What Is a Western?: Region, Genre, ImaginationThere’s “western,” and then there’s “Western”—and where history becomes myth is an evocative question, one of several questions posed by Josh Garrett-Davis in What Is a Western? Region, Genre, Imagination. Part cultural criticism, part history, and wholly entertaining, this series of essays on specific films, books, music, and other cultural texts brings a fresh perspective to long-studied topics. Under Garrett-Davis’s careful observation, cultural objects such as films and literature, art and artifacts, and icons and oddities occupy the terrain of where the West as region meets the Western genre. One crucial through line in the collection is the relationship of regional “western” works to genre “Western” works, and the ways those two categories cannot be cleanly distinguished—most work about the West is tinted by the Western genre, and Westerns depend on the region for their status and power. Garrett-Davis also seeks to answer the question “What is a Western now?” To do so, he brings the Western into dialogue with other frameworks of the “imagined West” such as Indigenous perspectives, the borderlands, and environmental thinking. The book’s mosaic of subject matter includes new perspectives on the classic musical film Oklahoma!, a consideration of Native activism at Standing Rock, and surprises like Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax. The book is influenced by the borderlands theory of Gloria Anzaldúa and the work of the indie rock band Calexico, as well as the author’s own discipline of western cultural history. Richly illustrated, primarily from the collection of the Autry Museum of the American West, Josh Garrett-Davis’s work is as visually interesting as it is enlightening, asking readers to consider the American West in new ways. |
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Contents
The Closing of the Far Eastern Frontier | |
Reconstruction Exposition 1935 | |
A Posse of Soul Westerns | |
On The Frisco | |
Stamps 1993 | |
On Smoke Signals as a Western | |
What a River Knows | |
A California Commonist | |
part five HOMESTEADS | |
On Joan Didion | |
Architects 2016 | |
All Our Values Are Shaken | |
On | |
part six FATAL ENVIRONMENTS | |
The Wonders of Leslie Marmon Silko | |
Horse Power | |
Standing Rock and the Museum | |
Gateway to the Borderlands | |
Aztlán Cowboys | |
A Triple Landscape | |
by Charles F Lummis | |
part four THREE TAKES ON OKLAHOMA | |
On Oklahoma | |
Im a Loner a Rebel | |
Hlavatý 1973 | |
Seuss in Boots | |
American Remains | |
Once upon a Place | |
1987 | |
Notes | |
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Abbey African American American West Angeles appeared artists Autry Museum became become borderlands California called century chapter characters Cheyenne City Collection comes cowboy critic cultural dance described earlier early essay example FIGURE film followed frontera frontier genre Grow Harp helped heroes High historian Hollywood horse identity imagined Indian Indigenous John Kansas land landscape Last later live look moved movie myth Native Native American never North noted novel Oklahoma once opened painting past perhaps Plains played poem poet political popular Prairie Progress published quote recording reflects region remains Rodeo seems sense Silko song Southwest spirit stars story tradition United University Press Western Western genre Wild Woody Woody Guthrie writing wrote York
Bibliographic information
| Title | What Is a Western?: Region, Genre, Imagination |
| Author | Josh Garrett-Davis |
| Contributor | Patricia Nelson Limerick |
| Publisher | University of Oklahoma Press, 2019 |
| ISBN | 0806165561, 9780806165561 |
| Length | 192 pages |
| Subjects | › › › Antiques & Collectibles / Americana Art / Popular Culture History / United States / State & Local / West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY) Literary Collections / Essays Literary Criticism / Native American Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism Performing Arts / Theater / Broadway & Musicals |
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