"It's supposed to be about the love of the game, not the love of Aaron Rodgers' eyes": Towards a feminist sociological analysis of sports fandom
Abstract
In this thesis, I offer a critical feminist interrogation of how sports fandom has been defined. Much of the literature on gender and sports fandom has been based on assumptions about the `proper' ways to be a sports fan. Since sports fandom has traditionally been coded as a masculine activity that has historically excluded women, these assumptions about sports fandom in the literature often reproduce that gendered exclusion. Using semi-structured interviews with eleven women who identified as sports fans, I argue that rather than relying on dominant understandings of what it means to be a sports fan, scholars should instead foreground the voices of sports fans themselves as they describe their own understandings of what sports fandom means. Those meanings are multiple, contradictory, and profoundly gendered.
Degree
M.S.
Advisors
Cooky, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Womens studies|Individual & family studies|Social structure|Gender studies|Recreation
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