In this dissertation, I build on contemporary theoretical perspectives to interpret characteristics of contemporary cowboy culture. Specifically, I target the image of the cowboy in relation to solidarity. I assume that contemporary cowboy culture is an illusion or simulacra of something, something maybe once authentic. Now, it is built around language games, illusion, image and many other postmodern phenomena. Even so, in this work I explore how postmodernism is useful, which many are hesitant to do. This is a new twist or at least an interesting study in contrast to the enlightenment project. I rely heavily on theoretical discussion, qualitative analysis, participant observation and interpretive interactionism to accomplish this study and engage this culture. I integrate this approach into the continuing question about progress and the relationship between postmodernism and modernism, which is characterized here by McDonaldization. I find contemporary society provides opportunities to celebrate the benefits and development of postmodern social bonding. As a result, postmodernism, characterized by chaos, contradiction, and especially illusion is found to actually create solidarity and allow for Jungian rebirth of something authentic.

This thesis presents a short history and description of the gaucho of Argentina and explores some of the literature that portrays the gaucho way of life.

The dramatic history of the 1885 Riel Rebellion has been revisited and reinterpreted countless times by hundreds of amateur and professional historians from all cultural backgrounds. From 1885 to the mid-twentieth century and beyond the tendency of many historians was to create melodramatic narratives, a writing style that began in various English theatrical traditions, dating back to the Middle Ages. Of particular interest to this study were the eyewitness narratives whose melodramatic style included a desire to codify and define the roles of Aboriginal people, another British tradition of defining the dark skinned other that was debated in London theatres from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. The Canadian historical myth was created by gifted writers who captured the broader publics imagination with their dramatic style, a hegemonic force which eclipsed many Aboriginal versions of similar historical events. One such event was the George Mann familys dramatic escape to Fort Pitt, as remembered by descendants of Mann and those of Nehithawe (Wood Cree) treaty Chief Seekascootch, whose family aided the Mann family in their escape. Through a variety of methods that have included historiographical analysis, literary analysis, playwriting, microhistory, and interviews with members of both families, this paper engages an interdisciplinary approach to the academic areas of drama, history and anthropology as a means of creating a broader picture of history that is hopefully interesting and accessible to people from multiple cultural backgrounds. This project concludes that single discipline western academic narratives do not sufficiently problematize their archival sources, and often underestimate the complexity of Aboriginal epistemologies.

The dramatic history of the 1885 Riel Rebellion has been revisited and reinterpreted countless times by hundreds of amateur and professional historians from all cultural backgrounds. From 1885 to the mid-twentieth century and beyond the tendency of many historians was to create melodramatic narratives, a writing style that began in various English theatrical traditions, dating back to the Middle Ages. Of particular interest to this study were the eyewitness narratives whose melodramatic style included a desire to codify and define the roles of Aboriginal people, another British tradition of defining the dark skinned other that was debated in London theatres from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. The Canadian historical myth was created by gifted writers who captured the broader publics imagination with their dramatic style, a hegemonic force which eclipsed many Aboriginal versions of similar historical events. One such event was the George Mann familys dramatic escape to Fort Pitt, as remembered by descendants of Mann and those of Nehithawe (Wood Cree) treaty Chief Seekascootch, whose family aided the Mann family in their escape. Through a variety of methods that have included historiographical analysis, literary analysis, playwriting, microhistory, and interviews with members of both families, this paper engages an interdisciplinary approach to the academic areas of drama, history and anthropology as a means of creating a broader picture of history that is hopefully interesting and accessible to people from multiple cultural backgrounds. This project concludes that single discipline western academic narratives do not sufficiently problematize their archival sources, and often underestimate the complexity of Aboriginal epistemologies.

215 pages / On the border between Beadle & Adam’s dime novel and Edwin Porter’s ground-breaking film, The Great Train Robbery, this dissertation returns to a period in American theater history when the legendary cowboy came to life. On the stage of late nineteenth century frontier melodrama, three actors blazed a trail for the cowboy to pass from man to myth. Frank Mayo’s Davy Crockett, William Cody’s Buffalo Bill, and James Wallick’s Jesse James represent a theatrical bloodline in the genealogy of frontier heroes. As such, the backwoodsman, the scout, and the outlaw are forbearers of the cowboy in American popular entertainment. Caught in a territory between print and film, this study explores a landscape of blood-and-thunder melodrama, where the unwritten Code of the West was embodied on stage. At a cultural crossroads, the need for an authentic, American hero spurred the cowboy to legend; theater taught him how to walk, talk, and act like a man. / Committee in charge: Dr. John Schmor, Co-chair; Dr. Jennifer Schleuter, Co-chair; Dr. John Watson, Member; Dr. Linda Fuller, Outside Member

Submitted by Cássia Santos (cassia.bcufg@gmail.com) on 2014-09-18T11:21:11Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Doutorado em Letras Adolfo J de S Frota.pdf: 1985468 bytes, checksum: fafb1977d452d027fb7c91088a2251c9 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2014-09-18T12:41:23Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Doutorado em Letras Adolfo J de S Frota.pdf: 1985468 bytes, checksum: fafb1977d452d027fb7c91088a2251c9 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-09-18T12:41:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Doutorado em Letras Adolfo J de S Frota.pdf: 1985468 bytes, checksum: fafb1977d452d027fb7c91088a2251c9 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-10-05 / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Goiás - FAPEG / This dissertation analyzes the novels All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing and Cities of the Plain, which constitute The Border Trilogy, written by the American author Cormac McCarthy. The main aspect of this study is the spatial construction, analyzed from the characters‟ point of view. Considering the possibility that the space is a human construct, loaded with personal and subjective symbolic values, the dissertation considers the point of view of cowboys characters in moments of adventurous projections and psychological conflicts. The configuration of the border space takes into consideration the perception and the focus of the characters, in constant cultural contact, mainly with foreign people. This research is also based on the idea that melancholy is predominant in the characters‟ lives, mainly when they suffer traumatic experiences, usually related to death and destruction. Thus, this feeling works as an important and fundamental affective filter to the process of scrutiny of the space and its appreciation. In the first two novels, two young cowboys travel to Mexico in search of an idealized space and come back changed after a series of dangerous adventures. They try to establish integration with the land but, when they meet and come to work together in the last novel, that attempt of integration with the land is made impossible. In The Border Trilogy, it is clear a conflictual relationship between character and milieu, environment and space, between reality and possibility, between what the world is and what it should or could be. All these elements are visible in the spatial composition, the main theme of this dissertation. / Este trabalho analisa os romances Todos os belos cavalos, A travessia e Cidades da planície, que formam a Trilogia da Fronteira, do autor norte-americano Cormac McCarthy. O aspecto central deste estudo é a construção espacial, analisada a partir do ponto de vista das personagens. Levando em consideração a possibilidade de que o espaço é um construto humano, carregado de valores simbólicos pessoais e subjetivos, esta tese considera o ponto de vista de personagens cowboys em momentos de projeções aventurosas e conflitos psicológicos. A configuração do espaço de fronteira leva em consideração a percepção e a focalização das personagens, em constante contato cultural, principalmente com o estrangeiro. Esta pesquisa apoia-se também na ideia de que a melancolia se torna preponderante na vida das personagens, principalmente quando elas passam por experiências traumáticas, usualmente relacionadas à morte e à destruição. Assim, esse sentimento funciona como um filtro afetivo importante e fundamental para o processo de escrutinização do espaço e de sua valoração. Nos dois primeiros romances, dois jovens cowboys viajam em direção ao México em busca de um espaço idealizado e voltam transformados, depois de uma série de aventuras perigosas. Eles tentam uma integração com a terra, mas, ao se encontrarem e trabalharem juntos no último romance, aquela tentativa de ligação com a terra será desfeita. Na Trilogia da Fronteira fica evidente uma relação conflituosa entre personagem e meio, ambiente e espaço; entre a realidade e a possibilidade; entre o que o mundo é e o que ele poderia ou deveria ser. Todos esses elementos ficam visíveis a partir da composição espacial, tema central desta tese.

This story suite is a work of autobiographical fiction, a coming of age tale which uses a young girl’s relationship to horses—along with various people and places connected to the horse world—as its narrative theme. The collection is comprised of twelve chapters, including an Introduction and Prologue and much later, an Interlude and Conclusion. While the first person narrative voice is maintained through most of the chapters herein, the Interlude uses second-person perspective. Additionally, NOW DEPARTING is written in the present narrative tense. Poems are interspersed throughout the work, between chapters, as transitional bridges for the reader.

In this thesis, I analyse four novels by Cormac McCarthy through the lens of Apocalypse theory. Looking at his later, south-western, novels Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men and The Road, I examine to what extent they respond to biblical and secular apocalyptic ideologies and narrative tropes. Particular attention is paid to the distinction between biblical apocalypse and secular, or nihilistic, apocalypse. The former draws its framework from the Book of Revelation, and entails a war between Heaven and Hell, the rule of the Anti-Christ and God’s final judgement. Although cataclysmic, a biblical apocalypse also promises worldly renewal through the descent of New Jerusalem. Thus, the end of the world was a desirable, rather than dreaded, event. However, as the world moved into the twentieth century, and we saw modernity give birth to weapons of global destruction, apocalyptic attitudes became pessimistic. The belief that God would save the world from corruption quickly gave way to an entropic end, in which human civilisation will simply collapse into nothingness. I consider McCarthy’s south-west fiction within these opposing apocalyptic ideas, and demonstrate how the four novels build a line of history that begins with Blood Meridian’s Manifest Destiny and ends with The Road’s nuclear bomb. I argue that McCarthy explores both biblical and nihilistic apocalyptic modes before combining them in The Road, which I argue offers a new apocalyptic mode: renewal and salvation without God. Within this context, I argue against common interpretations of McCarthy as a completely nihilistic writer with no vested anthropological concerns. Through these four novels, I instead suggest he negotiates between biblical and nihilistic apocalyptic modes before coming to the conclusion, in The Road, that hope exists.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T13:54:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 FranciscoJFA.pdf: 1991383 bytes, checksum: afbb72385131d405ad201e4a47281ba7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-07-18 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / This body of work discusses the gender meanings associated with cowboys while endorsing contemporary rodeos in Rio Grande do Norte as a recreational sport and a form of ludic expression. As a result, this research has focused on rodeo practices, aiming to understand the different aspects emphasizing masculinity: these associations being constructed through relationships, contexts and the competitiveness between participants. These gender meanings hinge on the desire for a wining performance and on the behaviour exhibited among cowboys outside the competitive ring in specific social settings such as parties and recreational time. The latter were the focus of the ethnographic research; direct observation and semistructured interviews with cowboys in rodeo stadiums were also used. Through qualitative analysis of the collected data, it was revealed that historically and socially different trajectories do not immediately cause a gender crisis in cowboys, but the assignment of new significance by the social acts in each historical context. However, the presence of cowboys leads to other models of masculinity configured by expressions and the insertion of new personas, not coming directly from field activities, but imbued by the symbolic elements of the cowboy persona, constructed throughout history / O presente trabalho, ao enfocar as vaquejadas contempor?neas no Rio Grande do Norte como atividade esportiva e como express?o l?dica, tem a proposta de pensar os significados associados aos vaqueiros, especialmente aqueles constru?dos na interface com as rela??es de g?nero. Por isso, esta pesquisa centrou sua abordagem nas pr?ticas dos vaqueiros nas vaquejadas, com o objetivo de compreender os diversos aspectos que apontam para a masculinidade, uma vez que os seus sentidos s?o constitu?dos pelos envolvimentos, rela??es e concorr?ncias entre os seus competidores. As significa??es s?o articuladas pela busca de uma performance para ser campe?o e pelas pr?ticas fora da pista de competi??o executadas entre os seus personagens no contexto das situa??es sociais espec?ficas, a saber: a festa e os momentos de lazer. Tais pr?ticas foram objeto da pesquisa etnogr?fica, com a observa??o direta e entrevistas semi-estruturadas com os vaqueiros nos parques de vaquejadas, o que nos conduziu a realizar a an?lise qualitativa dos dados coletados. A pesquisa tem revelado que as trajet?rias hist?ricas e sociais diversas dos vaqueiros n?o provocam imediatamente uma crise nas rela??es de g?nero, mas a forma??o de novos sentidos ressignificados pelos seus atores sociais em cada contexto hist?rico. A presen?a, portanto, dos vaqueiros conduz a outros modelos de masculinidade configurados por express?es e pela inser??o de novos figurantes, n?o exatamente advindos das atividades do campo, mas imbu?dos dos elementos simb?licos da figura do vaqueiro, constru?da ao longo da hist?ria

The land-grant university and the cowboy church are two social institutions designed to engage communities. Research is abundant on the former and limited on the latter. The purpose of this study was to provide a descriptive report on cowboy churches, while identifying the potential for university-cowboy church collaborations and examining the direct implications to Cooperative Extension. Rogers' Diffusions of Innovations conceptualized this study and was employed to evaluate the acceptability of university-cowboy church collaborations. This basic qualitative study utilized a purposive snowball technique to identify key informants of the American Fellowship of Cowboy Churches (AFCC). Ten subjects participated in semi-structured, face-to-face and phone interviews. Data were analyzed for common themes and patterns within the context of each of this study's objectives. Findings described cowboy churches affiliated with the AFCC, the interpersonal and mass media communication channels used by these churches, and subject awareness of Cooperative Extension. Conclusions and implications suggest university-cowboy church collaborations are an acceptable innovation, especially in the context of Extension collaborations. There are relative advantages for such collaborations, shared compatibility through each institution's mission, and ample opportunities for trialibility. County agents should initiate contact with cowboy church pastors and collaborations should be initiated regarding in information exchange, horses, livestock shows, and youth.