Dr. Tracey Hanshew

Assistant Professor of History

Ph.D. Oklahoma State University in History of the American West

MSSc, Syracuse University in American History

B.A., Tarleton State University in English

Dr. Hanshew joined the History Department at EOU in Fall 2022 after teaching five years at Washington State University Tri-Cities. At EOU she teaches courses in the American West, U.S. History, diversity, methods, the Capstone, and a new course, The History of Rodeo. 

Dr. Hanshew’s research interests include rodeo cowgirls at the turn of the twentieth century, rodeo history, ranching and rural women’s history.  She has been a visiting scholar at The Helmerich Center for American Research of the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and presented at the HCAR Fall Symposium on gender and masculinities in the American West in Fall 2018 following that fellowship. She authored two publications on Oklahoma cowgirls: Oklahoma Rodeo Women (Arcadia Publishing, The History Press, 2020) and “Rodeo in Oklahoma is Women’s Business: How Lucille Mulhall’s Fame Created Opportunity in Rodeo” in the Chronicles of Oklahoma in for which she received the Muriel H. Wright Award from the Oklahoma Historical Society. Her most recent publication, “`Here she comes wearin’ them britches!’ Saddles, Riding Skirts, and Social Reform in the Turn-of-the-Century Rural West,” published in Montana The Magazine of Western History, earned national recognition and the 2021 Western Heritage Wrangler Award. Dr. Hanshew’s current research focuses on the cowgirl image and her roles in the Western genre. She is presently working on a book chapter, One Lightning Yellow-hair Cowgirl: Sheridan’s 1883 Challenge to Hypermasculinity in the Western Genre, for an edited collection exploring Taylor Sheridan’s Wests. 

Dr. Hanshew serves locally on the Historical Landmarks Commission, and remotely serves on the Advisory Board to Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture, 1900. Additionally, she is the Rural Women’s Studies Association Membership and Communication Coordinator for the western United States.