Elyssa Ford. Rodeo as Refuge, Rodeo as Rebellion: Gender, Race, and Identity in the American Rodeo.

Abstract

Rodeos grew out of the ranching, livestock raising, and riding labor of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and survived as distinct events even as the activities that inspired them receded in significance. In modern North America, “rodeo” has become a sport, an activity for displaying skill and athleticism, and in its various forms a venue for pageantry and for the celebration of heritage and tradition. Rodeo events take place in at least twenty-six US states, including most of those west of the Mississippi and elsewhere as far east as Connecticut. The most prominent competitions take place under the auspices of the Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) and Women’s Professional Rodeo Association (WPRA), which constitute a “mainstream” that is often predominantly white and heteronormative. But Elyssa Ford has used oral histories, newspapers, and organizations’ records, among other sources, to construct an account of forms of rodeo that fall outside the dominant pattern. A rare study of rodeo practices that have thrived beyond the mainstream, Rodeo as Refuge, Rodeo as Rebellion: Gender, Race, and Identity in the American Rodeo offers “foundational scholarship on comparative rodeo analysis” (193, note 10).