Representations of Queer Cowboys in History, Literature, and Film

My senior thesis focuses on showing the existence and erasure of queerness in American cowboys. The first chapter uses two journals from two different cowboys as well as an article from a Denver newspaper to establish what being queer looked like to cowboys and how that queerness continued after the end of the Frontier. Chapter two focuses on interpretations of cowboys in literature using two fictional cowboy stories which included the queer aspects of cowboy life as well as autobiographical and fictional cowboy poetry that confirmed explicit homosexual activity and revealed a shift in public views on being queer. The final chapter shows how that erasure and negative perception of queerness continued into the most popular form of cowboy media, the Western film with a section on parts of queer history to contextualize several of the films. My research shows that the queerness of cowboys in undenyable and erasing that aspect from American history and pop culture further spreads misinformation about the American West.