Er Buck: Gender and Animal History in Twentieth-Century American Rodeo
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Let 'er Buck: Gender and Animal History in Twentieth-Century American Rodeo Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Whitehead, Frank Citation Whitehead, Frank. (2021). Let 'er Buck: Gender and Animal History in Twentieth-Century American Rodeo (Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA). Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 01/10/2021 08:12:11 Item License http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/660219 LET ‘ER BUCK: GENDER AND ANIMAL HISTORY IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN RODEO by Frank Whitehead __________________________ Copyright © Frank Whitehead 2021 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2021 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by: titled: and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _________________________________________________________________ Date: ____________ _________________________________________________________________ Date: ____________ _________________________________________________________________ Date: ____________ _________________________________________________________________ Date: ____________ Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. _________________________________________________________________ Date: ____________ 2 Acknowledgements This dissertation would never have been completed without the thoughtful advice and steadfast support of an absurdly long list of people and institutions. First on that list, of course, are the members of my dissertation committee. Thank you to my advisor for the past eight years, Jeremy Vetter. From my first day as a grad student in your Gilded Age and Progressive Era class to today, you have offered invaluable guidance and constant reassurance throughout an untold number of office (and recently Zoom) chats. I would be nowhere near the historian I am today without your help. To Katherine Morrissey, thank you for your constant encouragement to expand beyond my comfort zone and to explore new opportunities, both in my own work as well as in the world of academia. I have met so many new people and significantly broadened my horizons solely because of you. To Martha Few, thank you for first teaching me how to write and think like a historian so many years ago in HIST 301, all the way through to teaching me about the possibilities of examining the histories of animals and our relationships with them. To Katie Hemphill, I will be forever grateful for your guidance, especially for your help in refining my analysis of gender throughout my dissertation. To all four of you, once again, because it truly cannot be said enough: thank you. Thanks are also in order to all of the other faculty who have inspired me throughout my prolonged academic endeavors at the University of Arizona and Cochise College. Thank you especially to Benjamin Irvin and Doug Weiner for serving on my comprehensive exam committee and for always offering enthusiastic motivation at every turn. Thank you to JC Mutchler, who recognized my capacity for completing this dissertation before I recognized it 3 myself. Thank you to Dan Frey, Dave Pettes, and Chuck Hoyack at Cochise College, each of whom kindled a faint spark and provided continuous encouragement that led me to today. I am indebted to a number of fellow graduate students who have offered friendship, advice, and a significant amount of unofficial therapy over the past several years. At the University of Arizona, thank you especially to Lora Key, Marcus Hernandez, James Barefoot, Danielle Blalock, Nina Bogdan, Amado Guzman, Cristina Urias-Espinoza, Rachel Small, Reed Battles, and Osciel Salazar. Thank you also to the many, many equine and rodeo historians who provided extensive and incalculably valuable feedback and inspiration for much if not most of this dissertation, including Kerri Clement, Susan Nance, Katrin Boniface, Tracey Hanshew, Jeanette Vaught, Diane McKenzie, Kathryn Renton, Teresa Rogers, and Tobi Lopez Taylor. The completion of this dissertation required visits to archives in several different states over the course of several years, which would not have been possible without funding from numerous sources and the assistance of multiple kind, generous archivists. Thank you to the SBS Research Institute at the University of Arizona, the Charles Redd Center at Brigham Young University, and the Department of History at the University of Arizona for providing important research funding. A huge thank you to Megan Winterfeldt at the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colorado, who graciously allowed me to share her office for multiple days as I sifted through roughstock breeding records and old rodeo rulebooks, to Holly Hasenfratz and the entire staff at the Dickinson Research Center at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who put up with my seemingly endless requests for more collections, to Bethany Dodson and the staff at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas, who offered absolutely crucial materials on nearly every woman that 4 appears in these chapters, to the kind staff at the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming, the indispensable staff in the Special Collections at the University of Colorado, Boulder Libraries, who provided invaluable assistance with Clifford Westermeier’s papers, and to the staff at the American Quarter Horse Association Hall of Fame in Amarillo, Texas, who set me up in the most comfortable, peaceful reading room imaginable with all the materials I could ever want. Finally, and most importantly, I have been lucky to be surrounded by a group of helpful and compassionate family and friends who have kept me grounded and sane throughout graduate school. At the University of Arizona, I owe a big thank you to the faculty and my fellow staff members at the School of International Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, including Stephanie Topete, Leonora Escobar, Marcela Thompson, and so many others. My largest debt of gratitude, of course, is to my family. To Mom, Dad, Heidi, Ellen, and Alex, thank you all for your caring support and love. To Jenny, I can say, without an ounce of doubt, that this dissertation would never have been finished without you. I would have quit a dozen times had it not been for your persistent encouragement and reassurance to helping me through it. I can never thank you enough. 5 Dedication To Ryann. I didn’t know it when I started, but I wrote this for you. 6 Table of Contents List of Figures ................................................................................................................................8 Abstract ..........................................................................................................................................9 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 10 Chapter 1: The Bulldogging Housewife: Fox Hastings and Creating a Feminine Space in the Rodeo Arena .......................................................................................................................... 30 Chapter 2: “And Without No Women’s Lib”: Fern Sawyer and a New Generation’s Fight for Women’s Place in Rodeo ...................................................................................................... 55 Chapter 3: “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby”: Barrel Racers and Their Fight for Pay Equality ........................................................................................................................................ 93 Chapter 4: Exporting Cowboy Contests: American Rodeo in Twentieth-Century England .......................................................................................................................................120 Chapter 5: The Two are Pardners: Rodeo Cowboys, Their Horses, and a Distinctly Western Relationship.................................................................................................................147 Chapter 6: Bred to Buck: An Evolutionary History of Rodeo Livestock .............................170 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................192 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................198 7 List of Figures Fox Hastings posing for the camera while under control of a downed steer……………….……45 Charmayne James and a bridle-less Scamper at the 1985 National Finals Rodeo………………95 8 Abstract “Let ‘er Buck” explores the entwined history of gender and human-animal relationships