Rate My Professor Rebecca Scofield

Rebecca Scofield is Department Chair and Associate Professor of History in the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Idaho. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard University in 2015, M.A. in Regional Studies: East Asia from Harvard University in 2011, and B.A. in History from Willamette University in 2008. Scofield's expertise spans American studies, 20th-century U.S. history, the history of the U.S. West, history of gender and sexuality, and popular culture. She teaches courses on gender and race in the U.S. West and women in American society.

Scofield's research examines gender, sexuality, performance, and rodeo culture in the American West. Her books include Outriders: Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West (University of Washington Press, 2019) and Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo, co-authored with Elyssa Ford (University of Washington Press, 2023). Select publications feature “Nipped, Tucked, or Sucked”: Dolly Parton and the Construction of the Authentic Body (Journal of Popular Culture, 2016), “Balancing Act: Idaho’s Campaign for Women’s Suffrage” with Katherine G. Aiken (Western Legal History, 2019), and “Violence and Social Salvation at the Texas Prison Rodeo” (Journal of American Studies, 2020). Her current project, Astride the Beast: Women Riding Horses, Dragons, and Everything in Between, is under contract with the University of Texas Press. Scofield received the Presidential Mid-Career Award (University of Idaho, 2025), Humanities Fellowship (University of Idaho, 2021-2022), Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship, and CDIL Digital Scholarship Fellowship. She leads the Gay Rodeo Oral History Project (2016, University of Idaho Seed Grant), co-created the Voices of Gay Rodeo web exhibit, and developed the theater piece That Damn Horse: The Stories of Gay Rodeo. Her public engagements include the Malcolm M. Renfrew Interdisciplinary Colloquium and podcasts like Making History: An Idaho Story.