I got interested in Annie Oakley when researching my first book, Nature’s Noblemen. One of the the chapters in that book analyzed William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West 1880s performances in London as a performance of western masculinity in a cosmopolitan, imperial capital. I found lots of material about Oakley’s sensational success with London audiences during that run, but ended up not including it in the book in order to keep the focus on masculinities.
Since then I have had the good fortune to collaborate on projects with the Cody Papers Project housed at the Buffalo Bill Center for the West in Cody, Wyoming. The Project has worked with the university presses of Nebraska and Oklahoma, as well as with the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to increase understanding of the American West through access to primary sources and scholarship exploring Cody’s life and times. Studying Cody and other Wild West shows offers a useful point of entry for investigating a wide variety of topics, such as the emergence of celebrity culture, representations of race and gender, and the construction of the American West as a mythic frontier. Moreover–though many people don’t know this–wild West shows like Cody’s appealed to international audiences and can provide insights into the global circulation of mass culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
I am currently working with Frank Christenson, Doug Seefeldt, and Jeremy Johnston of the Cody Papers on a book that will present a range of primary sources highlighting Annie Oakley’s life and career. Oakley’s ability to craft a compelling public image and maintain it over time was second only to the remarkable self-promotion skills of Buffalo Bill himself. Modern transportation and communication technologies made it possible for her to reach thousands of people, including those who would never see her perform live. She reached audiences eager for a new image of femininity, one that combined athleticism with wholesome girlishness, and balanced domesticity and outdoor recreation. Analyzing Oakley’s life and image through primary sources offers insights into the relationships between gender, celebrity culture, and ideas about nature during the critical decades of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.
