Speaking Up, Speaking Out, and Speaking Back to Feminism in Sport History: Fifty Years on at NASSH

Abstract:Looking through the gateway of Title IX and second-wave feminism to NASSH meetings in the mid-1980s, one could see it might take a while for gender politics to gather steam in North American sport history. Though the field rang largely with the voices of male historians and stories of men's sport, challenges were growing from feminist sport historians who were ready and able to speak up and speak out about gender relations in sport history. With this momentum, feminist sport history moved into the twenty-first century primed to gain a growing presence in NASSH. I describe the growing maturity of scholarship in feminist history and highlight insightful studies which "helped rip sports history out of its overly masculine nature." Finally, I point to a new generation of young sport history feminist scholars renewing and reinventing feminism in their work, while illuminating how they have built their scholarship on the roots and shoots of earlier generations of feminist sport historians.