Religion, Sport, and Play Unit

Sport, play, and exercise provide many individuals and communities across the globe with rhythms to mark time; ways to manage physical, mental and spiritual health; opportunities for community-building and collective identity construction; and ritualized diversion. The precarity of life during the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the focus on sport, play, and exercise from any number of angles. This call for papers invites consideration of sport, play and exercise in relation to:

•             their function in terms of establishing "normalcy"

•             their role in the ongoing public discourse of the body, rights, the common good

•             their role in promoting physical, mental and spiritual health

•             their intersection with religious impulse or religion especially in life-threatening times

•             their exploitation in terms of economic gain (think Peloton), signaling socio-economic disparity, appropriating practices without attention to their religious or cultural dimensions, etc.

•             their expression of spirituality(s)