Notes From the Chair Elizabeth Cavalier, PhD Georgia Gwinnett College Greetings, members of the Sport, Leisure and the Body Section! I am just beginning my first year as Division Chair. Please join me in thanking our past chair, Dr. Cheryl Cooky, for her tireless efforts leading the division over the past two years. With her guidance we continued the momentum of our young division. I’d also like to welcome our incoming newsletter editor, Rachel Allison. In this newsletter, we have an interesting essay by Dr. Stephanie Medley-Rath on scrapbooking. We also have a report from Lisa-Jo van den Scott, Clare Forstie, and Savina J. Balasubramanian, winners of the section’s 2013 Student Paper Competition. Our division has sponsored or co-sponsored several sessions for next year’s program in San Francisco, including two solo-sponsored sessions, “Sport on the Margins” and “Gender, Sexuality, and Sport.” Please keep your eyes out for these sessions when the Call for Papers comes out. Also please encourage your graduate students to submit to the Student Paper Award Competition. Winners receive a $100 stipend, student membership in SSSP for 2014, complementary registration for the 2014 annual meeting, and a complementary ticket to the 2014 SSSP Awards Banquet. Please note that the deadline for submitting to this award is 1/31/14. We would love to have more active participation in our division. We are one of the smaller divisions at SSSP, so there is a lot of room for active membership. We especially need your help in soliciting more membership for our division. As you renew your memberships this January, please be sure to spread the word about our division. Be creative! I promised to buy beers for people in San Francisco if they get us more than 3 members. Faculty, please also encourage your graduate students to join. The more the merrier! Finally, we will publish two more newsletters in the academic year—one in spring semester, and one in the summer right before the conference. We would love to have your contributions to the newsletter, whether it is an essay, a book review, or an announcement. Please send any contributions or essay ideas to our newsletter editor, Rachel Allison (rallis2@uic.edu). Enjoy the rest of your fall semester, everyone! Member News Cheryl Cooky (past Division Chair, 2011-2013) was recently promoted toAssociate Professor in the Department of Health & Kinesiology and theWomen’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Purdue University. Sport, Leisure and the Body members Cheryl Cooky and Mike Messner (withRobin Hextrum) published an article this summer in the newjournal, Communication & Sport titled, “Women Play Sport, But Not on TV: ALongitudinal Study of Televised News Media.” Sport, Leisure and the Body members Shari Dworkin and Cheryl Cooky (withAmanda Swarr) published an article this summer in Feminist Studies titled, “(In)Justice in Sport: The treatment of South African Track Star CasterSemenya.” Cheryl Cooky (past Division Chair, 201-2013) will begin a 3-year term thisNovember on the Editorial Board for the Sociology of Sport Journal. Elise Paradis was promoted to Assistant Professor at the University of California,San Francisco. Elise Paradis won the 2013 ASA Body & Embodiment Best Paper Award for her"Boxers, Briefs or Bras? Gender and Change in the Boxing Gym," published zn Body & Society in 2012. 2014 Student Paper Competition The Sport, Leisure, and the Body Division announces the 2014 Graduate Student Paper Competition. Papers may be empirical and/or theoretical, andmay be on any aspect of sport or sporting culture, leisure, and/or sportingbodies broadly defined. The winner will receive a stipend of $100, student membership in SSSP for 2014, complimentary registration for the 2014 annualmeeting (to help the winner attend the meeting), and a complimentary ticket tothe 2014 SSSP awards banquet. The winner will also be invited to present thewinning paper at one of the Sport, Leisure, and the Body sessions at the 2014 annual meeting. To be eligible, a paper must meet the following criteria: 1) theapplicant must be a graduate student at the time of the SSSP annual meeting inAugust 15 -17, 2014; 2) the applicant must be the first (lead) author on thepaper; 3) the paper must not be co-authored with a faculty member or acolleague who is not a student; 4) the paper must not have been submitted oraccepted for publication (papers that have been submitted for presentation at aprofessional meeting are eligible); 5) the paper must not exceed 30 pagesincluding notes, references, and tables; 6) the paper must be typed using 12point font in either Times New Roman or Courier; and 7) the paper must beaccompanied by a nominating letter from a faculty member at the student’scollege or university. Authors are required to submit their papers throughthe annual meeting Call for Papers process as a condition for consideration for the award. Please submit your paper electronically as a Microsoft Word and PDF file to ecavalie@ggc.edu . The faculty letter of nomination may be sent electronically or as a hard copy to: Dr. Elizabeth Cavalier, School of Liberal Arts,Georgia Gwinnett College, 1000 University Center Lane, Lawrenceville, GA,30043 (electronic copies strongly preferred). Paper submission must be dated(via electronic time/date stamp and post-mark) on or before 1/31/14. Call For Papers CFP for Special Issue of Sport in Society Topic: Girls, International Development, and the Politics of Sport Guest Editors: Dr. Megan Chawansky, University of Brighton, m.chawansky@brighton.ac.uk Dr. Lyndsay Hayhurst, University of British Columbia, lyndsay.hayhurst@ubc.ca Overview: Drawing on dominant claims of the positive benefits of sport and physical activity, a growing number of sport for international development and peace (SDP) projects seek to empower ‘marginalized’ girls and young women in the global South. Sport may be a new approach to help girls and young women address the palpable problems they face in varied communities around the world, but there is still much that needs to be understood about the use of sport for development and peace interventions. SDP programmes promise positive change through sport trainings and varied life skills curricula that endeavour to educate girls and young women on topics such as reproductive health, hygiene, effective communication, and financial literacy. It is the aim of these programmes to use sport to improve the lives of girls and young women by working directly with them on issues and challenges they face. In turn, they are framed as part of the solution to their own ‘problems’. We seek contributions that will offer an analysis of how, why, and if sport can help girls and young women of the global South. We expect contributions to raise complex questions surrounding transnational and postcolonial feminisms, sporting practices, power, bodies, gender, and sexuality. Timeline: Title and Abstract (150 words) due: 1 December 2013 **Please email title, abstract and full contact details to Megan Chawansky at m.chawansky@brighton.ac.uk** Confirmation of acceptance: 15 January 2014 First draft of articles due: 1 August 2014 Feedback to authors: 15 September 2014 Final manuscripts due: 15 October 2014 Expected article length (6,000-7,000 words, including references) Instructions for authors: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fcss20/current#.Ul5zN19wZjo For more information or to request this information in an alternate format contact: Megan Chawansky (m.chawansky@brighton.ac.uk) Call For Papers 2014 CSRI Conference on College Sport April 22--26, 2014 Downtown Columbia Marriott The University of South Carolina Columbia, SC Call for Papers The College Sport Research Institute welcomes the submission of abstracts for its 7th annual CSRI Conference on College Sport to be held at the Columbia Marriott:http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/caemh-columbia-marriott/ The conference’s mission is to: “Provide students, scholars, and college-sport practitioners a public forum to discuss relevant and timely intercollegiate-athletics issues.” Submission Guidelines: To be considered for acceptance, abstracts must reflect college-sport research on the history of intercollegiate athletics, social-cultural college-sport issues, legal theory or the application of law to college-sport issues, business-related issues in college sport, or special topics related to current college-sport issues. The research should have reached a fairly complete stage of development, and the abstract should provide enough detail about the research, so the reviewers have sufficient information to judge its quality. Abstracts proposing teaching- related sessions on college-sport issues will also be considered, as long as the abstract provides sufficient detail to judge the quality of the proposed session. Abstracts will undergo a multi-person, blind-review process to determine acceptance. Abstracts submitted to CSRI should not be concurrently submitted for consideration to another conference. Submission Deadline: Abstracts should NOT be submitted prior to Monday, October 14, 2013 and MUST be received no later than Friday, January 10, 2014 (11:59p.m. EST). Submissions received after this date and time will not be considered for acceptance. Abstract Format and Submission Procedures: All abstracts MUST be submitted electronically as a Microsoft Word attachment and must contain the following information and conform to the following format requirements: • Single-spaced • One-inch margins, • Times New Roman 12-point font, and • 400-word maximum for 30-minute presentations and posters, and 800­word maximum for 65-minute presentations. Abstract Format: Line 1: Type of session desired (choose from the options below): • 30-minute oral presentation (including questions) • 65-minute panel, roundtable, or workshop • Poster presentation Line 2: three to four keywords that will help the program coordinator schedule similar topics in succession Line 3: author(s) and institution(s) names (centered on page) Line 4: presentation title (centered on page) Line 5: blank Line 6 to end: text of abstract (including demonstration of research conducted) In the email message accompanying the attached abstract, include the principal author’s name, postal mailing address, email address, and fax and telephone numbers. Submission of abstract(s) indicates the intent of the presenter(s) to register for the conference at the appropriate registration fee. Email all abstracts to: CSRI Office Manager -Joseph Isenberg at csri@sc.edu NOTE: All abstracts MUST be submitted electronically as a Microsoft Word attachment. For more information regarding the conference: http://www.csriconference.org or call at: 803.777.0658 / 803.777.5550 Call For Chapters Fighting Women: Women’s Boxing in the Americas The editors of this anthology invite previously unpublished papers on women’s boxing in Canada, the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. We are seeking proposals for research papers (maximum 6,000 words) and case studies of current or former pugilists (maximum 4,000 words). Chapters may use historical, contemporary, comparative, or interdisciplinary perspectives. Topics may include: · Historical Legacies of Early Women’s Boxing · The Policing or Regulating of Women’s Bodies in the Ring · Contemporary Issues in Women’s Amateur and Professional Boxing · Cultural and Media Representations of Women’s Boxing · Women Boxers in the Olympic Games or other International Tournaments · Officiating and Judging of Women’s Boxing · Women’s Boxing in New Media and Social Networks · Case Studies of Women Boxers Submission Guidelines: Please send 500-word abstracts with one-page CVs to fightingwomen.submissions@gmail.comby March 1, 2014. Notifications will be sent by April 1, 2014, and final papers are due July 1, 2014. The book will follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition. For general inquiries, please email benita.heiskanen@gmail.com. Editors: Dr. Benita Heiskanen (University of Turku, Finland) is the author of The Urban Geography of Boxing: Race, Class, and Gender in the Ring (New York: Routledge, 2012). Dr. Cathy van Ingen (Brock University, Canada) has published articles on boxing in theSociology of Sport Journal, Journal of Sport History, Feminist Media Studies, and several anthologies. Dr. Anju Reejhsinghani (University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, U.S.A.) is completing a monograph on the history of Cuban boxing from 1898-1962. Blurred Lines: The Leisure-Work of Scrapbooking and the New Domesticity Stephanie Medley-Rath, PhD Lake Land College [“A Day in the Life of a Sociologist and a Mom” Credit: Stephanie Medley-Rath 2012] Most scrapbook pages include photos and words arranged with pretty papers, stickers, and embellishments, which preserve a memory from a person’s life. A typical scrapbook page includes a written story to accompany the photographs (i.e., journaling). Arranging memories into scrapbooks while a leisure activity, also conforms to conventional gender roles. Scrapbooking is an example of a leisure activity that allows women to remain fully committed to both their family and their hobby. For example, scrapbooking typically takes place within the home, therefore, mothers who scrapbook can do so while children sleep. Moreover, the subject of scrapbooks is mostly family-focused, allowing women to make claims about doing kin work to justify their participation in the hobby. Women’s participation in hobbies often involves disregarding traditional gender roles within the family (Gillespie, Leffler, and Lerner 2002; Raisborough 1999) or suspending leisure activities while children are dependent (Bialeschki 1994). Scrapbooking, in contrast, is a leisure activity that can allow its participants to fully embrace domesticity. While scrapbookers claim that “it’s not your grandma’s scrapbooking,” they also “tell young moms to do it.” This juxtaposition of difference from past generations, while embedding it into expectations of modern motherhood provides evidence of a renewed emphasis on domesticity—what Emily Matchar (2013) identifies as “new domesticity.” Matchar (2013) defines new domesticity as a rejection of the status quo, that is, taking care of a household’s needs through gardening, homeschooling, chicken-keeping, and so on rather than using market-based or government supported solutions. New domesticity, however, introduces the potential for turning housework into income—blurring the lines between leisure and work. While few successfully turn these leisure pursuits into profits, the allure is there with examples of women (and men) who have built online empires out of domesticity. The new domesticity that Matchar (2013) critiques, is not entirely new, but the Internet has shed light on this leisure-work activity. As part of my dissertation, I interviewed 11 scrapbook industry workers. Three were business owners and this was their full-time job. The remaining eight industry workers were employed in the industry part-time. Surprisingly, all except two industry workers who were full-time college students had household incomes of $40,000 or more per year. They earned the bulk of this money from their full-time professional jobs or had working spouses or parents. All of the industry workers had at least a Bachelor’s degree or earned their degree since our interview. For the most part, these were workers that were working for fun, to support their hobby (primarily through discounted supplies), or both. When I interviewed scrapbookers (N=38), I found some who were also industry workers–mostly as direct sellers, but also as scrapbookers­for-hire. I was surprised that so many hobbyists began working in the industry, despite indicating no clear financial need to do so. This finding taken with Matcher’s (2013) arguments about new domesticity suggest that women are seeking strategies for making leisure (especially, domestically-inclined leisure) profitable blurring the lines between leisure and work. REFERENCES Bialeschki, M. Deborah. 1994. “Re-entering Leisure: Transition Within the Role of Motherhood.” Journal of Leisure Research 26(1):57-74. Gillespie, Dair L., Ann Leffler, and Elinor Lerner. 2002. “If it Weren’t for My Hobby, I'd Have a Life: Dog Sports, Serious Leisure, and Boundary Negotiations.” Leisure Studies 21(3&4):285-304. Matchar, Emily. 2013. Homeward Bound: Why Women are Embracing the New Domesticity. New York: Simon & Schuster. Raisborough, Jayne. 1999. "Research Note: The Concept of Serious Leisure and Women's Experiences of the Sea Cadet Corps." Leisure Studies 18(1):67­ 71. What Can Reality TV Tell Us About the Presentation of Self in Contemporary America? Lisa-Jo van den Scott, Clare Forstie, and Savina J. Balasubramanian Reality television is an important cultural phenomenon today, one that is deeply embedded in American social worlds. Although many minor reality television shows will not make the same cultural splash as other, better known shows, reality television routinely wins coveted time slots. In our project, Lisa-Jo van den Scott, Clare Forstie and I take a critical look at discourse and performance on mainstream, competitive reality television shows in the United States. We employ a grounded theoretical approach to our data and analysis in order to uncover the social processes by which reality TV participants manage and present themselves, their conceptions of the shows in which they are competing, and visions of their own futures vis-à-vis the shows. Moving beyond the general concept of the reality TV competition, we were extremely intrigued by how contestants dealt with the uncertainty of their continued presence on these shows and the possibility of future fame. In order to understand how participants managed this uncertainty, we focused specifically on the elimination procedures in these shows (moments contestants are voted off the show), as well as how participants interpret and justify these moments of change that are so central to the shows’ progress. In order to do so, we conduct focused viewings of elimination rituals on 3 seasons of 6 different shows, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Survivor, Big Brother, The Bachelor/ette, and The Apprentice. The analytical crux of the paper is what we are terming “eulogy work.” This term encapsulates theoretical insights from three broad literatures—the sociology of emotions, the sociology of death, and the sociology of ritual—to make sense of how reality TV participants perform emotion work to frame their selves in the context of a highly ritualized experience of loss, that is, a veritable “show death.” We analyze elimination rituals for how participants manage their sense of self in a public way—a kind of self “eulogy”—and focus on how the rituality of the elimination procedure necessitates different kinds of emotional labor or “work.” While prior scholarship on emotion work (Hochschild 1979) can be applied to a plethora of emotion-laden contexts, eulogy work, as a theoretical concept in its own right, denotes the specific kind of emotion work that occurs during the presentation of self in the context of personal loss. In this vein, insights from our project can be generalized to various contexts where personal loss is experienced, and where individuals feel the need to justify such loss to themselves and to a broader audience. We might think that Americans are averse to public discussions of death and loss but, as our study suggests, Americans publicly grapples with the meaning of symbolic death. Sociologists have written extensively about grief and death (Charmaz and Milligan 2006; Lofland 1985; Walter 1991), as well as transitions, particularly ones which involve identity shifts (Aronson 2008; Bailey 1999; Charmaz 1991; Grove, Lavallee and Gordon 1997; Hayano 1984) and the combination of transition of loss and identity shifts across a variety of fields (Latack & Dozier 1986; Sherman 2009; Weigert & Hastings 1977; van den Hoonaard 2001). Eulogy work both contains and conveys the emotional energy inculcated within the context of the show, and eulogy work, furthermore, conditions the repertoire of actions available. We have identified three categories, or spheres, of reality television show with competitive eliminations: the External Vote (where an external audience, like “America,” decides the fate of participants), the Internal Vote (where members of the competing group vote each other out), and the Choosing Individual/Deity category (where an individual decides which contestant is eliminated). The source of blame and power to eliminate contestants shapes each of these categories, the symbolic death of the exit, and the eulogy work enacted therein. Viewers may learn about ways to cope with different kinds of loss by watching these shows. In the case of shows featuring choosing individuals, eulogy work in shows like The Apprentice and The Bachelor/ette might help viewers manage losses around jobs and relationships (break-ups and divorces, for example), specifically. Shows involving an external audience may help individuals respond to smaller-scale public performances like on-the-job talks, students’ evaluations of their professors, wedding toasts, and karaoke. Finally, shows involving internal votes may provide tools for managing small-group dynamics like navigating friendships and work relationships. While reality television is a cultural object unto itself, we can still extrapolate core aspects of our observations to myriad social phenomena on which the sociological lens is often focused. Reality TV contests, like American Idol, The Apprentice, and Survivor, reflect both remarkable and mundane events in democratic, communal and competitive spaces, such as presidential elections, interpersonal relationships and sports games. Whether “America votes” to choose its “Next Top Leader,” or teammates on a soccer team rally to explain the missed penalty that cost them the game – whether a person one meets through an online dating site makes it to the second date, or whether you are chosen to get a promotion from among a team of managers vying for the spot – conducting forms of emotion work to manage one’s public sense of self in the face of perceived failure or loss often becomes a vital part of one’s emotional labor. Thus, we believe our theoretical insights can shine light on sociodramatic spaces and relationships other than those expressed on television. To turn to the original, Goffmanian question: what can reality TV tell us about the presentation of self in contemporary America? Quite a lot, we argue, and we would do well to pay it critical attention.