NASSS 2018 Conference - Vancouver

This session focuses on the contribution of affect theory to critical sport studies. Affect provides an opportunity for exploring visceral bodily sensations, triggers, surges, and their qualification as feelings and emotions, in the realm of sport and physical activity. Although affect theory has had a significant impact on many fields across the social sciences and humanities, it has not been given sustained attention in sport studies. This lack of attention is surprising given the feelings and emotions that are expressed in sport: through the aesthetics of athlete resilience, the subjective experience of pain, the vigor of sport violence, the passion of team fandom, the ability of sport to invoke feelings of pride and belonging, and the influence of music in sporting arenas. Papers in this session are encouraged to address how social inequities of race, gender, and sexuality are concretized, contested, and resisted through the relationship between sport and affect.