Futbolera

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"Through their research, [Elsey and Nadel] navigate the challenge of reconstructing a largely forgotten, underground history...an important contribution not just to sports history, but to Latin American history as a whole." (Americas Quarterly) "Futbolera offers a compendium of individual, institutional, and state efforts designed to support or to undermine women's soccer in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Central America, and Mexico. After reading Elsey and Nadel's book, it is impossible to plead ignorance to the fact that women have been playing soccer across Latin America for well over a century and that, to play their sport, these athletes have had to battle powers that wanted to keep them out of the game." (Public Books) "This well-written and meticulously researched history helps us understand the past, moving the female body out of the silence enforced upon it. History may have attempted to write women out of the story of sports in Latin America, but Futbolera puts the ball back in women's possession." (All Heels on Deck) "While sports has often been sidelined in histories of gender, class, nationalism, and the so-called Social Question in the region, Elsey and Nadel show how women's involvement in sports animated eugenic debates over healthy citizens, nationalism, and proper motherhood in government, the Church, and the press." (New Books Network: Latin American Studies) "This book is a pure delight to read and provides tremendous new information on the struggles that the women's game has faced over the years throughout Central and South America...one of the best books ever written on international women's football." (Tribal Football) "[Futbolera] provides a critical contribution to the growing literature on the international nature of women's sports...A must read for anyone interested in soccer history." (CHOICE) "Futbolera...has opened a path for further social and historical research into the amazing but often neglected world of women's sports in Latin America...Futbolera is as much a pleasant read for the general public as it is an essential tool for scholars who, at any stage of their careers, look to understand the complex relationships between gender, sports and political structures within any Latin American context." (International Journal of the History of Sport) "[A] far-reaching work...[Futbolera gives] a broad understanding of public and politically motivated conceptions that continue to restrict funding and support for women's sports, in spite of the rich histories and hard-won success stories that have occurred previously." (Journal of Latin American Studies) "Futbolera is an eminently readable work and should be considered both by academics and soccer fans. Elsey and Nadel wrote in their introduction that 'History telling can confer legitimacy on its subjects,' and in their work, [they] have done a fine job of providing that service to the women who struggled against considerable odds to play the game they loved." (Sport in American History) "Elsey and Nadel have published a foundational text for Latin American history and for the histories of women and sport...The book is accessible to undergraduate students while providing sustenance for scholars of sport, women, gender, and Latin America." (The Americas) "Futbolera is a welcome contribution to the growing scholarship on sports in Latin America...Elsey and Nadel have not designed the book to be an authoritative treatment but a beginning; they have afforded readers a framework for understanding women's experience with sports, a set of questions to pursue, and spaces both geographic and substantive to fill. As such, Futbolera is an invaluable contribution to the study of Latin American sports and, therefore, to understanding the region's history beyond the playing field." (Hispanic American Historical Review) "This pioneering study of the trajectory of women's sport in Latin America exemplifies the multiple riches to be gained from the comparatively recent reappraisal of sports history within the continent...[Elsey and Nadel's] juxtaposition of female participation in football, other sports, and societal trends exposes the ongoing fickleness of broader attitudes towards women and physicality." (Bulletin of Latin American Research)