Hopkins Press Podcast 4.9: Yumi Roth & Emmanuel David on Filipino Rough Riders in Buffalo Bill's Wild West

On today's episode, we talk with Yumi Janairo Roth & Emmanuel David about their award-winning article in Journal of Asian American Studies, "Playing Filipino: Racial Display, Resistance, and the Filipino Rough Riders in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West" Delving into archival photographs and records about the Filipino performers who joined Buffalo Bill's immensely popular touring show in the wake of the Philippine-American War, Roth and David uncover a fascinating and largely forgotten history. 

In October, Roth and David accepted the Vicki L. Ruiz Award from the Western History Association for their research into the obscured history of the Filipino Rough Riders in Buffalo Bill's Wild West touring show.  This annual award recognizes the best article on race in the North American West published that year. 

To accompany the podcast, "Playing Filipino: Racial Display, Resistance, and the Filipino Rough Riders in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West" will be free to read on Project MUSE through the end of November. 

Bonus content: View an interview with Roth and David by MOCA Denver about the Filipino Rough Riders, and see some of their process in their "We Are Coming" project.  

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Yumi Janairo Roth has created a diverse body of work that explores ideas of immigration, hybridity, and displacement through discrete objects and site-responsive installations, solo projects as well as collaborations. In Roth’s projects, her objects function as both natives and interlopers to their environments, simultaneously recognizable and unfamiliar to their users. Yumi Janairo Roth received a BA in anthropology from Tufts University, a BFA from the School for the Museum of Fine Arts-Boston and an MFA from the State University of New York-New Paltz. She has exhibited and participated in artist-in-residencies nationally and internationally, including New York City (Bronx River Art Center, Sara Meltzer Gallery, Momenta Art, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Smack Mellon, Cuchifritos), San Francisco (Limn Gallery), Portland (Institute of Contemporary Art, Map Room) Houston (Lawndale Art Center, Diverse Works), Denver (Rule Gallery, Center for Visual Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art), Minneapolis (Soap Factory), Milwaukee (Institute of Visual Arts, Kohler Arts/Industry), Santa Fe (Museum of Fine Arts), Mexico (Arcaute Arte Contemporaneo, La Galleria RufinoTamayo), the Philippines (Ayala and Vargas Museums), and Czech Republic (Galerie Klatovy-Klenova, Institute of Art and Design-Pilsen), and Germany (Frankfurter Kunstverein).

Emmanuel David is an interdisciplinary scholar of gender, sexuality, and globalization. His recent research on gender and sexuality in the Philippines has focused on a wide range of topics, including global call centers, the politics of beauty pageants, sex work and militarism, and contemporary art and performance.  He is currently working on a book project about Christine Jorgensen’s performance tour across Asia and the Pacific in the early 1960s.

He is also engaging in an artist-scholar collaboration with Yumi Janairo Roth focused on the untold history of the Filipino Rough Riders of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Their work We Are Coming will be featured in the MCA Denver’s Cowboy exhibition, which is now travelling to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art . For more, see Roth and David’s We Are Coming project and their article “Playing Filipino,” featured in the Journal of Asian American Studies.