Explore how Black professional cowboys use “coolness”—style, demeanor, presence—not as fashion, but as a strategy for navigating racialized space, visibility, and belonging in American culture.
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In this episode of In Depth with Academia, Richard Price (Academia.edu) walks through “Cowboy Cool: A Professional Black Cowboy’s Perspective,” offering a neutral, research-focused discussion meant to help listeners reflect (not “take a side”). The conversation centers my ethnographic approach—following a professional cowboy known as Cam (“Big Reach”)—and examines how cool operates as quiet resistance: staying steady under pressure, managing hypervisibility, disrupting expectations with swagger, and using storytelling (in words and in action) as survival, connection, and subtle protest.

Explore how Black cowboys “control the reins”—literally through horsemanship and figuratively as a lens on masculinity, history, identity, and belonging in America.
In this episode of In Depth with Academia, Richard Price (Academia.edu) walks through Controlling the Reins by anthropologist Myeshia Babers, offering a neutral, research-focused discussion meant to help listeners reflect (not “take a side”). The conversation follows Babers’ ethnographic fieldwork (2012–2014) among Black-owned ranches and rodeos and highlights what everyday routines reveal: preparation as ritual, control as care, and masculinity as something practiced—built through quiet, repeated acts rather than domination.

Along the way, we revisit the limits of the mainstream “cowboy” image, consider how narratives shape our understanding of race and gender, and reflect on why the power to move, gather, and be seen still matters. The episode closes with an invitation: use research as a starting point for deeper questions about who gets to shape history—and who gets to ride out front.

📌 Listen with curiosity. Keep exploring.
🔗 Shorts playlist: [link]
📄 Related reading / work: [link]

Explore how Black cowboys in Houston challenge urban narratives. This research unpacks their “right to the city,” reshaping ideas of identity, belonging, and public space. Discover how historical narratives are re-written through urban exploration.
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In this episode:
• Black trail rides as public reclamation and visibility
• “Right to the city” (Lefebvre) and what it means beyond access
• How movement through streets exposes boundaries, policing, and belonging
• Why memory and history matter in contemporary urban life
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📄 Paper: Reclaiming Space and Memory: Black Cowboys and the Right to the City
🔗 Shorts playlist (10 clips): [link]