In this first-ever intersectional interrogation of the settler colonial roots of Canada's oldest and largest western heritage festival, I expose the complicity of the annual Calgary Stampede, Canada’s hugely popular rodeo and western heritage festival, in producing and sustaining the poor status of women, queers, and other Others here in Calgary. The annual Stampede operates as a ten-day keg party for the country’s oil and gas industry and a major fundraiser for politicians of all stripes. It is also notorious as an internationally renowned sex tourist destination. Using a diverse archive, including forms of civic culture, photography, print advertisements, news coverage, poetry, and social media, the project utilizes a combination of archival research, media studies, participant observation, and narrative and discourse analyses to examine the urban culture that exists in Calgary because of Stampede. 

Available now!
Order from Fernwood Publishers in Canada and Columbia University Press in the US. Also available at Shelf Life Books in Calgary.

While you await your copy, check out the special Stampede edition of the Alberta Advantage Podcast, where Kim and host Kate Jacobson talk all things sexist, racist, and settler colonial about this event that consumes Calgary for ten days every July and beyond. 

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Did you miss the virtual book launch event on July 8, 2021, sponsored by Fernwood and Shelf Life? No worries. Check it out here: