University of Washington Press Outriders: Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West

Rodeo is a dangerous and painful performance in which only the strongest and most skilled riders succeed. In the popular imagination, the western rodeo hero is often a stoic white man who embodies the toughness and independence of America’s frontier past. However, marginalized people have starred in rodeos since the very beginning. Cast out of popular western mythology and pushed to the fringes in everyday life, these cowboys and cowgirls found belonging and meaning at the rodeo, staking a claim to national inclusion.Outriders explores the histories of rodeoers at the margins of society, from female bronc-riders in the 1910s and 1920s and convict cowboys in Texas in the mid-twentieth century to all-black rodeos in the 1960s and 1970s and gay rodeoers in the late twentieth century. These rodeo riders not only widened the definition of the real American cowboy but also, at times, reinforced the persistent and exclusionary myth of an idealized western identity. In this nuanced study, Rebecca Scofield shares how these outsider communities courted authenticity as they put their lives on the line to connect with an imagined American West. Review Outriders function as a compendium of current cowboy and rodeo research. Scofield takes this research, and--with engaging style--demonstrates how women, Blacks, Gay men, and incarcertated men have chosen the cowboy as a symbol of what it means to be authentically American.--Journal of Popular CultureOutriders offers an alternative perspective about what inspires people to enter rodeo, arguing that many do so as a way to claim a presence in the history of the West, and explores how rodeo gave agency to groups previously omitted from the history of cowboy lifestyle...provocative and contributes to framework for revisiting fringe groups.--Pacific Northwest Quarterly[A]n engaging, insightful, wonderfully researched social and cultural study of forgotten or ignored participants in United States rodeo.--Great Plains QuarterlyControversial and dutifully written, Outriders...will be of interest to scholars while causing rodeo fans to think deeply about the conflic: ts within the myth of the sport.--Montana: The Magazine of Western HistoryThis is an ambitious book in which Scofield deftly tackles multiple historical contexts, secondary literatures, and political sensitivities...a foundational monograph that will no doubt inspire further research into the diversity of communities and traditions in rodeo and the North American West.--Western Historical QuarterlyThis well-researched book is a good introduction to rodeo beyond the mainstream and will be of interest to rodeo and western scholars, along with a more popular audience unfamiliar with rodeo's more varied history.--Pacific Historical Review About the Author Rebecca Scofield is assistant professor of American history at the University of Idaho.