 529-5006 or mcdonamg@muohio.edu.

Abstract Format and Submission Requirements:

Abstracts will be reprinted and published in the Conference Abstracts as submitted. Thus, it is imperative that these guidelines be considered prior to submitting. The simpler your submission is, the easier it will be to convert into a publishable form. Please note that due to time and space constraints presenters are limited to two presentations only (one single authored paper & one coauthored paper, or two coauthored papers).

Once you submit via the web, a copy of your abstract will automatically be sent to the session organizer and the program chair. If you are unsure about which session you should submit or you believe you have a topic that does not easily fit one of the identified sessions, please submit your abstract to the open session listed on the web. Please submit poster abstracts to the poster sessions only.

Acceptance review criteria include:

Abstract Submission Deadline: June 30, 2004       Notification of Acceptance: mid-August, 2004

Paper Sessions

Analysis of Cultural Values in College Sport
On an almost daily basis, the media chronicles issues dealing with abuses in college athletics. These reports seem to reflect the dichotomy between the values of the academy and those found among members of college athletic departments. Against this backdrop, this session is intended to focus generally on research into the core values of college athletic departments, and specifically on research regarding attitudes toward sexual orientation among college students and athletes.
Organizer: Richard M. Southall, University of Memphis
The Athlete as Activist: Using Sport to Effect Social Change
This session will explore the extent to which sport can be (or has been) a vehicle for social change. Possible paper topics might include profiles of athletes who have engaged in social or political activism, analyses of athletic events that have impacted the social or political landscape, or considerations of the influence that athletics and athletes might have to foster progressive social change. Papers are welcome from all disciplinary perspectives including, but not limited to, anthropology, Black studies, communication and media, English, history, political science, sociology, and women's studies.
Organizer: Peter Kaufman, Department of Sociology, SUNY--New Paltz
Body Culture
Topics might include, but are not limited to, diet, fitness, and body routines; body practices; and discourses about the body. Papers might also examine body ideals and/or body image for women or men.
Organizer: Margaret Carlisle Duncan, Department of Human Movement Sciences, University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee
Bringing Sport Sociology to Life in the Classroom
While NASSS scholars have divergent scholarly interests, we share one pedagogical experience, we all teach sport sociology at our respective institutions. This session invites scholars to share their classroom ideas that make their course informative, unique, fun, interactive and which touches the lives of their students. Session attendees not presenting are invited to bring hard copies of their classroom ideas to be included in a published work by the session organizer or to e-mail them to gsailes@indiana.edu. Please do not bring course syllabi. This session is interested in descriptive papers focusing on unique classroom experiences.
Organizer: Gary Sailes, Department of Kinesiology, Indiana University
Brown Versus Board Themed Session -- Dreams Deferred: From Integration To Commodity
The session will target social and historical analyses of the integration of high school and college athletics in America. New social history approaches history from the bottom up. That is, the main focus is on the common folk, not the wealthy. Following the Brown decision, the integration of sports in America followed a slow and uneven path. Coaches and players from the period often talk about the uncertainty and uneasiness caused by the process. Program participants will present social and historical papers over viewing the integration of sport process on selected high school and college campuses.
Organizers: Dana Brooks, School of Physical Education, West Virginia University
Ron Althouse, Sociology and Anthropology, West Virginia University
Challenging the Gender Binary in Sport
Papers in this session will raise questions about the naturalness of the sex/gender binary as they relate to the institutionalization of sex segregation in sport. Papers on the history of sex segregation in sport will be appropriate as well. If you think your paper might address some aspect of sex segregation in sport, go ahead and forward the abstract.
Organizer: Ann Travers, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University
The Changing Culture of American Golf: The Tiger Woods Effect
This session invites papers which focus on the changes experienced in American Golf Culture since Tiger Woods turned professional in 1997. Papers can focus on a variety of topics including increased minority participation, increased prize money, fan behavior, changing commercial promotion of the game, increased media coverage and viewership, increases in course construction, increases in the sale of tee times, golf equipment, golf clothing, a report on Tiger's First Tee Program, the impact on women's golf, etc.
Organizer: Gary Sailes, Department of Kinesiology, Indiana University
Celebrating NASSS's Silver Anniversary
As part of the commemoration of the NASSS 25th Anniversary, the 2004 Program Committee is organizing a session on continuity and change in the history of the organization. The specific content and focus will emerge as a result of NASSS member suggestions and recommendations.
Organizer: Wib Leonard, Sociology Department, Illinois State University
Comparative Perspectives on Sport Policy
Papers are invited which explore the utility/application of comparative method to the study of issues associated with sport policy. We would welcome papers that are from within a single social science discipline or multi-disciplinary; papers that compare across countries or across policy sectors; those that consider the roles and relative significance of voluntary, commercial and public sector actors in policy-making and programme delivery; those that deal with issues of policy-making process, policy delivery and policy impact; papers that deal with issues of comparative methodology; and papers that consider the implications of globalisation for comparative analysis.
Organizers: Barrie Houlihan, Institute of Sport and Leisure Policy, School of Sport and Exercise Science, Loughborough University
Hilmar Rommetvedt, Rogaland Research
Critiquing Sport: What is the Relevance of Marxism?
This session invites papers that explore the extent to which Marxist theory and Marxism as a political project offer productive lines of inquiry for contemporary sports scholarship. Has Marxism been rescued from being an unfashionable and reductive theoretical straitjacket by its distillation through Critical Theory, Cultural Studies and Post-modernism, or has this been a 'destructive distillation' for Marxism? According to Marx's lifelong collaborator Friedrich Engels, Marx was 'before all else a revolutionist', but what is the meaning of praxis in Marxist Sport Studies and how should we articulate the relationship between theory and intervention, and the politics of identity, resistance, social transformation and social reproduction in sport?
Organizer: Ian McDonald, Chelsea School, University of Brighton
The Cultural Politics of Lifestyle Sports
The past decade has seen a tremendous growth in the popularity, of activities like skateboarding and snowboarding; sports that have been labelled as 'extreme' or 'lifestyle' and which embody 'alternative' sporting values. Given their rampant commercialisation, and media appropriation is lifestyle sport culture and the identities that emerge from it transforming in the 21st century? Do these sports cultures vary in different national and trans-national cultural contexts? Can these (sub)cultures still provide an alternative to traditional sport; how in a postmodern culture can 'resistance' be conceptualised. The popularity of these activities goes beyond the teenage white male youth that the media typify as their main consumers. However how are expressions of identity and difference constructed; Are notions of authentic identities based on an essentialised white male subject? Paper are welcomed exploring these and other aspect exploring the cultural politics of lifestyle sport cultures, their identities and representations.
Organizer: Belinda Wheaton, Chelsea School, University of Brighton
Cyborg Sport - Primate Play: Configuring the Athlete in Human History
Consideration of the Cyborg in sport has grown noticeably over the past 5 or 6 years. This session hopes to question the significance of "being human" in sport through a juxtaposition of the technology-saturated icon of the cyborg and its assumed polar opposite of the playful primate. It is hoped that the session will have a multi-disciplinary flavour with presentations from varying sociological viewpoints as well as from anthropological, biological, and philosophical perspectives. The topic will not be limited to expositions of cyborg theory.
Organizer: Simon Eassom, Department of Sport Sciences, De Montfort University
Deconstructing Discourses on Women's Health/Fitness
Contributions to this session should participate in a sense of creative excitement in disseminating new knowledge about cultural constructions of health and illness. In recent decades, business models of health/fitness have been associated to the emergence of a psychosis about impending epidemics of illnesses and diseases. The "health/fitness/sport" industries are also benefiting from an ideology of salvation through consumption and self-discipline. According to dominant discourses, the "good/moral" citizen is the one who takes personal responsibility for, and actively manages her own body/fitness/health. We are calling for papers that will both critically examine the dominant discourses and reflect on alternative discourses and practices in the area of health/fitness.
Organizers: Geneviève Rail, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Ottawa
Sylvie Fortin, Department of Dance, Université du Québec à Montréal
Disability in Sport Sociology
This session will address the topic of disability related themes and issues within the context of sport sociology. Particular emphasis will be placed on examining the inclusion of disability related curriculum within the framework of a broader Sport Sociology curriculum. Further, parallels between race, gender and disability will be explored in order to advance awareness and understanding of disability as a significant social issue in sport.
Organizer: Eli A. Wolff, Director, Disability in Sport, Center for the Study of Sport in Society, Northeastern University
Gazing at the Fe/male Sporting Body: Interdisciplinary Visual Analyses of Gender/Sex in Sport
This session will hopefully bring together work that examines racialized female, gendered and/or sexed bodies in sport using various visual theories. These might include psychoanalytic mechanisms based on sight and recognition; cultural studies of spectatorship and spectacle; the gaze from critical race studies, feminist and/or film studies.
Organizer: Heather Sykes, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Department of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning, University of Toronto
The Gene Genie: New Technology, Old Issues?
WADA and the IOC are beginning to take seriously the (supposed) "threat" of gene therapies used to enhance performance in sport. But they have begun from the premise that such forms of enhancement are wrong and bad for sport. Do new technologies such as gene doping warrant the same consideration as the old issues, such as steroid and EPO use? Does the debate need to be re-opened? Are there no new issues generated by the new performance-enhancing technologies of the 21st Century? This session hopes to combine sociological and philosophical perspectives to question, 'what's wrong with genetic enhancement in sport?'
Organizer: Simon Eassom, Department of Sport Sciences, De Montfort University
"Glass Ceilings" in Sport Organizations — Studies on Gender Arrangement in Leadership Positions
All available studies show that influence and power in sport organizations lay in the hands of men. There is a gender hierarchy in decision making committees in the IOC, the international and national sport federations as well as the national, regional and local sport associations. This session will take a closer look at the existing knowledge about the historical development of gender hierarchies and about recent gender arrangements in the sport systems of various countries and will propose various theoretical approaches which could explain the lack of women in leadership positions. The theories which could be used reach from constructivist theories to theoretical approaches on the gendered culture of organizations. In addition, the results of recent interview studies will be presented and the possibilities of intercultural comparisons will be discussed.
Organizer: Gertrud Pfister, Institute of Exercise and Sport Sciences
Group Diversity in Sport Teams and Sport Organizations
Previous organizational science research has demonstrated that diversity, however defined, within groups can result in both positive (e.g., increased creativity, greater decision making comprehensiveness, and increased productivity) and negative (e.g., greater conflict, member turnover, and member stress) outcomes. The purpose of this session is to examine the effects of group diversity within sport teams and sport organizations. Topics may include, but are not limited to, (a) ways of conceptualizing diversity within groups and teams, (b) the positive and negative effects of diversity, (c) ways of transforming the possible negative effects of group diversity, (d) methods for increasing heterogeneity within groups, and (e) strategies for managing and increasing the value of differences within groups.
Organizer: George B. Cunningham, Laboratory for Diversity in Sport, Department of Health & Kinesiology, Texas A&M University
Homophobia and Sexual Harassment in the World of Sports
Homophobia and sexual harassment in sports are not new phenomena; however, they are largely underreported and not widely researched. This session will focus on the impact that both homophobia and sexual harassment has on its victims, more often females than males. Thus, papers in this session will focus on gender themes and differences in the treatment of men and women in sport.
Organizer: Karin Volkwein, Department of Kinesiology, West Chester University
Indigenous Peoples: Sport, Health and Culture
Papers in this sesssion might explore issues around Indigenous/Native rights, mascots/representation, Native Games, the National Indian Health Board 2004 Fitness Initiative (US), or examinations of specific sports or personalities.
Organizer: Amy S. Hribar, Montana State University
Integration, Inclusion, Sport and Disability
This session will examine trends, models and issues related to the integration and inclusion of people with disabilities in various sporting contexts. Models of integration and inclusion will be presented, along with ideas and research concerning integration and inclusion opportunities and barriers. Also considered will be future directions for research and policy analysis concerning various possible forms of participation of people with disabilities in sport and sports organizations.
Organizer: Eli A. Wolff, Disability in Sport, Center for the Study of Sport in Society, Northeastern University
Interdisciplinary Dialogues: Sport Studies and Urban Studies
This session aims to continue the important contribution that sport studies scholars have made to an overall understanding about urban contexts and to the more specific articulation between sport and urban economic, political, cultural, and sociospatial processes. Welcome are papers from various theoretical perspectives that extend the "conversation" between sport studies and urban studies. Topics may include, but are not limited, to the following: urban images, discourses of community, sociospatial development, crime, race and space, inter-city competition and economic growth, environmental issues, and local-global tensions.
Organizer: Kimberly S. Schimmel, School of Exercise, Leisure & Sport, Kent State University
Interdisciplinary Studies of Sport and (Ill)Health
Research by social scientists within the fields of sport, health, social policy and education, among others, has questioned the often uncritically accepted ideology that sport is somehow "good for you". This session aims to develop these ongoing evaluations by inviting papers from any theoretical or disciplinary perspective, which engage with this debate. It is anticipated that topics may include: young people's lifestyles, illness and injury risk, drug taking, abuse, medical discourse and health care, but other analyses of (ill)health in physical activity contexts are very welcome.
Organizer: Elizabeth Pike, School of Sport, Exercise & Health Sciences, University College Chichester
Major Sports Events
This session provides an opportunity to present primarily data-driven papers that address issues related to recent major sporting events including the Olympic Games, Hockey World Cup, European Championships etc. Key areas that could be addressed include, but are not limited to: fandom, corporatization, media, nationalism, gender, class, ethnicity.
Organizer: Emma Wensing, Department of Exercise Science, University of Toronto
Masculinities and Sport
This session will examine the construction of masculine identities and their relationship to sport. Papers that explore the construction or management of identity among racial or sexual minorities are particularly encouraged as are papers that explore the relationship between masculinities and homosexuality.
Organizer: Eric Anderson
Pain, Interdisciplinarity and Sport
Social Science has endured decades of 'lip-service' to interdisciplinarity, but the fact of the matter is that interdisciplinary sport study is rare. Injury and pain represent real potential for furthering knowledge by crossing disciplinary borders. This session will showcase the work that has been accomplished in this growing field to date, and explore the potential of the field for encompassing/implementing interdisciplinary theories, ideas and practices.
Organizer: Kevin Young, Department of Sociology, University of Calgary
Power and the Politics of Sport Policy
It is increasingly acknowledged that sport policy, be it transnational, state/national, or local, both constitute and contribute to relations of power in different ways. This session invites papers that debate the developing social, political and cultural significance of sport policy and the appropriate theoretical and conceptual framework required to develop the nascent field of critical sport policy analysis. In particular, the call is for papers that identify and articulate relations of power as their central theme in the critique of sport policy.
Organizer: Ian McDonald, Chelsea School, University of Brighton
Power, Gender and Media Images: What Would Stuart Hall Say?
What images do the media present to project idealized interpretations of changing power for various genders? Are the suggested meanings applicable, believable, refutable or in need of reinterpretation in the context of today's sports world? Papers that address any of these issues, tangentially or explicitly, will be welcomed as will empirical or conceptual presentations.
Organizer: James (Jim) Steele, Sociology, James Madison University
Racing the Athletes: The Continuing Significance of Whiteness and Racism
In some cases, like the "Tennis Whites" milk mustache ad campaign, notions of White identities seem to be recycled as a means of protecting the current racial hierarchy-providing a "throwback" to what was perceived to be a more "pure" time in sport. In this session, we analyze ways that "raced identities" get represented in and through sporting bodies, perhaps even how sexuality, ethnicity, and gender are "Whitened" through particular racial projects. We will present two papers, hear from a discussant (TBA), and will engage discussion about Whiteness as an analytic category for sport studies.
Organizers: Nancy E. Spencer, Bowling Green State University
Katherine M. Jamieson, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Delia D. Douglas, Independent Scholar
(Re)Considering Sport as a Communication Phenomenon
The domain of sport is a communicatively rich locale for understanding an array of symbolic processes endemic to everyday interaction. This session seeks to (re)consider how sport-related phenomena may be understood if disciplined from a communication paradigm. This session solicits theoretical essays and empirical studies-from a variety of intellectual approaches and perspectives-that provide serious consideration to those communicative (i.e., message-based) processes that empirically constitute, inherently drive, and ultimately perpetuate, the symbolic process and practice of sport.
Organizer: Kelby K. Halone, School of Communication Studies, University of Tennessee
The Reform Movement in College Sport
This Session will examine contemporary reform movements in college sport in the United States. The efforts of such as those of "The Drake Group" and the "Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics", among others, will be reviewed. Prospects for real reform in the near future will be critiqued.
Organizer: Michael Malec, Department of Sociology, Boston College
Research in Progress: Race and Sport
This session aims to bring together folks who are at various stages of thinking, researching, and writing on race/race relations and sport. Papers that focus on under-researched groups (e.g. women of color), grapple with intersections of systems of power (e.g. race/gender/class), and explore new theoretical directions are especially welcome.
Organizer: Cynthia Fabrizio Pelak, Department of Sociology, University of Memphis
Social Manifestations of the Psychic - Psychoanalysis of Culture and Sport
Work in the 'psychoanalysis of culture' is often inadvertently misread as an attempt to delineate clear ascriptions of intent or motivation to individual persons. This session wants to explore how we can theorize the 'psychic' (in whatever form) in sporting contexts through its larger cultural and social manifestations. We welcome papers considering issues of identification, desire, and/or subjectivity (among others) and how they articulate with relations of power, social inequalities, and/or other arenas of politics (among other possibilities).
Organizers: Judy Davidson, Physical Education & Recreation, University of Alberta
Michelle Helstein, Department of Kinesiology, University of Lethbridge
Spaces for Racism: Sport, Race, and Nation
Papers/Abstracts for this session should be focussed on the interrelatedness between sport, race, and nation/national identity. Of most interest are papers dealing with the legitimation and/or rendering invisible of racism within contemporary sporting and national discourses. Examples could include, but are not limited to: critiques of multicultural or assimilationist national/sport policies; complexities of racialized/national identities and the experiences of sport participants; discussions of insider/outsider status as related to sport, race, and nation.
Organizers: Rod S. Murray and Lainie Mandlis, Faculty of Physical Education & Recreation, University of Alberta
Sport and [Queer]Sexuality: Critical inQueeries
Queer theory offers a way to discuss and analyze sexuality in sporting contexts. Queer also opens the way for inclusion of the multiplicity of sex-gender-desire identities. The session intends to focus on sexuality and its relation to gender and the sexed body. Participants are encouraged to critically engage with queer theory and how it can[not] be useful to the sociology of sport. Papers that interrogate queer theory and /or engage with the diversity of sexuality are welcome.
Organizer: Jayne Caudwell, Chelsea School, University of Brighton
Sport and the Community: Issues and Controversies
What are the economic consequences of sport teams for their local communities? Which community members benefit the most from the local team? Which community members benefit the least? Do local teams contribute to a community's self-esteem or collective conscience? Do local teams integrate or divide communities? How do communities decide whether or not to sponsor a team? These questions and others will be taken up in this session, which explores the relationship between sport teams and local communities. Researchers interested in community politics, urban sociology, community sociology, sociology of sport, urban economics, and applied economics are encouraged to submit papers.
Organizer: Merrill J. Melnick, Department of Physical Education & Sport, SUNY -- Brockport
Sports and Youth Academic and Developmental Outcomes
Sports are pervasive features of American schools with potential for major impacts on student motivation, development, and success. This session provides an opportunity to present papers that contribute to a clearer definition of the role and importance of sport and extracurricular involvement in the educational system. Such new knowledge and practical suggestions should be helpful to educational practitioners and policy makers as they proceed with reform and restructuring efforts and might better enable decisions regarding the role and place of sport in schools and communities.
Organizer: Jan Sokol-Katz, Center for Research on Sport in Society, University of Miami
Sport, Culture and Advertising
In recognition of the dominant role of advertising and promotional culture within contemporary existence papers are invited for a session on Sport, Culture and Advertising. Papers dealing with any of the following areas (or related) are invited: identity politics, globalization, corporate nationalism, audiences and new media.
Organizer: Steven J. Jackson, School of Physical Education, University of Otago
Sport, Fatherhood and Family: Multidisciplinary Contributions to the Understanding of Sport in Contemporary Family Life
The intention of this session is to encourage two broad types of contribution from researchers with roots in sociology of sport, leisure studies, social policy and family studies: The session would equally accommodate contributions with a theoretical, conceptual or empirical focus, and would offer an opportunity to forge more links between sports researchers and those working on similar topics from other sociological and/or social policy perspectives. More fundamentally, it would have the potential contribute to the development of a more critical perspective on men, sport and family.
Organizer: Tess Kay, Institute of Youth Sport, School of Sport & Exercise Science, Loughborough University
Sport and the Nation
This session aims to explore the multiplicity of ways that sport and sporting individuals are articulated with the nation and/or as representative of national "character". Papers on any aspect of sport and national identity are welcomed.
Organizer: Toni Bruce, University of Waikato
Sport, Social Capital and Social Class
Organizer: Peter Donnelly, University of Toronto
Sport Sociology and History: The Legacy of Mountaineer John Muir
This session explores the historical roots of mountaineering, backpacking, rock climbing, exploring, outdoor adventuring and observation of the natural world by examining the exploits of John Muir (1838-1914). While Muir is justly famous as a nature writer and founder of the Sierra Club, he also had an athletic disposition. We seek papers for this session on Muir's athletic feats and how his physical engagement with the outdoors contributed to many sport and recreational activities in North America.
Organizers: Tim Curry, Department of Sociology, Ohio State University
John Phillips, Department of Sociology, University of the Pacific
Sporting Initiatives and Peace Processes in Divided Societies
Throughout the world many societies are destabilised through deep social and political divisions. In some this has led to serious social disorder and in the worst cases civil war with global consequences. This session invites papers from those who are researching into and/or have practical experience of sporting initiatives that are designed to contribute to peace and reconciliation in such societies.
Organizer: John Sugden, Chelsea School, University of Brighton
Sports Fanship: Active Consumption of Sport - Processes, Effects and Implications
Although some have seen fans as merely passive recipients of sporting culture and messages, or as potentially incorporative or resistant agents, fans are highly active actors participating in often contradictory ways albeit in a sporting culture not of their own making. Nonetheless, fans through their active engagement with sport in a myriad of ways not only construct their own identities but impact aspects of social knowledge and social structure. This session hopes to focus on the lived experience of fans as they interact with other aspects of or participants in sporting culture and process so as to explore how the consumption of sport contributes to individual identities, and collective social processes, and structures.
Organizer: Don Levy, Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut
To the Extreme: the Meaning and Motivation of Risk in Sport
The organizers welcome contributions examining the (sub)culture(s) of extreme sports as well as conceptual papers exploring the meaning of risk, danger, and 'extreme' etc - from ethnographies through to quantitative socio-psychological studies and philosophical analysis. Papers on 'new' extreme sports are welcome as are presentations on the traditional fayre, such as climbing, hang-gliding, base-jumping, sky-diving. Studies of scientific researchers and/or workers requiring extreme 'sporting' skills in their occupations would also be considered.
Organizer: Simon Eassom, Department of Sport Sciences, De Montfort University
Traditional and Non-Traditional Job Searches: What Happens When the Interview Never Comes
In today's times of academic budget cuts, many departments are scaling back tenure track positions. The purpose of this session is to discuss different methods for securing an academic position. Session speakers will have experience either hiring or getting hired in non-traditional ways, and will give suggestions to graduate students about such topics as ways of getting a job, how to make the most out of part-time employment, and ways to knock down barriers so that they can succeed.
Organizer: Brenda A. Riemer, Department of Physical Education & Exercise Science, California State University -- Chico
Visual Economies of/in Motion: Sport and Film
This session conceives of film as a medium and a method vital to the creation and circulation of identities, ideologies, and hegemonies in public culture and in turn as a means of unpacking and even challenging such visual economies. Engaging structures and stories, no less than production and reception, it seeks to showcase critical accounts of sport films, from Hollywood blockbusters to independent documentaries. It invites as well presentation from filmmakers interested in discussing their ongoing efforts to use film to critical engage sporting worlds. The session welcomes a range of critical theories (feminist, post-structural, marxist, critical race, etc) concerned with any number of substantive themes in sport films (race, gender, sexuality, ability, globalization, class, etc.).
Organizer: C. Richard King, Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies, Washington State University
Walter Benjamin and Physical Culture
Organizer: David L. Andrews, Sport Commerce and Culture Program, Department of Kinesiology, University of Maryland
What Does Legal and Moral Theory Have to Do with the Social Criticism and Analysis of Sport?
This session is interested in papers that explore the role legal and moral theory play in critiques of sport. It is also concerned with what sort of legal and moral principles and forms of reasoning people use in deciding how controversial issues in sport, such as sexual equity and fairness, are resolved. Finally, it seeks to explore more generally the contributions legal and moral theory might make to social theories and analyses of sport.
Organizers: Sarah Fields & Bill Morgan, Sport Humanities, Ohio State University
Women, Sport and the Iconography of Nationhood
The relationship between sport and nationhood has been examined by academics from a variety of disciplines and by popular commentators, but most investigations tend to focus on men's sports practices. This session will consider the ways in which sports women are represented in relation to the iconography of nationhood. Papers are invited from varying national contexts, academic disciplines and theoretical perspectives.
Organizer: Irene A Reid, Department of Sports Studies, University of Stirling

Poster Sessions

Images of Brown V. Board of Education: 50 Years of Contradictions
This poster session will focus on the segregation and integration and college and high school sports in America. Posters should consist of pictures of former African American players, coaches, cheerleaders, teachers, community leaders and local industry, copies of newsletters, year books, and pictures of previous segregated high schools and colleges.
Organizers: Dana Brooks, School of Physical Education, West Virginia University
Ron Althouse, Sociology & Anthropology, West Virginia University
"Teaching to Transgress": Critical Pedagogical Practices in the Sociology of Sport
Description: A number of educators have challenged the institutional focus on "knowledge as accumulated capital" (Mohanty, 2003, p. 195), and in its place offer a more nuanced, activist, critical consciousness that focuses on knowledge as inextricably linked with history, power, and subjectivity. This poster session seeks to articulate varied forms of resistance that occur through teaching in the broad field of Sociology of Sport. Examples of such resistance may be the use of particular pedagogical frameworks (feminist, anti-capitalist, phenomenological, experiential, etc), specific classroom strategies (politicized curricula, oppositional readings, problem solving, etc.), or research focused on the impact of particular pedagogical strategies in the Sociology of Sport.
Organizer: Katherine M. Jamieson, Department of Exercise & Sport Science, University of North Carolina--Greensboro

NASSS 2004 Info | Sessions | Abstract Submissions | NASSS Homepage | Comments and Questions

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