On April 13, Michella Marino ‘13PhD was interviewed by Léa Iribarnegaray on "L'Heure du Monde," a news podcast presented by Le Monde, the paper of record in France, about her book, Roller Derby: The History of an American Sport (University of Texas Press, 2021), and the history of the sport in the United States.
“Le Monde reached out to me, as the author of the recently published book Roller Derby: The History of an American Sport, to provide context for this long history, focusing more specifically on the Seltzer family Roller Derby from 1935–1973,” Marino told the UMass Amherst Department of History.
According to Le Monde, 4,400 people, mostly women, participate in roller derby in gyms throughout France every week but it’s for more than just recreation. It empowers the players to explore “leur féminité” in a “safe space” that openly welcomes gender minorities often shunned in mainstream sports.
Roller derby is a relatively new phenomenon in France, taking hold in the country about a decade ago. The podcast episode explores why roller derby is so important to skaters, how the sport was created, and how it took on political undertones. Marino traces the beginnings of the sport in the United States to the present day in France.
“After the modern resurgence of the sport in the early 2000s, roller derby spread like wildfire across America and then the globe," said Marino. "In recent years, roller derby has gained in popularity in France, yet few French skaters are aware of the long history of the sport pre-2001, a history which stems back to late 19th and early 20th century America.”
The first comprehensive treatment of the sport, Marino’s book examines the origins of roller derby to the 1930s, making the case that by the mid-20th century, roller derby’s “emphasis on gender equality produced gender relations and gender politics unlike those of traditional sex-segregated sports."
Also in April, Roller Derby was released as an audiobook on Audible.
Now Deputy Director of the Indiana Historical Bureau, Marino received her doctorate from the University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of History in 2013. Her dissertation, “Sweating Femininity: Women Athletes, Masculine Culture, and American Inequality from 1930 to the Present,” drew on oral histories and archival research to explore how feminist women negotiated the cultural boundaries surrounding gender to carve out identities as women, athletes, and mothers.