Fictions of the American West

This course will explore the many images, myths, and legends that have come to define the distinctive identity of the American West while simultaneously defying its actual history. Hollywood has taught us the images well: cowboys and cattle drives, Indian wars, wagon trains, rowdy mining towns, and scrappy homesteaders. All of which played a part in the region's history, but behind the art, novels, and films from which those image spring, lay developments crucial the rise of the modern U.S. nation state and the economic, scientific, and military power it wields globally.