I trust all is well and you are enjoying 2023. It has the potential to be a great year for NASSH.
This is a short note to let you know that the Executive Council, the various NASSH Committees and the Journal of Sport History Editors have been working hard behind the scenes.
Executive Meetings
A NASSH Executive Meeting (online) was held on January 23, 2023. Conference Manager Kim Scott, Program Chair Sarah Fields, and Treasurer Tommy Hunt delivered reports. NASSH members brought forward several items for discussion, including Janice Forsyth (continuing virtual conference options), IT Committee Chair Tom Fabian (IT Systems Coordinator) and Distinguished Lectures Committee Chair Dave Wiggins (Awards Proposals). The Executive Council also heard from Pierre-Olaf SCHUT and Annette Hofmann, co-chairs of the new NASSH Internationalisation Ad Hoc Committee, about how NASSH can extend its international scope. There were many excellent ideas that we will endeavour to implement in the coming months.
NASSH 2023
Planning for NASSH 2023 is well underway. We had a remarkable number of submissions (120 in-person presentation abstracts, 21 remote presentation abstracts, and 22 complete session proposals), which makes for a very full program. The conference will start early with a 4pm session at the National Museum of African American History & Culture followed by a wine and cheese event. For those who are available, we are arranging various tours of museums and archives for earlier in the day on Friday. A special thanks to Damion Thomas and Dave Wiggins for arranging the event at the Smithsonian, and to Alec Hurley for coordinating the museum and archive tours. We are also working on an overflow hotel as the conference hotel fills up. More will be posted on the conference website (https://conference.nassh.org/) soon, but we encourage you to register for the conference by April 15 to take advantage of early bird fees.
NASSH Website
Over the past months, the IT Committee in conjunction with the EC have been refining the content and structure of the NASSH Website. Jen Guiliano has been the driving force behind the NASSH website revamp which has been launched as of March 9, 2023. The EC would like to thank Jen for all of the work that has gone into our new website.
Journal of Sport History
The Journal of Sport History has continued to publish high quality scholarship. Recent articles in Volume 49, Number 1 (2022) include Aram Goudsouzian, ‘House of Cards: Leisure, Freedom, Authority, Revolution, and the Diary of Landon Carter’, Todd H. Leedy, ‘Race around the Mountain: Competitive Cycling among the Coloured Communities of Greater Cape Town, 1930–1960’, and David Christopher Galindo, ‘Spurs Fandom in San Antonio: The Baseline Bums and HemisFair Arena, 1973–1993’. There is also a broad range of book reviews that is a hallmark of the Journal of Sport History. Our thanks to the Editor Maureen M. Smith, Associate Editors Daniel A. Nathan, Terry Anne Scott, and Travis Vogan, and Specialty Editors Adam Berg and Matthew R. Hodler, for their contributions to the dissemination of scholarship in our discipline.
Everybody stay well and we look forward to seeing you in person or virtually in May.
Kind regards,
Murray Philips
NASSH President