On Thursday, January 23, University of Lethbridge kinesiology professor, Dr. Carly Adams, will present, “Hey, why don't we have a bonspiel?” Oral Histories, Sport, and (re)Imaging Community. This is the fourth talk of the 2019/20 season for the Faculty of Arts & Science’s PUBlic Professor Series. The free event runs from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Sandman Signature Lethbridge Lodge and is open to the public.

This talk will address two projects, separated by time and space, to consider the place of oral history in contemporary scholarship and communities. On the one hand, Adams considers the case of the Preston Rivulettes, arguably the greatest women’s hockey team ever to lace up their skates. On the other, she considers a current project she's working on with Dr. Darren Aoki (Plymouth University, UK), in which they consider community (re)building in the Nikkei community in southern Alberta in the post-WWII period. Individually and together, these projects highlight the value of oral histories, both in terms of drawing attention to histories too often left in the margins of scholarly work, and in reminding ourselves and each other about critical moments, peoples and communities in histories of the places and spaces we inhabit.

Adams is a Board of Governors Research Chair (Tier II), acting associate dean in the School of Graduate Studies and associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology & Physical Education. She is also a founding and active member of the Centre for Oral History and Tradition. She is in her third year of a five-year appointment to the Canada Sports Hall of Fame Honoured Members Selection Committee.

As a social historian and an advocate for oral history, Adams explores community, resiliency and gender in her research, with a focus on sport, recreation and leisure experiences. She is author of Queens of the Ice, a book about the Preston Rivulettes women's hockey team from the 1930s, the editor of a textbook, Sport and Recreation in Canadian History and co-editor of Routledge Handbook of Sport History, both forthcoming in 2020.

In 2017, she teamed with Aoki and several community partners (Galt Museum, Nikka Yuko Japanese Canadian Garden and Nikkei Cultural Society of Lethbridge and Area) to launch the Nikkei Memory Capture Project, a long-term community-based oral history project to spur the narration of the history of Japanese Canadians in the second half of the twentieth century.