Helen Jefferson Lenskyj Books
The Olympic Games: A Critical Approach
Helen Jefferson Lenskyj
University of Toronto, Canada
Do the Olympic Games really live up to their glowing reputation? As the biggest global sport mega-event, the Olympics command public attention, while Olympic mythology obscures their underlying function as a
profit-making business. Unlike terms such as 'Olympic movement' and
'Olympic family', the concept of 'Olympic industry' focuses on sport as an economic and political enterprise, with its beneficiaries including sponsors, media rights holders, developers, and politicians. Negative impacts on host cities disproportionately threaten the lives and well-being of disadvantaged minorities.
Citizens' Olympic resistance campaigns address a range of human rights abuses, while recent athlete activism also focuses on the doping problem and the sexual abuse of girls and women. Female athletes with 'differences of sexual development' face discriminatory gender policies that disqualify them from women's events. All of these issues are analysed through a feminist, anti-racist lens.
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Gender, Athletes' Rights, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport
Disputes over gender, doping, and eligibility in Olympic sport are widely covered in sport studies and in the mainstream media. Less well known are the functions of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), and the threat it poses to athletes rights by depriving them of access to their own countries' court systems.
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Gender Politics and the Olympic Industry
This book explores how the Olympic industry has shaped hegemonic concepts of sporting masculinities and femininities for its own profit and image-making ends, examining its continuing marginalization of athletes on account of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class.
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Sexual Diversity and the Sochi 2014 Olympics: No More Rainbows
This book examines Russia's 2013 anti-gay laws and their implications for the Sochi 2014 Olympics. Lenskyj argues that Putin's Russia and the International Olympic Committee wield power in similar ways, as evident in undemocratic governance, fraudulent voting processes, hypocrisy and absence of accountability.
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Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies
A comprehensive, state-of-the-art reference collection, bringing together an authoritative and international line-up of scholars to examine key social and political issues related to the Olympics. An essential, 'one-stop' volume for a wide range of academics, students and researchers.
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Olympic Industry Resistance: Challenging Olympic Power and Propaganda
A critical look at the Olympics in the postbribery, post-9/11 era, particularly at consequences for host cities and so-called “Olympic education” for schoolchildren. Scholar and activist Helen Jefferson Lenskyj continues her critique of the Olympic industry, looking specifically at developments in the post-9/11 and postbribery scandal era.
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A Lot to Learn: Girls, Women, and Education in the 20th Century
Using sources from women's history, women's studies, and critical social theory, Dr. Lenskyj situates two stories - her own and that of her mother - within the broader Australian socio-cultural context from 1900 to 1960.
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Out On The Field: Gender Sport and Sexualities
This book provides an in-depth examination of gender, sport and sexualities, an analysis of the limitations of liberal feminist responses, and an exploration of radical feminist alternatives.
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The Best Olympics Ever: Social Impacts of Sydney 2000
Uses the Sydney Olympics as a prism through which to explore recent Olympic scandals, media coverage, reform efforts, and controversies.
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Inside the Olympic Industry: Power, Politics and Activism
Analysis from the perspective of those adversely affected by the social, economic, political, and environmental impacts of hosting an Olympic Games.
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Women Sport and Physical Activity: Selected Research Themes
Available in French and English
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Women, Sport, and Physical Activity: Research and Bibliography
Available in French and English
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Women, Sport, and Physical Activity: Research and Bibliography Second Edition
Available in French and English
Available in public and university libraries
Out of Bounds: Women Sport and Sexuality
In Out of Bounds, feminist Helen Lenskyj presents an insightful examination of the links between women's participation in sports and the control of their reproductive capacity and sexuality. She identifies the female frailty myth, the illusion of male athletic superiority and the concept of compulsory heterosexuality as powerful determinants of "masculinity" and "femininity" in the realm of sport.