“Not Just an Activist: The Black Athlete in History and Beyond,” will be the topic of important conversations happening on Thursday, Oct. 26 as Dr. Ornella Nzindukiyimana delivers the 2023 Dr. Agnes Calliste African Heritage Lecture at 7 p.m. in the Schwartz Auditorium.
Dr. Nzindukiyimana is an associate professor in the StFX Department of Human Kinetics where she teaches Canadian sport history. She will speak on the history of sport from the perspective of Black Canadian athletes and fans. She will discuss the ways communities and individuals integrated sport into their social and cultural lives and the significance of this history for the future.
“It is a true honour to deliver the lecture. Dr. Calliste’s work was foundational to the beginning of my journey as a scholar of Black Canadian studies. This is in many ways a full circle moment, the opportunity to extend that influence on this platform is very meaningful for me,” says Dr. Nzindukiyimana on delivering the Dr. Agnes Calliste Lecture.
Established by the StFX Sociology Department in 2010, the annual lecture honours the legacy, research, teaching, and service of the late Dr. Agnes Calliste, activist and longtime StFX sociology professor.
A meet-and-greet, co-hosted with the StFX President’s Action Committee on Anti-Racism (PACAR), will follow the lecture.
The lecture is free of charge and open to the public. It is co-sponsored by the following: PACAR, Academic Vice-President & Provost, Associate Vice-President of Research and Graduate Studies, and the Deans of Arts, Science, Business and Education.
Dr. Ornella Nzindukiyimana
Dr. Nzindukiyimana is a social historian with a background in human kinetics and earned a PhD in socio-cultural studies of sport from Western University.
Dr. Nzindukiyimana studies 20th century and early 21st century contexts, focusing on how nationalism, colonialism, multiculturalism, immigration, along with the intersection of race, gender, class, and other social categorizations have shaped Black peoples’ practices and experiences in what is currently Canada. Her socio-historical studies span sporting accounts of girls and women in southern Ontario in the early 20th century to the contextualization of the Toronto Raptors’ 2019 National Basketball Association championship run.
She has documented obscured histories in boxing, track and field, swimming, and baseball. She is developing more histories in those spaces and exploring surfing, basketball, and hockey, with particular interest in individuals and groups who challenged colonial, White supremacist, patriarchal, and capitalist forces in sport, who expanded what sport could be, and who inform a template for reimagining sport’s structure.
She is currently a co-investigator on an Insight Grant in partnership with Sport Participation Research Initiative titled “A People’s History of Sport in Canada” and on a grant from E-Alliance, Canadian Gender+ Equity in Sport Research Hub titled “Documenting the Sporting Experiences of Black Women, Girl, and Non-binary Athletes and Physical Educators in Canada.”
Dr. Nzindukiyimana has been invited to present her research at and on multiple national and international academic meetings and panels. She has also spoken about racial discrimination to sport organizations such as Canadian Coaching Association/Association canadienne des entraîneurs and Black Coaches Canada and has appeared on various podcasts and media platforms in Canada. Her work has been published in Canadian and international peer-reviewed forums, including Sport History Review, Journal of Canadian Studies, Society & Leisure, and The International Journal of the History of Sport.
The Dr. Agnes Calliste African Heritage Lecture
In 2010, the Department of Sociology established the Dr. Agnes Calliste African Heritage Lecture series to honour the research, teaching, and service of their retired colleague, Dr. Agnes Calliste. Following her death in 2018, the Canadian Sociological Association (CSA) highlighted that “her ground-breaking research with African-Canadian railway porters and Caribbean-Canadian nurses explored previously unexamined dimensions of our social history.
Dr. Calliste studied not only the institutionalized oppression of such communities, but also their organized resistance." At St. Francis Xavier University, Dr. Calliste established some of Canada’s first race courses (e.g., Race, Class, Sex and Gender; Black African Diaspora), and she was loved and admired by her students. Her extensive service at StFX included chairing the Department of Sociology, creating and serving in the role of what is now called the Black Student Advisor, and annually organizing a Martin Luther King Jr Day lecture – highlighting the work of activists, and an African Heritage lecture – highlighting anti-racist research conducted by Black scholars.
In addition to her service at StFX, Dr. Calliste co-established and served on the CSA’s Anti-Racism Caucus and she worked with local activists in the organizations like the Antigonish-Guysborough Chapter of the Congress of Black Women. She is dearly remembered by her friends near and far.
