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Abstract

Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist (2022) revisits the complicated fame and misfortune of former college football player Manti Te’o. The documentary traces the arc of Te’o’s athletic career at the University of Notre Dame alongside his relationship with his girlfriend that resulted in intense public scrutiny and gendered ridicule in 2013. Untold offers feminist pedagogues a catalyst for engaging students in critical discourse around the relationships between collegiate sport and race, gender, and sexuality. In this review, I provide a summary of the documentary’s main points and framing, and then discuss at least two ways in which this media can be of service to feminist educators. Specifically, instructors of gender and sexuality studies might consider using Untold first, to analyze the racialized relationship between student athletes and universities and second, to explore how contemporary discourses interrogating athletic performance fortify and further compel heteronormative performances of gender.

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