Dr. Nicholas Villanueva Jr. will present a talk about his book Rainbow Cattle Co.: Liberation, Inclusion, and the History of Gay Rodeo as part of the State of Arizona Research Library’s 2025 Arizona Author Series. The talk is at 12 p.m. MST, Thursday, May 22nd, and will be held virtually on Zoom. Attendees are encouraged to register to receive the link to the presentation. After the talk, there will be time for questions from the audience.

This presentation will be recorded and made available on our YouTube channel. Registered attendees will receive a link to the recording once it is available. 

About Rainbow Cattle Co.: At first glace, the rodeo may not seem like a critical space for gay liberation; yet, Villanueva argues just the opposite. While the gal liberation movement is associated with urban areas, the rodeo has long been overlooked as an essential site for expression, particularly when it comes to questioning assumptions about gender, heterosexuality, and Western culture. The rodeo became a space for insisting on full participation in sports and a platform to fight against the AIDS epidemic.

You can read and listen to books about the history and culture of Arizona for free on Reading Arizona.

Dr. Nicholas Villanueva Jr. is an Associate Professor and Director of Critical Sports Studies at the University of Colorado. There, he helped create the Critical Sports Studies certificate program, which is a discipline that studies social issues in sport and society. He is the author of four books and most recently released Rainbow Cattle Co.: Liberation, Inclusion, and the History of Gay Rodeo (University of Nebraska Press, November 2024). Villanueva received two national book prizes for his work in Latinx studies: Border Regional Library Association, 2017 Southwest Book of the Year, and the 2018 National Association of Chicano & Chicana Studies, Tejas Foco Non-fiction Book of the Year. Since 2018, Villanueva has worked fhi360 and its International Sports, Culture, and Youth Program, supported by the United States Department of the State and its Sport for Diplomacy grant. In this role, he conducts workshops at the University of Colorado and the Unites States Olympic Training center for visiting international coaches. He recently worked with adaptive sports coaches and administrators form Croatia, and they examined critical studies of identity and ableism in sport. Villanueva is also a United States Army Veteran and received the National Defense Service Medal as a Combat Medic, Gulf War. He is a first-generation college graduate. He earned his B.A. from Missouri University Science & Technology, summa cum laude, 2007, he earned his M.A. from Vanderbilt University in 2009, and he earned his Doctorate with Distinction from Vanderbilt University, 2013. As an avid outdoors person, Nick enjoys riding horses, fishing, and rodeo. 

This event is part of the 2025 Arizona Author Series. This program is supported by the Arizona State Library, Archives & Public Records, a division of the Secretary of State, with federal funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Arizona Center for the Book, a Library of Congress Center for the Book Affiliate.