Scholars from across the nation and around the world converged at Cal State Fullerton recently for the Center for Sociocultural Sport and Olympic Research’s Sixth Annual Conference.
Held since 2018, the conference offers the opportunity for academics to present research on a variety of topics related to sport and the Olympics from a sociocultural perspective.
The conference, held March 14-15, is hosted by the Center for Sociocultural Sport and Olympic Research on the CSUF campus, which has been recognized as an International Olympic Studies Center by both the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Studies Centre and the United States Olympic Committee for its quality and commitment to research and academic activities.
Launched at Cal State Fullerton in 2014, the center’s official mission is “to promote education and research around sport in cultural, social, and political dimensions.”
Attendees at the conferences included sociologists, historians, anthropologists, philosophers and others who presented research and gleaned information from the presentations to apply in their focus areas.
“It brings together all kinds of different dimensions of the sociocultural studies board,” said Julie Brice, kinesiology professor and one of four co-directors of the center. “We don’t have biologists or exercise physiologists coming. It is much more humanities-focused, but within the humanities, there’s such a wide plethora.”
Session topics at this year’s conference included Queer Experience in Sport, Art Literature and Objects, Gender and Sport, Politics and Diplomacy, Sport and Identity, and Environment and Sustainability.
As a CSUF undergraduate student working toward a degree in women and gender studies, Lauryn Jarvis presented her research in the session titled Queer Experience in Sport.
Jarvis’ research project was titled Is the “Fitness Party” Really Fun For All? An Examination of the Gender Non-Conforming Experience in Zumba.
“I’m a part of the LGBTQ community, and I’m also a Zumba instructor,” Jarvis said. “It has kind of led perfectly to this intersection of gender nonconformity in Zumba and the group fitness space. There’s not a lot of literature or work done that really looks at that intersection, but there is such a big need as well. Navigating my own identity, I find a lot of those challenges arise … I had the opportunity to work on a research project, so I figured why not look into this intersection.”
CSUF kinesiology professor Emmanuel Macedo, who teaches the Philosophy of Human Movement and the History of Sports Games and Culture, has attended the conference several times and was interested in the sessions covering gender and sports and trans athletes, a topic he covers in his class.
“Because it’s like the newest conversation,” Macedo said. “It’s obviously an issue that goes way back, but in terms of it being of interest to students, it’s important to talk about it for multiple reasons, of course political, but also just ethical, moral reasons. So, I get to see how they talk about it, what resources they’re using to study it, how they teach it. So that’s the kind of stuff I’m interested in at this conference.”
The conference also featured an athletes’ panel of current and former Cal State Fullerton athletes discussing the topic of Race, Athletics and Student Perspectives.
The keynote speaker for the conference and distinguished scholar recipient was Akilah Carter-Francique, dean of the School of Education, Health and Human Services at Benedict College in Columbia, S.C.
Serving as co-directors along with Brice are kinesiology professors John Gleaves, Matt Llewellyn and Toby Rider.
Llewellyn and Gleaves are also the center’s co-founders.
Co-director Toby Rider joined in 2015, and Brice came on in 2022.
Rider and Llewellyn are historians, researching different aspects of history in the Olympics.
Brice’s research centers around sociology, focusing on society and sport and the Olympics, and Gleaves studies the philosophy of sport.
“The motivation (for forming the center) was, we had been conducting research in and around sport history, in particular the Olympics, Olympic studies, and we just felt that there was a real niche in the academic landscape for an Olympic-focused research center,” Llewellyn said. “There was one in Brown University, there was one at the University of Texas in Austin, and there was one at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, but they were the only Olympic study centers in North America.”
Llewellyn is pleased with how the center has progressed.
In 2020, the center published the Journal of Olympic Studies and continues to publish the journal twice a year.
Several educational programs have also emerged from the center, including an Olympic studies course taught to undergraduate and graduate students along with a two-week trip to Greece, where students study the origins of the Olympic Games.
“The focus of the program is Olympic studies, ancient to modern,” Llewellyn said. “We go to the archaeological sites, and then we study the modern revival of the games. So, we go back to Athens and show them the first modern Olympic stadium. It’s an amazing program.”
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