Urban Cowboys Research Articles

JUE Insight: Were urban cowboys enough to control COVID-19? Local shelter-in-place orders and coronavirus case growth

One of the most common policy prescriptions to reduce the spread of COVID-19 has been to legally enforce social distancing through shelter-in-place orders (SIPOs). This study examines the role of localized urban SIPO policy in curbing COVID-19 cases. Specifically, we explore (i) the comparative effectiveness of county-level SIPOs in urbanized as compared to non-urbanized areas, (ii) the mechanisms through which SIPO adoption in urban counties yields COVID-related health benefits, and (iii) whether late adoption of a statewide SIPO yields health benefits beyond those achieved from early adopting counties. We exploit the unique laboratory of Texas, a state in which the early adoption of local SIPOs by densely populated counties covered almost two-thirds of the state's population prior to adoption of a statewide SIPO on April 2, 2020. Using an event study framework, we document that countywide SIPO adoption is associated with an 8 percent increase in the percent of residents who remain at home full-time and between a 13 to 19 percent decrease in foot-traffic at venues that may contribute to the spread of COVID-19 such as restaurants, bars, hotels, and entertainment venues. These social distancing effects are largest in urbanized and densely populated counties. Then, we find that in early adopting urban counties, COVID-19 case growth fell by 21 to 26 percentage points two-and-a-half weeks following adoption of a SIPO, a result robust to controls for county-level heterogeneity in COVID-19 outbreak timing, coronavirus testing, the age distribution, and political preferences. We find that approximately 90 percent of the curbed growth in COVID-19 cases in Texas came from the early adoption of SIPOs by urbanized counties, suggesting that the later statewide shelter-in-place mandate yielded relatively few health benefits.

Were Urban Cowboys Enough to Control Covid-19? Local Shelter-in-Place Orders and Coronavirus Case Growth

One of the most common policy prescriptions to reduce the spread of COVID-19 has been to legally enforce social distancing through state or local shelter-in-place orders (SIPOs). This paper is the first to explore the comparative effectiveness of early county-level SIPOs versus later statewide mandates in curbing COVID-19 growth.We exploit the unique laboratory of Texas, a state in which the early adoption of local SIPOs by densely populated counties covered almost two-thirds of the state's population prior to Texas's adoption of a statewide SIPO on April 2, 2020. Using an event study framework, we document that countywide SIPO adoption is associated with a 14 percent increase in the percent of residents who remain at home full-time, a social distancing effect that is largest in urbanized and densely populated counties.Then, we find that in early adopting counties, COVID-19 case growth fell by 19 to 26 percentage points two-and-a-half weeks following adoption, a result robust to controls for county-level heterogeneity in outbreak timing, coronavirus testing, and border SIPO policies. This effect is driven nearly entirely by highly urbanized and densely populated counties. In total, we find that approximately 90 percent of the curbed growth in statewide COVID-19 cases in Texas came from the early adoption of SIPOs by urbanized counties. These results suggest that the later statewide mandate yielded relatively few health benefits.

Driverless Trucks at Ford: Cruising into a Compromised Brand Identity?

Ford's F-Series of trucks were first introduced in 1948, and ever since they have represented American identity for their consumers. Both earned media, in movies like Urban Cowboy, and Ford's paid media positioned Ford as part of the pioneering culture. Ford also constantly introduced innovations to the F-Series to make the trucks more suitable to the changing needs of its consumers.In 2018, Ford's management decided to retreat from the low-margin cars segment and focus on trucks and SUVs. Ford was also working toward robot taxis and driverless delivery by 2021. These two parallel trajectories converge to pose a pivotal challenge for Ford: Should the company invest in developing driverless capabilities for its best-selling and highest-margin product, the F-150? The case provides students with a context in which to discuss the changing technologies in the auto industry and their implications for industry structure, along with the specific aspects of software-driven business models, consumer preferences, and brand identity. It also offers an opportunity to explore the challenges faced by traditional businesses as they develop digital capabilities and reimagine their business models to fully leverage artificial intelligence (AI). The competition among Ford, Google Inc. (Google), Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), and Tesla, Inc. (Tesla) in the automonous vehicle industry highlights the different routes these companies have taken to obtain develop autonomous vehicle capability that leverages their respective strategic capabilities. Excerpt UVA-M-0967 Rev. Jul. 10, 2020 Driverless Trucks at Ford: Cruising into a Compromised Brand Identity? In the summer of 2018, iconic American automaker Ford Motor Company (Ford) created a new limited liability company, Ford Autonomous Vehicles LLC (Ford AV). Ford charged the organization “with accelerating [Ford's] AV business to capitalize on market opportunities.” As members of the newly appointed management team at Ford AV considered the best way to guide Ford, the second-largest automaker in the United States, toward its well-publicized robot-taxi and driverless delivery services slated to debut in 2021, they had several important decisions to make regarding the company's strategy and driverless car product offerings of the future. Alongside its goals in the self-driving space, Ford had made a seminal product decision several months earlier, when the company announced it was retreating from the American car business and dropping several sedans, such as the Fusion, Fiesta, and Taurus (while preserving the Mustang and Focus Active crossover launching in 2019), in order to improve its profit margin. The company's decision to turn away from its slow-selling car models and instead focus on its more lucrative line of trucks and SUVs was in line with Ford's long-standing reliance on the success of its trucks division, especially the F-Series (which included the classic F-150 pickup truck and “super duty” F-250 and -350 trucks) that the company had first released in 1948. . . .

“Chaps and Scowls”: Play, Violence, and the Post‐1970s Urban Cowboy

“Chaps and Scowls”: Play, Violence, and the Post‐1970s Urban Cowboy

The Country Music Reader by Travis D. Stimeling

Reviewed by: The Country Music Reader by Travis D. Stimeling J. Michael Butler The Country Music Reader. By Travis D. Stimeling. ( New York and other cities: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xvi, 382. Paper, $39.95, ISBN 978-0-19-931492-8; cloth, $99.00, ISBN 978-0-19-931491-1.) The Country Music Reader, assembled for "students of music history" by Travis D. Stimeling, is a wonderful collection of primary sources whose purpose is to present the subject "not simply as the result of musicians' work but also as a product of many figures, often with competing interests and goals" (p. ix). The variety of sources that Stimeling has accumulated achieves his primary objective and is the strength of this volume. The text features the mainstream magazine and newspaper articles that often dominate such anthologies, but Stimeling also pulls from trade publications, memoirs, biographies, music criticism, academic journals, archived interviews with musicians, and fan literature to provide a diverse sampling of the types of sources available to scholars who study popular music. Early "songcatcher" Cecil B. Sharp, The Talking Machine World,and Cash: The Autobiography (New York, 1997) are some examples of the variety of sources the work features. As a result, the collection satisfies Stimeling'sgoalof "providing access to the voices of people who have created country music culture over the course of the genre's nine-decade history" (p. ix). The volume would work best as an ancillary text in a college-level course on country music and related topics, or as an accompaniment to narrative histories on the genre such as Bill C. Malone's Country Music, U.S.A. (3rd ed. [with Jocelyn R. Neal]; Austin, 2010) or Jocelyn R. Neal's Country Music: A Cultural and Stylistic History (New York, 2012). Yet even more experienced scholars of country music, popular culture, and southern history will find much to appreciate about The Country Music Reader. First, Stimeling provides an introduction to each document he has included in the volume. The brief background narratives allow teachers to use different sources in their courses without the loss of context that often comes with a selective use of documents from one text. Furthermore, the detailed footnotes and number of suggested readings at the end of each source provide ample materials for those who want to learn more about a particular person, theme, or topic. Second, Stimeling's reader gives a nice overview of the major trends and key personalities that populate country music history. Hillbilly fiddlers, the Bristol sessions, barn dance programs, Bill Monroe, Sun Records, Chet Atkins, the 1960s folk revival, "outlaw country," Urban Cowboy (1980), and Garth Brooks are all profiled in key documents. Finally, scholars will find that many common themes resurface at different points in [End Page 755] the work, which present the potential for future research. The most interesting topics from a cultural historian's perspective are the constant struggle between artistic respectability and authenticity within the genre; the public fascination with the hillbilly, outlaw, and country stereotypes; and the globalization of country music. Despite the numerous strengths The Country Music Reader possesses, there are some shortcomings that potential users should recognize. There is no introduction or conclusion to the work, and only a brief preface provides a modest overview of the book's objectives. It seems odd to give each document an introduction but not the entire volume, and the work ends in a rather anticlimactic way when the final selection is followed by only an index. The absence of a comprehensive narrative, which an introduction would establish and a conclusion could reflect, makes documents that pertain to the 1990s and beyond rather hard to synthesize. What does the author hope to accomplish by highlighting the rise of country dance clubs and the MuzikMafia, of classic country radio, and of Miranda Lambert? Finally, there is only passing reference to the role that African Americans and feminism have played in country music history. Slim entries on the domestic life of Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn's 1975 song "The Pill," and Charley Pride pose more questions than they address. Still, these concerns should not deter scholars from giving The Country Music Reader strong consideration...

In Search of the Urban Cowboy: The Need to Incorporate Animal Husbandry into the United States Higher Education Curriculum and Its Implications for Production Animal Welfare.

The increasingly urban United States population combined with an aging human agricultural population presents a paradigm where there is a need to recruit, retain, and educate younger generations about animal handling and husbandry in production animal agriculture (1). Yet much of the animal husbandry information historically learned through experiences at the family farm must now happen in the classroom. While sustainably meeting the food needs of the future is paramount to a high-quality food system, there is also a need to disseminate generations-old knowledge about how to care for agricultural animals. Agricultural animal welfare science may not make scientific and societal advancements at the same pace as more traditional areas (e.g., nutrition, reproduction) unless we properly train future generations.

"They'd Kill Us if They Knew": Transgression and the Western

"They'd Kill Us if They Knew":Transgression and the Western1 Sue Brower (bio) A film that touched audiences with its epic tale set in the West, Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (2005) tells the story of hidden homosexual love, beginning in 1963 in the Wyoming wilderness and spanning the next twenty years. The film's use of the Western genre in its setting and iconography intensifies the lovers' transgression by juxtaposing the mythic roots of our country and the masculine archetype of the cowboy with a taboo love affair—a combination, as critics have noted, resulting in a film closer to melodrama than Western (Kitses "All That"; Osterweil). A smaller film released in 1993, The Ballad of Little Jo, written and directed by Maggie Greenwald, is a tale set in the West (the old West) that also features social and sexual transgressions, including at least two taboo love stories. Both films also illuminate the lives of marginalized people. My intention is to explore the filmmakers' use of the Western genre in telling these stories and to consider how in each case they blend the Western with other genres. I hope to show The Ballad of Little Jo deserves as much recognition as Brokeback has garnered, or more, for the former's critique of gender and racial stereotypes, its examination of gender-based assumptions on which the Western is largely based, and its generic response to the theme of transgression that results in blending the Western not with melodrama but with comedy. Problematic Heroes (or, Who're You Callin' a Cowboy?) Despite an increasingly cynical, media-wise audience that can spot and often dismiss established generic icons, the Western archetype of the cowboy still possesses power as a symbol of American courage, strength, capability, and masculinity. The Western figure continues to inhabit popular culture, from the Marlboro man to President George W. Bush's references to Western mythology (e.g., "we're gonna smoke 'em out") to the recent flurry of Western films, including Appaloosa (2008) and 3:10 to Yuma (2007). The Western protagonist's identification with masculinity, in contrast to Eastern femininity, goes unchallenged unless that challenge becomes the point of characterization. James Stewart in Destry Rides Again (1939), for example, is initially presented as less than a "real man" by his entry into town carrying a birdcage and a parasol. As Dennis Bingham points out, what is seen as "'sissified' to the townspeople" proves to be an act of "chivalry" to a young woman he is assisting (47). In My Darling Clementine (1946), Wyatt is challenged by Doc Holliday to "draw," and Wyatt mildly declines ("Can't—not wearing a gun") without sacrificing masculine pride because of the well-established reputation of Wyatt Earp, within both the film and American culture. The subtlety and irony of these characterizations are cast aside by the extreme violence of Clint Eastwood's Western protagonists in Leone's films of the 1960s and many of Eastwood's subsequent films made with Don Siegel or under his own [End Page 47] direction. Eastwood's (perhaps) final Western, Unforgiven (1992), offers a stark comment on the hideous obligations of an individual assuming the role of masculine protector/avenger. These characters are Western heroes or antiheroes, but they are not cowboys. In films since the 1960s, there has been a self-conscious use of the term; indeed, "cowboy" has taken on a theatrical, artificial, camp, and/or homosexual connotation. Ara Osterweil identifies both Andy Warhol's Lonesome Cowboys (1967) and John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969) as precursors to Brokeback Mountain (39–40).2 "Cowboy" has become a signifier of an ironic twentieth-century (and now twenty-first-century) perspective on the genre's tradition as it has been commercialized, such as The Electric Horseman's (1979) has-been rodeo champion, repeatedly called a "cowboy," cornered into selling breakfast cereal, or the term is trivialized, as with John Travolta's turn on a mechanical bull in Urban Cowboy (1980). In Midnight Cowboy the term is literally prostituted. In their allusions to the Western genre, Brokeback Mountain and Ballad of Little Jo offer a host of mythic associations and cultural references to the Western...

Briefcases for Hire: American Hardboiled to Legal Fiction

Take a shopworn, dick, softened with bourbon, rumpled at the edges, a piece snug under his arm, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Take an Armani-clad attorney-at-law, all suave urbanity and legalese elocution, a Gucci briefcase dangling from his manicured hand. We are talking night and day, the pauper and the prince, the marginal and the mainstream, right? Well, not quite. Although not wholly obvious at first glance, the premier difference between the American gumshoe from the pages of fiction and the lawyer-hero of contemporary courtroom drama may be that one carries a gun and the other a briefcase. This flies in the face of a common perception that the two genres-hardboiled and legal fiction-have little in common. After all, they are not even of the same era. Tough guy prose peaked in popularity in the 1930s and 1940s, while the legal procedural did not go nova until the 1980s, enjoying its phenomenal success until this very day.1 And yet first impressions can be misleading. Take a look at the heroes, for instance. Both are archetypal, fast-talking urban cowboys, moving through the shark tanks of mean city streets or mean city courtrooms. Both are for hire for a fee plus expenses. Both are reluctant to use force at first, although when push comes to shove neither the PI nor the attorney-at-law will back down from a tangle with the wise guys-or pretty dames, for that matter. As even this thumbnail tableau reveals, the tough guy of the school may be more closely related to the hero of the legal procedural than previously allowed. Could this resemblance be more than a coincidence? For an answer to this question, we will look to two novels that in their own way typify their respective eras, Zeitgeists, and modes of writing. Samuel (Dashiell) Hammett's proto-hardboiled Red Harvest (1929) and John Grisham's novelistic and Hollywood blockbuster, The Rainmaker (1995), usefully highlight a number of the apparent differences and underlying similarities of their respective genres. Taking a closer look at the narrative styles, cultural roots, and socio-historical contexts of these two novels, we aim to establish beyond reasonable doubt the roots of contemporary law fiction. Paying particular attention to the prime mover of the crime and courtroom thriller-the hero, we'll trace how the conjunction hardboiled lawyer plays out in modern-day legal procedurals such as The Rainmaker. Although implicitly, at least, this article joins the debate on aesthetic and cultural merits of popular literature. We take the answer to the question Is there a point in studying genre fiction? as largely settled in the affirmative.2 Quite apart from the demonstrable inaccuracy of critiques aiming to put the aesthetic merit of popular fiction to doubt, this type of elitism is misplaced in the consideration of literature in its socio-cultural context. More to the point, genre fiction is by now a universal forum for the propagation and assimilation of ideas. Commenting on all aspects of contemporary life, it ends up informing, and in some cases even forming, the background of many people's values and beliefs. A good case in point may be the 1927 trial of Ruth (Momsie) Snyder and Henry Judd (Lover Boy) Gray, convicted of murdering Ruth's husband, Albert Snyder. Even though every paper, from Hearst tabloids to the New York Times, covered the sensational hearings, few of us remember anything about Snyder v. Gray. And yet anyone familiar with James M. Cain's classics, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) and Double Indemnity (1936) -or their movie adaptations (Postman 1946, remake 1981; Oscar-nominated Indemnity 1944)-will recognize the case in a flash. While the names have changed -Cain, a seasoned journalist who covered the Snyder trial on assignment, turned them to Cora, Frank, and Nick in Postman, and to Phyllis, Walter, and Herbert in Indemnity-the circumstances did not. …

Trickster of Literacy

Trickster of Literacy Steve Hawley When James Welch died, the matter of his passing was discussed in an inadvertently comic mode in Missoula at the gym where I used to work out in the mornings. A small coffee and juice bar served as an informal gathering spot to glance at the day’s headlines. Someone would read a few lines aloud from a front-page story or, more commonly, raise a comment on the dismal turn of events portrayed on CNN, and the rest of the men—this was an exclusively male ritual—would offer an opinion if so moved. These were generally decent, conservative, no-nonsense, middle-aged men who did not waste a lot of time reading books, with one exception. One-legged Simms, a shrewd businessman with a liberal streak and a tricksterlike penchant for suckering others into his discussions, usually played host, hogging the newspaper, murmuring a few words from the front page, and adding his own editorial comments, often irreverently baiting the clientele at the bar with an acerbic remark about the absurdity of the Iraq war or the hypocrisy of Rush’s drug addiction. Though the arguments Simms incited sometimes escalated into shouts in the parking lot, he spoke with impunity, for the simple reason that no one wanted to get into a brawl with a one-legged guy, certainly an unwinnable proposition from any opponent’s standpoint. “Lotta big names in town for the memorial of James Welch,” Simms reported nonchalantly that February morning. “Givin’ up protesting the war, huh Simms?” said Todd, a born-again urban cowboy who worked out in a tank top, factory-faded jeans, and horseman’s boots. [End Page 46] “Your back hurts again, doesn’t it, Todd?” observed Simms. “You want to know why? It’s because you’re fat. You insist on wearing those fruity boots, then you come in here, work your biceps and your jaws, and then you go home and eat all the fatty food your wife cooks. When are you going to get an aerobic workout? If you’re not going to use the legs, then at least give me one of them.” “Welch, I think I got his book from someone at church,” said Slick, a tight-lipped CPA. “Welch’s?” Simms asked, surprised. “Yeah, I got that too, called Inside My Gut or something like that,” chimed in Todd, his face a shade more crimson than usual, pretending to ignore the verbal lashing from Simms. “Didn’t know he died,” said the electrician, sipping his coffee. “Didn’t know he’s from Montana,” someone else said. “Probably he’s not,” said the sporting goods store manager. “Every one of these rich CEOs makes a bundle and then buys themselves a spread on the Front or on the Madison. Then they pretend they’ve lived here their whole lives.” Simms’s eyes lit up; he kicked me under the bar with his prosthetic foot. “Says here Tom Brokaw was there.” “No surprise there,” said Slick. “GE owns NBC, so he came to pay his respects to the boss.” “Knighted by the French,” smiled Simms. “Figures,” said the barista with disdain, rolling his eyes. “Says here he’s Blackfeet Indian too.” A few furtive glances came Simms’s way, then passed. “Who woulda guessed,” said the electrician, rising as he spoke, glancing at his watch, slugging his coffee, prompting the procession out toward the day. * * * Of course, former General Electric executive Jack Welch has proven to be neither honest (a development that belies the title of his 2001 best seller, Straight from the Gut) nor Indian. By contrast, James Welch owns both a full measure of brutal honesty and Blackfeet Indian identity and would not have needed a kick from Simms’s fake leg to get a laugh out of the misdirection at the gym that morning. [End Page 47] Bill Kittredge eulogized his friend Jim Welch as a trickster figure. Of course, tricksters come in every shape and size, with a myriad of modus operandi. While Simms’s antics always involved an initial deception, baiting a trap laid in a subsistence hunt for nourishment in the cruel banalities of the business...

Coach Carter: The Urban Cowboy Rides Again

Coach Carter: The Urban Cowboy Rides Again

“Are You Talking to Me?”—New York and the Cinema of Urban Alienation

ABSTRACT New York is a city in which a substantial number of films depicting urban alienation have been set and filmed, although New York films are neither exclusively nor exhaustive of such films. The conditions for alienation derive from several aspects of urbanism also addressed in this essay. This subject deals with the social and psychological estrangement that is often reflected in antisocial behavior in the City, but may also be an expression of idiosyncratic and esoteric lifestyle choices that result in an urban menagerie of rich and varied social types and groups, among them rogues and loners, and urban cowboys. The deepest problems of modern life flow from the attempt of the individual to maintain the independence and individuality of his existence against the sovereign powers of society, against the weight of the historical heritage and the external culture and technique of life. Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Modern Life [1903]

Leading the Parade

mythologies embedded in the West exert their own ironies and displacements, their own refusals and contingencies. In the short story that follows, have set out to play with the master narrative of the much-mythologized Calgary Stampede, The Show on Earth, and its most dangerous sport, the Chuckwagon Races. This liminal story rides at the edge of this frontier and its narration, beyond the action of the real races, real danger, and real mythology as it might be encountered in the body of a woman whose family has been in racing for generations. This is a fiction, but the Chucks, for all their carefully orchestrated competition and spectatorship, are not. They gesture toward potential transgressions and confrontations that are deliciously ironic and yet perversely real in their dangerous enactment. ********** On Friday morning at nine, the official opening of the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth (or so they like to think and so it is called), Tulip, the undisputed matriarch of the Pane family, will assume the honorary and honored position of Parade Marshall and ride at the head of the string of cars and balloons and horses and floats and marching bands that signify the opening of the Calgary Stampede's ten days of drink and debauchery. This is not an imaginary event, but materially predictable, a hyperbolic re-imagining of the ranching era that lasted in southern Alberta only about thirty years, and is good and dead now, but that continues to repeat its own memorial, as regularly as any carnivale or yearly religious bloodletting, lottery, or harvest. parade furls its droopy tail always and undeviatingly on the same day, the first Friday of July after Canada Day. Stampede itself follows the parade, until the Monday ten days later, sodden with sunrise Ceasars and midnight corn dogs, nursing their blistered feet and denim-chafed thighs, bankers return to their counting houses and secretaries to their computers and lovelorn urban cowboys gas up their suburban assault vehicles and take down their portable gun racks, although the I love Alberta beef bumper stickers flag freeway traffic for the rest of the year. red and white Stampede pennants along the main thoroughfares of Calgary ripple for a few weeks longer, their edges shredding in the western wind. By August they are tattered and slatternly, although the day when tickets for next year's Stampede go on sale will reawaken one more summer lineup fuelled by nostalgia about the dust and mud of the infield, the blood on the cowboys' hands, the all-night line dancing. Tulip Pane, it is important to know, is not a tall woman, five foot two even with the heeled boots that she wears only for Stampede. She struggles into them at that time of year, but would rather be wearing her more comfortable Nikes. Faster, better grip, rubber sole. She prefers too her threadbare sweats, her GMC truck, and her Palm Pilot, but they aren't part of her mythopoeic image, and so she doesn't mention them, won't be caught dead using them until after the Stampede is over. No point upsetting the chuckwagon. She will be, in fact, driving a chuckwagon at the head of this world-famous but commercially impelled parade, her bony ass perched on the hard and narrow driver's bench. Discomfort should not be necessary, but it is noble. As Parade Marshall, an honor usually reserved for politicians and hockey stars and opera singers, she has the right to ride in a red convertible, but Tulip knows how that abdication could play out. journalists would start their calculations and add years to her age. If she were to sit on a stuffed leatherette seat with a driver aiming the nose of the rag top forward, they'd begin to predict the end of the Pane family as champion wagon racers of the west. Tulip Pane knows that a chuckwagon is a synecdoche. And don't kid yourself, as she would say, she knows what a synecdoche is too, although she'll deny that knowledge vehemently, refuse to admit her own grasp of metaphor. …

Grease Cowboy Fever; or, the Making of Johnny T

Through a mix of theory, memoir and performance narrative, this chapter examines the making of drag persona Johnny T. as part of a king movement where the dominant cultural paradigm of gender is reconsidered and remastered. As seen in Grease, Saturday Night Fever and Urban Cowboy, pop culture icon John Travolta's particular blend of 50s greaser, faggy 70s disco, and 80s country masculinities are shown to be prime drag king conditions, particularly for a dyke who came of age during the 70s Travolta fever. While drawing from personal experience as a king, current trends in the king movement, and gender theory, this essay calls into question the lines between performing masculinity on and off the stage, inviting us to see both the work and play, the parody and realness, the struggle and liberation that make up the transgressive world of drag kinging and gender variance. Drawing upon gender theorists Judith Butler and Judith Halberstam, gender is exposed as a social construction both produced and performed, and as such, drag kinging is framed as an arena where gender is reconfigured.

Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination by Michael Allen

BOOK REVIEWS 3 3 3 repeatedly, thus implying that there are comparatively few westerners whose writings are truly significant. This undercuts an introduction that invites us to see the multiplicity of western American cultures and note the many writers whose work “begins to suggest a new western identity, something broader and more open than the simple ‘he’ of the traditional West” (18). Nevertheless, rather than turning in on its own completeness like some anthologies, The Literary West reaches outward. Well excerpted pieces from My Antonia, Refuge, The Land of Little Rain, and The Grapes of Wrath invite new readers into those works and provide pleasant reminders for others. The introduction and the “Guide to Further Reading” at the end of the volume provide a wealth of additional titles, helpful context, and advice on choosing useful critical and historical materials. Because of this open-endedness, the quality of the excerpts, the interesting connections among the selections, and the thoughtful commentaries, The Literary West serves several audiences well: it would be a good undergraduate literature text, an excellent introduction for readers new to or intrigued by the West, a nice surprise for folks who think “sense of place” can be found only in nature writing, and a thought-provoking resource for fans of western American literature. Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination. By Michael Allen. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1998. 270 pages, $29.95. Reviewed by R obert R oripaugh University of Wyoming, Laramie Rodeo and the men and women involved in it have been a significant but relatively neglected part of western American culture and literature for over a century. With Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination, Michael Allen has written a fine study of the subject based on his own knowledge, the sources dealing factually with rodeo life and its history, and treatments in film, folklore and literature, art, and music. Allen describes himself as primarily a historian, but he is also involved in American studies and utilizes that inter­ disciplinary approach in an effective and interesting way. The initial chapter, “A BriefHistory ofRodeo,” gives an overview ofwhat becomes, in time, a professional sport rather than a rangeland contest and cel­ ebration by working cowboys. Allen discusses the evolution in origins, back­ grounds, and motivations of rodeo performers as related to cowboy history and his later consideration of their place in popular culture. His second chapter focuses on rodeo as a subject in film, with an emphasis on The Lusty Men, The Misfits, Stoney Burke (on television),junior Bonner, j. W. Coop, Electric Horseman, Urban Cowboy, 8 Seconds, and The Cowboy Way. A chapter on “The Rodeo Cowboy in Folklore and Literature” considers oral and written traditions, including tales, folk beliefs, superstitions, reminis­ 3 3 4 WAL 3 5 . 3 f a l l 2 0 0 0 cences, novels, and poetry from earlier figures such as Curley Fletcher and contemporary poets like Paul Zarzyski and Red Steagall. Novels discussed include Larry McMurtry’s Horseman, Pass By, and Moving On, William Crawford’s The Brone Rider, along with Cyra McFadden’s memoir, Rain or Shine. A perceptive chapter on rodeo art and artists is enhanced by eight pages of illustrations and photographs. “The Rodeo Cowboy in Country Music” discusses how older folk songs blend into the work of Ian and Sylvia, Chris LeDoux, Red Steagall, Garth Brooks, George Strait, and other singers and songwriters. In Allen’s view, their songs present “the rodeo-cowboy folk hero: his wanderlust, sto­ icism, courage, pride, humor, attitudes toward rodeo animals and the wild, and ambivalence toward women” (133). In “Rainbow Rodeo Riders and the Archetypal Anti-Archetype,” Allen deals with the question of whether racial, sexual, and cultural diversity exist within the cowboy way of life and among rodeo performers. He concludes that cowboy culture and its code of behavior, and the openness of rodeo as a sport, to a large degree have always worked against prejudice. He supports and illus­ trates this factually and through examples from film, art, music, and literature, including poetry and novels such as Ken Kesey’s Last Go Round written with Ken Babb, Hal Borland’s When the Legends Die, Craig Lesley’s Winterkill...

Let the Cowboy Ride: Cattle Ranching in the American West

The dime novel and dude ranch, barbecue and rodeo, suburban ranch house and urban cowboy - all are a direct legacy of 19th-century cowboy life which still enlivens American popular culture. Yet at same time, reports of environmental destruction or economic inefficiency have led to calls for restrictions in grazing livestock on public lands, or even an end to ranching altogether. In fact, writes Paul F. Starrs, history of ranching in United States is a full one of ongoing tension and conflict - between ranchers and farmers, between US citizens and their government, between Texas cowboys and California buckaroos. In Let Cowboy Ride, Starrs offers a detailed and comprehensive look at one of America's most enduring institutions. Richly illustrated with more than 130 photographs and maps, book combines authentic detail of an insider's view (Starrs spent six years working cattle on high desert Great Basin range) with a scholar's keen eye for objective analysis. Tracing geography and history of ranching in US, Starrs tells how Anglo settlers first encountered open grasslands of West - an environment quite alien to most of European experience. Knowing little of West's unique geography, Congress in far-off Washington enacted land-use laws better suited to needs of Jeffersonian yeoman farmers, with idealized 160-acre plots in Ohio Valley, than to those of cattle ranchers in semi-arid West. Starrs describes how these laws, which made it extremely difficult for citizens to obtain large tracts of land needed for cattle raising, soon came into conflict not only with stern realities of Western climate, but also with customs and practices of region's Hispanic inhabitants, whose system of land grants - based on group ownership of large tracts of land - was far better suited to ranchers' needs. Starrs tracks imprint of these conflicts in shaping ranching today. He explores paradox of lonesome cowboy, whose rugged individualism is in constant conflict with need to accommodate federal land-use laws (resulting in a situation in which the level of rancher unease ...is roughly proportional to amount of rangeland controlled by federal government). And he shows how understanding past mistakes can shape land-use reform in West today.

The Ominous 'Bulgarian' Threat in Sam Shepard's Plays

As a playwright, Sam Shepard has fashioned himself high priest of an American cult of machismo.' Famous for urban cowboys who are alienated, restless, and combative, Shepard has yet to create distinctive roles for women. When they figure in his dramas at all, they are obtusely marginal, hardly more than vehicles for exploring 'the masculine mode' of consciousness.2 Shepard noted the imbalance in an oft-cited 1984 interview: it always seemed to me that there was more mystery to relationships between men, and just now it's coming to a territory where I'm finding the same mystery between men and women.3 Florence Falk has powerfully sized up gender relations in Shepard's territory, observing that his women consent to enact the male fantasy of feminine perfidy, while his men move in an essentially homoerotic universe.4

The urban cowboy syndrome

The urban cowboy syndrome

The Urban Cowboy Syndrome

We describe the cases of 20 patients who received injuries while falling from mechanical bulls. Injuries were received in three ways: 1) from striking the ground; 2) from striking the bull or getting caught on the bull; and 3) from the concussion caused by bucking. The severity of injury ranged from minor sprains to thumb fractures and lumbar vertebral fractures. The patients presented with three things in common: 1) they had (with one exception) no previous bull-riding experience; 2) they had consumed alcohol; and 3) they had suffered an orthopedic injury. We have chosen to call this manifestation the Urban Cowboy Syndrome.

'Urban Cowboy' Myoglobinuria

To the Editor.— Exertional rhabdomyolysis and myoglobinuria have been associated with various types of physical activity. Myoglobinuria has been reported in wrestlers, jack-hammer users, football players, marathon runners, and military recruits. 1-5 It most often occurs in poorly conditioned persons, and when associated with dehydration, acidosis, or hypotension, may lead to acute renal failure. We recently saw a patient who had severe rhabdomyolysis and myoglobinuria after riding a mechanical bucking bull. Riding such a contraption has become an increasingly popular activity in country-western nightclubs as depicted in a recent motion picture. We therefore labeled our patient's condition urban cowboy myoglobinuria. Report of a Case.— A 30-year-old man in excellent health spent an evening at a country-western nightclub drinking beer, listening to music, and riding a mechanical bull. Because of some previous rodeo experience, he rode the bull on the professional setting. The bull was ridden three times for a total