Imagining the American West

This course examines the ways the American West has been popularly imagined from the late 19th century and into the 21st in literary texts, landscape painting and photography, heritage sites, western film, and science fiction. The course explores the packaging and consumption of the American West as a commodity, how meaning is made by producers and consumers of the West, and the collision of history, myth, memory, and place embodied by the West. Looking at the ways the past, present, and future American West are represented in literature, art, performance, and film, as well as the ways the American West circulates globally, this course is designed to teach students how to decipher the symbols and underlying meanings in the pop culture West, including its relationship to race and ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality, and national identity.