“Pleasurable Labors” is an interdisciplinary oral history project about the queer women-led organized fan groups that form around professional women\u2019s soccer teams in the United States. Following the US women\u2019s national team victory at the 1999 World Cup, fans showed up for leagues and franchises that started up and disappeared, supported players who struggled to carve out a living, and endured a series of player abuse scandals. As recently as 2019, the NWSL faced existential financial questions, but a $240 million media rights deal came online in 2024 and the league\u2019s latest expansion team commanded a $120 million fee in 2025. Yet, as women\u2019s professional soccer grows financially there is a possibility that the stories of the people who sustained it for the past two decades will be lost. Chris Henderson’s research seeks to counter maneuvers to marginalize these stories. At the core of the sport\u2019s fanbase were and continue to be queer women who found community in stadiums. At the center of this fandom, are the independent fan groups for each team that collectively perform an uninterrupted repertoire of choreography that loudly celebrate their team at every match. \u201cPleasurable Labors\u201d is their story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Faculty Research Grant<\/strong>
Chris Henderson (Public Relations\/Sports Media and Communication)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4099,"featured_media":12141,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[297],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-f25grants"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4099"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12107"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12150,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12107\/revisions\/12150"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}