Representative Scholarship
CHAPTER III. PERFORMING FEMININITY THROUGH DRESS AND ACCOUTREMENTS
Representations of the Cowgirl in Contemporary Social Consciousness

Chapter III of my Doctoral Dissertation.
I am in the process of converting this chapter to an article entitled:

Finding Agency: Sidesaddle Riding, Disability, and the Performance of Femininity
Season Ellison, Ph.D. Visiting Asst. Professor of Theatre, The College of Wooster

Riding sidesaddle is probably a quintessential example of women performing traditional femininity or even
hyper-femininity while riding horses. Despite that sidesaddle riding was, in part, a cultural performance of
performing upper class Victorian femininity “properly,” this upper-class social expectation spilled over into
the realm of women of middle- and working-class status so much so that many early American cowgirls and
ranch women felt that sidesaddle riding was a form of patriarchal restraint and restriction imposed on them.
In this paper, I examine sidesaddle riding from a contemporary perspective as I share the story of Mary Ellen
Linn, a cancer survivor and present-day sidesaddle competitor. Through her story I seek to complicate the
notion that sidesaddle riding is a form of patriarchal restraint and to illustrate the ways in which she finds
agency through riding sidesaddle.
Appropriating Myth: Exoticism, the American West, and the New Woman
in Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West

Currently submitted to Women's Studies for consideration of publication.

One can hardly speak of myth without conjuring images of ancient gods and goddesses, remembering the
theories of Roland Barthes, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Joseph Campbell, or contemplating the life processes of
birth, death, and resurrection. Such themes pervade opera, so much so that, one need only consider the titles
of the earliest operas to find truth in this statement: Orpheus, Euridice, and Dafne. Moreover, as one
examines operatic traditions throughout the centuries, a trend toward myth emerges. Celebrity, ghosting of
star productions, and vocal and musical tradition all provide a taste of the areas in which myth participates
in the making of opera (or opera in the making of myth). In this paper, I examine the ways in which
Giacomo Puccini’s opera, La Fanciulla del West, perpetuates the exoticized myth of the American West,
particularly through its portrayal of Western landscape and character types. Further, I argue that the
mythological foundation of the setting allows for the central female character’s agency and my reading of her
as a “New Woman” in the opera.

It is precisely because Puccini sets his opera in an exotic locale, the mythological American West, that he is
able to craft a story centered on such a strong, outspoken, New Woman. Despite negative critical reactions at
the opera’s 1910 premiere, Minnie is generally referenced as the strongest of Puccini’s heroines. Perhaps this
strength is why she is often ignored. Audiences and critics alike are generally drawn to the more
“traditional” Puccini heroines—the women who, as Catherine Clement might suggest, are “undone.” Minnie
is not undone. She survives and will have a future. She maintains her agency, her independence, and her self-
reliance. Most importantly, Minnie is allowed to exhibit these characteristics because of where she lives.
Women are allowed to “act like men” in the mythological West. While the New Woman, may not be happily
accepted or understood by early critics, Minnie is allowed to triumph because she can be rationalized as a
“myth” not a “reality.”
LaBute or LaBrute:
Negotiating Misogyny and Social Critique in Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig

Paper written for and presented at the 2008 Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference.