The lecture will highlight the opposite paths that women have traversed in the game of Associated Football on both sides of the Atlantic. Whereas the women in North America entered the field that was virtually open for them since men busily covered the playing fields and cultural space of hegemonic team sports of baseball, football (American and Canadian), basketball, and ice hockey; their European counterparts were forced to contest what has arguably been the most male- dominated space in European public life throughout much of the 20th century.
Both of these roads harbored immense obstacles. Both entailed challenges of their own that these pioneering women had to overcome. However, spurred by the massively important and popular World Cup tournaments, the last three decades have led to a rapprochement on both sides of the Atlantic by catapulting women’s soccer onto hitherto unexpected, maybe even unimaginable, heights.

Our speaker, Andrei S. Marcovits is the Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan where he has taught for more than 20 years. In addition to being a multiple-award winning teacher, his many books and articles on a range of topics—from European social democracy, labor and social movements to German-Jewish relations; and from comparative sports cultures to dog rescue—have appeared in 15 languages. His two latest books are Women in American Soccer and European Football; Different Roads to Shared Glory published in 2019; and The Boundaries of Pluralism; The World of The University of Michigan’s Jewish Students in 1897-1945, co-authored with Kenneth Garner and published in 2020.

This is the fourth of ten lectures to be presented once each month from September 2020 through June,2021. The next lecture will be held January 12, 2021. The title is: Stress and Brain Health from Biology to Social Context. Learn from well-known experts about an array of interesting subjects, with an interactive Q&A period following each lecture.

Pre-registration is required via the OLLI website or phone. A link to access the lecture will be e-mailed to you approximately one week prior to the first session.