Seed Grant: Gay Rodeo Oral History Project

Transcription

1 Seed Grant Application Cover Page PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Name: Rebecca Scofield Title: Assistant Professor Department: History ADDITIONAL INVESTIGATORS: Name: Department: Title: Name: Department: Title: Amount Requested: PROPOSAL TITLE: $12,000 Seed Grant: Gay Rodeo Oral History Project Proposal Checklist: Cover sheet (1 page) Abstract (1 page; 200 words max) Narrative (2 page max) Bibliography Budget Form Biographical Information (3 pages max)

2 Abstract: The Gay Rodeo Oral History Project is dedicated to collecting and preserving the personal stories of the men and women involved with the International Gay Rodeo Association. Gay rodeo started forty years ago in 1976, sparking decades-long debates about masculinity, sexuality, and the cowboy. Today, active members who can recall the early days of gay rodeo are passing away or becoming less active in the association. The experiences of these western gay women and men are at risk of being forgotten. I will be working directly with the rodeo association s archives committee to conduct, transcribe, and archive their oral histories. This project is an integral part of my larger research agenda and will contribute significantly to my current book project, which focuses on marginalized communities use of rodeo as a space to construct and contest notions of manhood, nation, and authenticity. Also, by digitizing and incorporating the collection into western gay and lesbian archives, this project will allow me to develop important professional skills in the areas of public and digital history. In these ways, the Gay Rodeo Oral History Project ultimately seeks to work with a community to save a vital piece western history.

3 Narrative: Gay Rodeo and History of the American West In 2016, gay rodeo is quietly entering its fortieth year of existence. Caught between a heteronormative western community, which has persistently labeled them failed cowboys, and a homonormative gay community, which has often viewed them as failed gay people, gay rodeoers have worked to create their own unique identities. The Gay Rodeo Oral History Project is dedicated to collecting and preserving the stories of these men and women who have risked great personal harm to enjoy the lifestyles they love. Not only are these personal narratives important to LGBTQ history, they are a vital part of the diverse history of the American West. While scholars have written on the imagery of the American cowboy extensively, they have largely neglected the centrality of sexuality in the twentieth-century imagined West, especially in rodeo. Some important works have traced the problematic aspects of a gendered and racialized West, for instance Mary Lou LeCompte s Cowgirls of the Rodeo: Pioneer Professional Athletes (1993) and Allison Fuss Mellis s Riding Buffalos and Broncos: Rodeo and Native Traditions in Northern Great Plains (2003). Gay rodeo, in contrast, has only received limited commentary by scholars of gay and lesbian history in works like Patricia Nell Warren s The Lavender Locker Room: 3000 Years of Great Athletes Whose Sexual Orientation was Different (2006). By investigating the lives of gay rodeoers, we can uncover new intersecting stories about the history of sexuality and the history of the cowboy. Over the past four decades, gay rodeoers have faced real challenges in maintaining the gay rodeo arena as a place to be both openly gay and cowboys. The first gay rodeo was held in Reno, Nevada in Within a decade, gay rodeoers had built the multistate International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) with sanctioned rodeos and standardized rules. Since the mythic frontier and the cowboy have represented the intertwined ideals of white, heteronormative masculinity throughout the twentieth century, many people viewed the gay rodeo as an affront to the heart of Americanism. Hate mail, bomb threats, and cancelled contracts plagued the rodeo during the 1980s and 1990s, yet new members continued to join. In the mid-1990s, IGRA drew together 3,000 active members for twenty-two annual rodeos spread throughout North America. Today, gay rodeos draw only half as many participants to half as many rodeos. Fewer young members join the gay rodeo in part because gay political activism has encouraged integration into mainstream communities. Yet, persistent homophobia on mainstream circuits has also ensured that no professional rodeoer has publicly identified as gay. In 2016, gay cowboys are more widely acknowledged in the media and less widely visible in everyday life than any time in the previous four decades. In light of this trend, this study will provide a timely intervention by validating gay rodeoers experiences. As the association faces decline and older participants leave or pass away, members have expressed concern about the loss of their history. Gay rodeoers and allies in the community have worked hard to create material and digital archives of IGRA artifacts. Vital historical pieces, such as belt-buckles, newspapers, and programs, have been collected and stored for posterity. To undertake a systematic oral history project, however, their efforts to protect their own history require institutional support in terms of

4 experience, time, and financial aid. I will be working in concert with IGRA s archives committee to ensure that my project represents the community s own concerns. Not only would I have the chance to work with this underserved community, I would also be expanding my own field experience and professional development in public and digital history. These two fields are central to the changing world of historical inquiry and production. Engaging directly with communities and presenting their histories for a wider public are increasingly important, even required, in today s digital world. This project would provide me the opportunity to conduct in-depth research with living populations, use this research in my own work, and then apply the information to create a museum collection and digital exhibit that can serve both the public and future scholars. In order to complete this project, I have selected four major rodeo events over the calendar to attend. Specifically, I intend to travel to rodeos in San Francisco, Dallas, and Palm Springs, as well as IGRA s annual convention in Austin. I have received IRB approval to conduct semi-structured interviews that will focus on participants experiences as gay cowboys or cowgirls. I will provide each participant with a consent form and, with permission, I will record these interviews for later transcription. If a person chooses to remain anonymous, I will collect no identifying information from them and their interviews will be kept on an encrypted drive. A minimum of ten interviews are expected, though every effort will be made to collect as many as possible. After collecting these interviews over the year, I will work with a summer graduate assistant to transcribe the recordings. After transcription, this collection will be added to one of several LGBTQ western history archives and incorporated into a digital exhibit on the history of gay rodeo. Roughly $5,500 will be allotted to travel expenses. $3,200 will be used to create private interviewing spaces at the rodeos and purchase necessary equipment. Recording equipment must be of high enough quality to allow for ease of transcription and potential curation of audio clips in a digital exhibit. $3,300 will fund a summer graduate assistantship to do the transcription. Of my $6,000 start-up budget I have set aside $2,000 for pre- and post-project work, including traveling to museums to manage the collection and traveling to additional rodeos to continue this line of inquiry. The rest of my start-up funds will be split between required office equipment and traveling to archives for my larger book project. This project will produce outcomes that are both beneficial to the public and to my overall research agenda. First, this oral history project will contribute substantially to my current book project. This work, tentatively titled Riding Bareback: Marginalized Rodeo Communities and the Performance of the 20 th Century American West, traces how various minority communities contributed to and challenged the development of a gendered, sexualized, and racialized western ideal over the twentieth century. The data from these interviews will allow me to illustrate the crucial differences between the cultural image of gay rodeo, created by news reports and rodeo programs, and the everyday lives of rodeoers. Also, while a Seed Grant would offer the funding for the initial collection process, I will continue to gather these oral histories, publish my findings, and work to curate these stories into a larger public exhibition. This, I hope, would help restore some of the dignity and respect this community deserves.

5 Bibliographic Information: For foundational works on the imagined American West see: Deloria, Philip. Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press, Grossman, James, ed. The Frontier in American Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, Warren, Louis. Buffalo Bill s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. United States: University of Oklahoma Press, For rodeo histories see: Allen, Michael. Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination. Reno: University of Nevada, Le Cony, Christopher and Zoe Trodd. Regan s Rainbow Rodeos: Queer Challenges to the Cowboy Dreams of the 1980s, Canadian Review of American Studies 39 no. 2 (2009). Laegreid, Renee. Riding Pretty: Rodeo Royalty in the American West. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, LeCompte, Mary Lou. Cowgirls of the Rodeo: Pioneer Professional Athletes. Chicago: University of Illinois, Mellis, Allison Fuss. Riding Buffalos and Broncos: Rodeo and Native Traditions in Northern Great Plains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, Penrose, Jan. When All the Cowboys are Indians: The Nature of Race in All-Indian Rodeo, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 93 no. 3 (September 2003). Patton, Tracey Owens and Sally Schedlock. Gender, Whiteness and Power in Rodeo. Lanham: Lexington Books, Warren, Patricia Nell. Rodeo: Real Gay Cowboys and Brokeback Mountain, in The Lavender Locker Room: 3000 Years of Great Athletes Whose Sexual Orientation was Different. London: Wildcat Press, 2006.