Society for the Study of Social Problems Notes From the Chair Jeffrey O. Sacha University of Southern California Hello Sport, Leisure, and the Body (SLB) Members, I hope that Spring is in full swing for all of you, as we inch towards summer. As I write this, we are about one week away from that perfect storm of mainstream American sports: the NBA and NHL playoffs are in full swing, nearly every MLB ballpark is abuzz with hopes for the pennant, and the NFL draft looms large. This is a time of year when I find myself torn in two. On the one hand, I am a full-on sports fan. I was born into a “sports family” and cheered for Seattle sports teams before I knew what sports were. On the other hand, I am a sports scholar. I am well aware, for example, that NBA owners and front offices are almost exclusively white and male, that MLB “academies” exploit players in Latin America, and the fact that the 250 young men who will be drafted into the NFL were once unpaid laborers who were never allowed to reap the benefits of their “free” college education. I find fellowship among fellow sports scholars who also both love and critique sports at all levels. I think that our underlying belief, that there is something redeemable in sports, drives our field’s research. I am very excited for our upcoming meeting in Seattle. The theme of the conference is “Globalizing Social Problems,” and our division is hosting and co-sponsoring some sessions that fit perfectly with this theme. The Rio Olympics kick off August 5th and conclude on the last day of the conference this year (August 21st). What a perfect time and place for a bunch of sports scholars to gather!! This newsletter outlines the titles of our eight exciting and diverse sessions. I encourage all of you to attend these sessions. We are the smallest division in SSSP and need to support one another whenever and however possible! As a first-year division chair I am also looking forward to meeting as many of you as possible. If you see me around the conference, please introduce yourself. Please do what you can to ensure the growth of the Sport, Leisure, and the Body division. Our division is valuable because it provides a voice to our subfield, which is often invisible or seen as frivolous in sociology. You can do this in a number of ways, including volunteering to organize sessions for the 2017 conference, serving on the graduate student paper committee, submitting papers to our sessions, attending the sessions and business meeting in Seattle, and most notably by renewing and maintaining your memberships in our division and encouraging others to do so. If you have colleagues or graduate students whose research fits with our division, please encourage them to join! SSSP membership is $60 and comes with two free division memberships. Thank you all for your active participation in our division. I look forward to serving you all as division chair for the next two years. ~Jeff 2016 Graduate Student Paper Award The award committee recently named the 2016 winner of the division’s Graduate Student Paper Award. Congratulations to Kathryn Hendricks, PhD student in sociology from the University of Chicago. Her paper, "What the Action Is: Flow, Risk, and Gender in a Fire Community," challenges objective definitions of risk in leisure activity and shows the complex relationship between gender and risk in group activities. Her clear theoretical framing and methodological rigor form a clear contribution to the concept of "flow" in sports and leisure activity.  Please also join the committee in recognizing the honorary mention winner, Sarah Billups. Sarah's paper, "Courting Equality? An Ethnographic Account of Disparities and Differential Treatment within a Youth Non-Profit Tennis Program" provides an empirically rich account of how social inequality is negotiated, challenged, and maintained within a sport outreach organization. Both of these papers represent the promising work being done by the next generation of sports and activity scholars. Thank you to all of the graduate students who submitted a paper. Graduate students are the lifeblood of our division and we appreciate your active membership! Sessions for Annual Meeting in Seattle (August 19-21) Our division is sponsoring or co-sponsoring eight total sessions. Days/times/rooms will be announced in May when the preliminary program is released for the annual meeting. Here are the session titles: * Session 37: “Performance, Medicalization, and the Body” w/ Drinking and Drugs & Health, Health Policy, and Health Services Division * Session 46: “Beyond the Classroom: Learning through Extra- and -Co-curricular Activities” w/ Educational Problems Division * Session 78: “Wielding Wellness? The Social Organization of Health and Bodies” w/ Institutional Ethnography Division * Session 84: “Tourism, Sport and Labor in a Global Setting” w/ Labor Studies Division * Session 103: “Genders, Sexualities, and Bodies” w/ Sexual Behavior, Politics, and Communities Division * Session 107: “Problematizing Bodies” w/ Social Problems Theory Division * Session 115: “Sport in a Global Context” * Session 116: “Sports on the Fringe: Non-normative Sport and Recreation” Sitting with the Chairs This section spotlights the thoughts and work of former chairs of the SLB division. Each former chair was asked the same set of questions about their personal history, current work, and their thoughts on “the field” of sports/leisure/body studies. This newsletter features our most recent chair, Beth Cavalier. Prof. Cavalier is an assistant professor of sociology at Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville, Georgia. Prof. Cavalier received PhD from Georgia State in 2009. Her past work has focused on gender and sexuality in a variety of sports contexts (formal organizations, colleges, and communities). How would you describe your current research interests? Beth: Currently, I'm working on a few sport-related projects. I just finished a chapter for a Social Problems reader about the use of Native American mascots and symbols in sport. I also recently completed a chapter for a book about the history of sport in San Francisco, focusing on the history of San Francisco roller derby (my first attempt at doing sport history work). I'm working on a project with Dr. Kris Newhall about social media and marketing of U.S. Women's Soccer, and I'm just starting a new project about extreme fandom. You might say my research interests are all over the map--but they all have sport in common! How did you come to be involved with the division of Sport, Leisure, and the Body? Beth: I took over the division for Dr. Cheryl Cooky, who had inherited it from Dr. P.J. McGann (who helped found the division). I knew Dr. Cooky from NASSS (North American Society for the Sociology of Sport), and I shared her belief that SSSP could benefit from having a focus on sport and sporting bodies. As division chair from 2013--2015, I tried to grow the division and solidify our position in SSSP. We are a small division (one of the smallest, even), but I think SSSP is a good space for those of us who are interested in sport, leisure, and body studies. Why do you think it's important to have a division on Sport, Leisure, and the Body in SSSP?  Beth: For better or for worse, sport is considered a "niche" field in sociology. SSSP is an organization that is historically open and accepting of those sorts of "niche" fields that don't fit as neatly at ASA or the other national organizations. And it allows for a more diverse representation of the fields of sport, leisure, and body studies than is usually represented at ASA (which tends toward a quantitative approach--not that there's anything wrong with that! But, diversity is good). What do you see as some of the most interesting or pressing issues that our division is positioned to study?  Beth: Our division can capture so many important social issues facing sport, leisure and recreation, and bodies and embodiment. These issues serve as microcosms for issues facing larger society. Often, inside and outside academia, we don't take the study of sport and leisure as seriously as other areas of study, but it can be very illuminating of broader social issues. What is your favorite book or article from the past couple of years that relates to our division's research areas? Beth: I'm not as current on the literature as I should be, but the first one that came to mind was Sammi King's article "What's Queer about (Queer) Sport Sociology Now" in Sport and Society Journal (2008, 25: 419-442). Although I'm not sure 2008 counts as "the past couple of years"! New Articles and Books Michael A. Messner & Michela Musto, eds., Child's Play:  Sport in Kids' Worlds. (Rutgers University Press) Several division members are included in a new edited volume on youth sports. The book, edited by Michael Messner and Michela Musto, will be released in May through Rutgers University Press: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/product/Childs-Play,5893.aspx http://www.amazon.com/Childs-Play-Worlds-Critical-Society/dp/0813571456/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459780154&sr=8-1&keywords=Child%27s+play+Messner Call for Papers Call for Book Chapters: Women in Sports: Breaking Barriers, Facing Obstacles Dear Colleagues, I am developing a two-volume book project to be published by ABC-CLIO Praeger addressing women’s sport involvement in contemporary society. The volume highlights both individual sportswomen as well as general empirical trends surrounding women’s sports participation. Women’s inclusion and exclusion and equitable and inequitable treatment in sports have large scale social, legal, health, and economic consequences. Furthermore, women are continuing to break barriers in all aspects of sports, and scholars and the general public are beginning to recognize sex disparities in sports as a social problem. This project provides a comprehensive overview of the “the state of women in sports,” by including both current events and qualitative and quantitative research. The volume also utilizes a sociological approach to discussing women in sports by questioning dominant ideology surrounding biological notions of athletic inferiority and by examining other social constructs which affect women’s experiences in sports, such as race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation. Submissions from current and former sports participants and professionals are welcome. Possible topics for book chapters include the following, but are not limited to: The 2015 Women’s World Cup and the 2015 U.S team; Serena and Venus Williams; new NFL interviewing requirements; Mo’Ne Davis; Ronda Rousey; Kacy Catanzaro; Jen Welter; Noora Räty: The 2016 NCAA Basketball Tournament changes in regulations; Cassandra Brown; Sam Gordan; Pat Summit; Diane Nyad; Lindsay Vonn; Shelby Osborne; Sarah Hudek; Michele Roberts; Becky Hammon; Brittany Griner; Hope Solo; Lakatriona “Bernice” Brunson; The 2012, 2014, and 2016 Olympic Games; pay inequality; roller derby; bobsled; motorsports; female sports journalism; sex integration in athletics; abuse; eating disorders; sex-typed sports and biological assumptions; female athletes of color; LGBT athletes; extreme female athletes; fat female athletes; women in leadership roles (e.g., coaches, owners, and committee members); injury risk; and sexed uniforms. Please submit abstracts as Microsoft Word documents no longer than 500 words to amilner@uab.edu by May 1, 2016 for feedback and further submission information. Full drafts of papers will be submitted by July 1, 2016 for review although final revisions will not be due until October 15, 2016. Please feel free to contact me about submission details or with any questions. Sincerely, Adrienne Milner, PhD Call For Abstracts Publicly Engaged Sociology of Sport North American Society of the Sociology of Sport La Sociedad Norteamericana para la Sociologia del Deporte Societe Nord-Americaine de Sociologie du Sport Annual Conference, November 2 – 5, 2016 Hilton Tampa Downtown, Tampa Bay, Florida Publicly Engaged Sociology of Sport On behalf of the 2016 conference committee, it is my pleasure to distribute the Call for Abstracts. I am confident that you will agree the organizers have developed creative, thought-provoking, and timely sessions. As the conference organizer, I look forward to an engaging and meaningful conference. I appreciate all the session organizers who offered their time to create sessions. Thank you! You can download and review the session descriptions from our website. Abstract authors are strongly encouraged to submit to one of the organized sessions. However, for authors who do not see their paper fitting in with one of the organized sessions, there is also the option to submit to an “open” session – for paper presentations or roundtables. Authors submitting to an “open” session are asked to indicate if they are willing to serve as an organizer and/ or moderator of a session. The conference organizer and committee will do their best to ensure abstracts find an appropriate home. Due to time, space, and scheduling constraints, we ask that authors submit only one abstract as first author. Authors who wish to submit more than one abstract may do so provided they are not the first author on subsequent abstract submission(s). Abstract authors submitting to multiple sessions (and organizers of multiple sessions) should be prepared well in advance of the conference to have a collaborator or colleague present or moderate should there be a scheduling conflict. In addition, the conference organizer will not be able to accommodate specific requests or preferences regarding time or date of a session or paper. As such, session organizers, moderators, and presenters/ authors are expected to be 9 available for the duration of the time when conference sessions are scheduled. Sessions begin in the morning on Thursday, November 3 (typically around 8 am) and end in the afternoon on Saturday, November 5 (typically around 5 pm). There will always be someone who is first, and someone who is last. Your understanding regarding the tremendous work that is involved in organizing the conference is much appreciated by the conference organizer and committee! All considerations will be made to schedule sessions in accordance with the topics of each session, so sessions do not compete with each other for those with similar academic interests. However, due to limited time and space, this sometimes may occur. Timeline: Deadline for submission of abstracts to session organizers is June 30, 2016. Session organizers will notify authors of abstract acceptance by July 15, 2016. Session organizers will submit completed sessions (4 – 5 papers each) to the conference organizer, Theresa Walton-Fisette at NASSS2016@kent.edu, by July 15, 2016. Format: Abstracts should include the name, institutional affiliation, and email address of the author/s; a title (no more than 10 words); and a brief abstract (200 words maximum) that describes the presentation and ideally how the session fits into the conference theme. Please submit abstracts to the appropriate session organizer via the online submission system (do not send abstracts directly to session organizers via email). For open session abstract submissions, please submit abstracts to the Conference Committee Chair via the “OPEN” session options (last sessions listed in the drop down menu). 1