Sportista: Female Fandom in the United States

By: Andrei S. Markovits, Emily Albertson

Narrated by: Jared Pike

Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

The typical female sports fan remains very different from her male counterparts. In their insightful and engaging book, Sportista, Andrei S. Markovits and Emily Albertson examine the significant ways many women have become fully conversant with sports - acquiring a knowledge of and passion for them as a way of forging identities that until recently were quite alien to women. Sportista chronicles the relationship that women have developed with sports in the wake of the second wave of feminism of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The changes women athletes have achieved have been nothing short of revolutionary. But, as Markovits and Albertson argue, women's identities as sports fans, though also changed in recent decades, remain notably different from men's. Sportista highlights the impediments to these changes that women have faced and the reality that, even as bona fide fans, they speak sports differently from and remain largely unaccepted by men.

The book is published by Temple University Press.

©2012 Temple University (P)2014 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

Male and female sports fans alike will have fun with this book. (Theda Skocpol, Harvard University)

"Thought provoking and enjoyable to read, this book will interest readers in a variety of social scientific fields--e.g., psychology, sociology, history--as well as those interested in sports. Summing Up: Highly recommended." (Choice)