Queering the Cowboy by Mark Asquith

Available for pre-order. Publishes 4 February 2027
 
Queering the Cowboy : From The Virginian to Westworld
 
An exploration of the queer Western across contemporary literature and film, before and beyond Brokeback Mountain. 

Queer cowboys are everywhere. From the kinky kitsch of Chappell Roan and Orville Peck to the cinema blockbuster The Power of the Dog (2021), the queer cowboy has become a person of interest. Queering the Cowboy traces the phenomenon from the classic Western to contemporary films and books, to demonstrate that the journey from John Wayne to Roan is not long – since camp has always been a flipside to the cowboy's hypermasculinity. 

Adopting queer theory with intersectional and psychoanalytical approaches, Mark Asquith reveals queer subtexts in ostensibly straight texts and assesses the success of queer representation in queer blockbusters. He shows how the Western replaces the woman – as object of male appreciation – with the cowboy, including how his leather chaps and spurs have become fetishized objects of male desire. The book also explores how male relationships in Westerns are mediated through screen women, horses, and expertise with a gun; how the cowboy becomes both surrogate father and queered model of masculinity to young boys; and how crossdressing and transgender men and women are represented. 

Queering the Cowboy offers readings of Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Power of the Dog, and Brokeback Mountain (2005), arguing that the films tend to straighten out the more radically written texts. Ending with an analysis of HBO's Westworld (2016-2022), it shows that, even when projected into the distant future, the robot cowboy remains a distinctly queer character.
 
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'In his landmark study, Mark Asquith restores to memory key moments in the cultural development of the queer cowboy on the page and the screen. This lively and groundbreaking book is sure to be essential reading for fans, scholars, and students of the Western.' - Susan Kollin, Professor of English, Montana State University-Bozeman, USA
 
'This detailed, thoughtful, and provocative book demonstrates the resilience, flexibility, and instability of the western whilst skillfully unravelling the intrinsic queerness ever present in the genre.' - Neil Campbell, Emeritus Professor of American Studies, University of Derby, UK
 
Queering the Cowboy is a breathtaking ride through the weird wild west. Mark Asquith moves effortlessly across genres, mediums, and historical periods, examining the “crisis of masculinity” in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, the barely suppressed homoerotic longing in Wister's The Virginian, to Joan Crawford's swaggering, cross-dressing gunfighter in the delightfully bonkers 1956 western, Johnny Guitar, carefully situating each text within the closeted but centuries-long history of queer cowboys while uncovering important new insights about the ways sexuality, especially queer sexuality in the west, has been racialized, celebrated, buried, and uncovered again and again.' - Sara L. Spurgeon, Professor of American Literature, Texas Tech University, USA