Copyright by Jeannette Marie Vaught 2015
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by UT Digital Repository Copyright by Jeannette Marie Vaught 2015 The Dissertation Committee for Jeannette Marie Vaught Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: SCIENCE, ANIMALS, AND PROFIT-MAKING IN THE AMERICAN RODEO ARENA Committee: Janet Davis, Supervisor Randolph Lewis Erika Bsumek Thomas Hunt Elizabeth Engelhardt Susan D. Jones SCIENCE, ANIMALS, AND PROFIT-MAKING IN THE AMERICAN RODEO ARENA by Jeannette Marie Vaught, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2015 Dedication In memory of my grandmother, Jeanne Goury Bauer, who taught me many hard lessons – unyielding attention to detail, complete mastery of the task at hand, and the inviolable values of secretarial skills – and without whose strength of character I would not be here, having written this, and having loved the work. I did not thank you enough. And to Jeannie Waldron, DVM, who taught me when to stop and ask questions, and when to just do something already. Acknowledgements This project has benefitted from helpful contributors of all stripes, near and far, in large and small ways. First, I must thank the institutions which made the research possible: the Graduate School at the University of Texas provided a critical year-long fellowship that gave me the time and freedom to travel in order to conduct this research. The National Science Foundation also provided travel and research funds that allowed me to visit several archives and to present part of this research to an international audience. The American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming in Laramie provided another source of funds to use their collections. I thank the Center and in particular Ginny Kilander, who helped coordinate my visit and guided me through several collections that proved invaluable to this research. Thanks go as well to Melleta Bell and Jerri Garza at the Archives of the Big Bend at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas, with special thanks to my committee member Thomas Hunt for so generously offering me the use of his family’s home in Alpine while I conducted research there. Becky Jordan at the Iowa State University Special Collections in Ames, Iowa was a key part of my being able to go through a huge number of collections in a relatively short period of time. Thanks also to the many assistants and pages at these three locations for making the research fun and efficient. I owe a special thank you to Dr. Frosty Moore, who provided valuable information in the form of an interview and took me backstage to one of the largest professional rodeos in the country and introduced me to another of my subjects, Dr. Steven Golla, DVM. Both of these men welcomed me to their rodeo and regular workspaces and answered my questions with interest, kindness, and openness. I could v not have written this project without their help. Blake Russell is also on this list of informants who provided critical information at short notice and without hesitation, as is Tamar V.S. McKee, whose willingness to share her work-in-progress at a critical time was a great boon to late-stage analysis. My supervisor, Janet Davis, was a laser-beam of focus at many critical moments when this project threatened to get out of hand. Her astute guidance of the project and her unflagging support of it despite its unwieldy breadth carried the day in innumerable ways. Her mentorship is not limited to this project, however, but extends to all parts of my graduate career, for which I am extremely grateful. Elizabeth Engelhardt has likewise been here through it all, well before this dissertation was germinated. Her friendship and mentorship are invaluable not only to this project but to who I am as a scholar. The members of my committee, Erika Bsumek, Thomas Hunt, Randy Lewis, and Susan D. Jones, provided valuable support and rousing encouragement, and their acumen will help transition this project into its future iteration. Steven Hoelscher, Julia Mickenberg, Randy Lewis, Stephen Marshall, and the entire American Studies faculty have provided a liberal supply of cheering-on, key introductions, and an incredible climate of support and encouragement throughout my graduate training. Jim Cox, John Hartigan, Thomas Hunt, Amy Nelson, Robert W. Mitchell, and Brett Mizelle have widened this net of encouragement beyond AMS and beyond UT. My graduate colleagues are deserving of recognition here too. Thanks especially to the Margarita Monday crew, Carrie Anderson and Emily Roehl, whose real time and real talk are so very necessary. My office mate over the past year, Kirsten Ronald, has provided me with laughter, clarity, and cookies at critical moments. And lastly, with special appreciation and affection, thanks must go to Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa, who wrote her dissertation alongside me, read many a meandering chapter draft, bought me many a breakfast taco, vi and who is nothing short of a friend for life beyond the walls of academia. Thank you so much, Ellen, for everything. Another group of people provided nourishment, wine, sanity, and intellectual growth that has not only sustained me through this process, but improved me as a person while doing it. Tiffany Bredfeldt, Sharon Hanson, Sabine Lange, and lately Donna Rowe of the Flying Pig Farm dressage group extraordinaire: thank you for letting me teach you all these years, for letting me learn from your horses, and most especially for feeding Dallas and his ego as he ages gracefully into an Elderly Equine Diva. I’m the one who has learned from all of you, and I cannot thank you enough for the opportunity to be a part of your lives. You are family. You should all take a bow (and Joules as well). And then, more thanks are due to my family-family, to which I have had the great joy of proximity during this process. My parents, George and Liliane: to you I owe everything. The innumerable ways in which you have helped me during this process are truly too many to count. Steve, Jenny, Steven, and Aiden: I feel your love and support every day. And Amber and Evan: without Reality TV Night, I would have been an absolute hermit, and I’ve been so lucky to have you in my corner these past several years. Thank you. vii Science, Animals, and Profit-Making in the American Rodeo Arena Jeannette Marie Vaught, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2015 Supervisor: Janet M. Davis The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) has grown in scope and popularity since the mid-1970s, cultivating large rodeo audiences with spectacles of human and animal athleticism, speed, and skill. While the sport is popularly understood as an outgrowth of “traditional” western culture and ranching practices, this dissertation argues that its modern iteration depends on scientific advancements pioneered in animal nutrition, reproduction, and injury treatment in industrial beef production and on the creation of new narratives about animals in the past and present. Through analysis of industry documents, oral history interviews, and popular western lifestyle publications, this dissertation shows how rodeo and its partners in the beef industry responded to changing consumer perceptions of animal welfare in food and entertainment. After charting the emergence of a network comprised of agricultural scientists, businessmen, and rodeo participants from the 1950s to the 1970s who successfully nationalized the sport, this dissertation investigates how reproductive transformations of cattle in response to declining beef demand in the 1980s emphasized the virility and power of bulls, and shows how rodeo used these technologies to make bull riding the centerpiece of its popular appeal. From there, the dissertation argues that the cultural redefinition of wild horses from 1950 to the present created new understandings of pain and animal welfare that played out in the rodeo arena’s dramatization of wildness against a backdrop of a viii growing horse crisis in contemporary America. Finally, an analysis of contemporary efforts to reconcile the growing practice of rodeo and agricultural animal cloning with rodeo tradition shows how rodeo continually reinvents its history to incorporate new scientific technologies while still marketing identification with the past. Taken together, these episodes show how professional rodeo, industrial beef, and veterinary science responded to changing public attitudes about nonhuman animals, continually producing both new animals and new histories that obscured the modern technologies fueling these transformations. In the process, the rodeo and its allies promoted conservative gender ideologies and political alignments, further enfolding innovation with tradition. ix Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: Building a Network: Science, Beef, and Rodeo in the Postwar West 32 Introduction .................................................................................................. 32 The "Daddy of 'Em All" Enters the Big Time ............................................. 37 Sun Belt Rodeo: Agricultural Education, College Rodeo, and the Shrinking Rural West .......................................................................................... 47 A "Collection of Fairy Tales":