Guest Lecture: While the World Watches: Gender, Violence, Resistance & Digital Memory

Millions of fans watch the Women’s World Cup, but a dangerous play takes place on and off the field.

About the Talk
A dangerous play in soccer is an action in which an attempt is made to play the ball, but it puts a player or teammate at risk on the field. This type of foul is part of Law 12 of the Laws of the Game set out by the International Football Association Board and is, unfortunately, a perfect metaphor to exemplify some of the experiences that many professional female soccer players face daily. For most players, stepping onto a soccer field is an act that can be dangerous because it transgresses the gender norms that prevail both implicitly and explicitly in our society. Even so, struggle and resistance prevail in women’s soccer despite all the risks. Dr. Carolina Alonso’s research documents some of the struggles that many women, Mexican players in this case, have faced in order to play soccer safely and with dignity.

Using Digital Humanities practices and methodologies, Dr. Alonso currently analyzes violence in media coverage and online narratives about women’s soccer to trace how these experiences are documented, circulated, and remembered. By combining years of research with digital tools, her research highlights patterns of representation, resistance, and solidarity within the broader history of professional women’s soccer.

About the Speaker
Dr. Carolina Alonso is an Associate Professor of Borders and Languages and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Fort Lewis College. She is a Co-Principal Investigator of Transborder Digital Humanities (TBDH) and team member of the United Fronteras project. She has published on transborder digital humanities and digital-public humanities. She is the co-creator of the digital project Futlove Femenil and is currently working on a DH project that documents and maps feminicidal violence in women’s soccer. Her first book, Juego peligroso: historias de lucha y diversidad en el futbol femenil mexicano, about Mexican women’s soccer, was published in 2024.