Sport and Gender Matters in Western Countries

Sport historians present their evidence of, and arguments about the past in different ways, but this collection of diverse and interesting approaches to the role of gender in sport history is proof of the discipline's richness and creativity. These welcome shifts in approaches to gender provide a compelling reason to bring together this interesting collection of studies around the history and sociology of women in sport, physical education, dance, games. Together they convey the complexity of gender as a topic of study both thematically and geographically while each chapter introduces a perspective which asks different questions, challenges traditional thinking and throws new light upon women's abilities to play, lead, jump, manage and boldly go where men have told them not to tread. We can see how important it is to continue to focus upon the complexities and contradictions that still face women and girls as a result of their gender and culture.
More subtly, the studies in this transnational and diverse collection provide cogent examples of 'doing gender' in sport and physical education that offer the potential to decode gender arrangements, debate them, and provide inspiration for critical and tactical engagement with the lived messiness of contemporary life.
Patricia Vertinsky
Contents:

Foreword by Patricia Vertinsky · Introduction by Gigliola Gori · Bettina Kratzmueller: Girls Running a Race in the Ancient Greek Gymnasion of Brauron? Ancient Arkteia and Brauronia Reconsidered · Maurizio Sibilio, Daniela Patti and Mario Lipoma: Female Sport in Ancient Rome · Gigliola Gori: Italian Female Courtiers and their Bodily Education through Dance in the 15th and 16 th Centuries · Gigliola Gori: Between Passion and Local Pride: Female Spectators at the Virile 'Bracciale' Game in the 18th and 19th Centuries · David Chapman (short story translated and annotated by): Edmondo de Amicis: Un amore di Nellino · Antonella Cagnolati: Bicycles, Dresses and Women's Emancipation (1880-1920) · Lise Warren Pedersen A Case Study: Female Pioneers Bringing Scandinavian Education and Movement Culture to the Appalachian Region · Jan Todd: Center Ring: Katie Sandwina and the Construction of Celebrity· Annette R. Hofmann, Shannon Jette and Patricia Vertinsky: The Rocky Road on Mount Olymp: Women's Fight to Enter the Olympic Venue in Ski Jumping · Gertrud Pfister: Gendered Discourses and Enactments in Team Handball: An Historical Approach · Jorid Hovden: Images of Female Leadership. Leadership Discourses in Norvegian Sport Organizations · Gerd von der Lippe: Female Football Players Don't Have Balls · Ivana Matteucci: The Gendered World of Sport: An Analysis of the Influences on Italian Society and Communication · Nadia Carlomagno, Michela Galdieri and Maurizio Sibilio: Teaching Programmes for Sports and Motor Activities and Gender. Diversity in the Italian Primary School from 1955 until Present Day · Sandra Winheller and Katja Schmitt: Female Physical Education Teachers and Movement