Tuesday, January 05, 2010

CFP: HIM 15 “History at Play: Sport, Leisure, and Games, Old and New”

CFP: HIM 15 “History at Play: Sport, Leisure, and Games, Old and New”
Location: Quebec, Canada
Call for Papers Deadline: 2010-01-15

History in the Making 15
“History at Play: Sport, Leisure, and Games, Old and New”
Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
March 5 & 6, 2010
www.himconference.ca

Call for Papers:

The study of sport, leisure, and games is a broad, multi-faceted, interdisciplinary field of inquiry that contributes meaningfully to our understanding of the past and the present...

The games people play, the organization of leisure, and the social role that sports occupy, allow scholars to explore questions of individual and collective identities such as gender and sexuality; class, race and ethnicity; nationalism and national identities; and colonial and post-colonial experiences. The study of sport, leisure, and games contributes to our knowledge of historical processes such as globalization, cultural diffusion, and patterns of commerce and consumption. Practices of participation, commemoration, and spectatorship provide insight into the construction of communities from the local to the global. Also of interest is the important role played by the various media and communications systems, oral, written, visual, and digital, that transmit and transform the cultural meanings of games, leisure, and sport. Whether approached as mirror or lens, process or performance, sport, leisure, and games have given us productive ways with which to better understand the varied experiences of people at play from ancient to postmodern societies.

HIM 15 proposes to bring together graduate students, professional historians, and members of the broader academic and sporting communities to discuss current research and activities on the subject of sport, leisure, and games in history and society. Proposals on a wide variety of topics, time-periods, and geographic regions are welcome and we gladly invite papers from scholars representing disciplines other than History.

Proposals for fifteen-minute presentations should not exceed 250 words and should be accompanied by a brief biography. The deadline for submissions is Friday, January 15, 2010. Please send email attachments to himconference@gmail.com. For further information, feel free to contact us at the same address, or visit www.himconference.ca
Jessica J. Mills and Lindsay Pattison, Co-Chairs
Concordia University
Email: himconference@gmail.com
Visit the website at http://www.himconference.ca