ENGL-2120 Literature of the American West
(TEXTS & CONTEXTS) What is the American West as imagined and depicted by modern writers? Which mythologies and ideologies about the West (such as rugged individualism and the idea of the frontier) dating from the nineteenth century are still present and perpetuated by contemporary authors? How do contemporary writers reject or revise such mythologies? How do individualism, aridity, competition over natural resources, racial difference, religion, and environmentalism shape the way Americans imagine the West? How does the West-in its conflicts, diversity, and complexity-epitomize in a dramatic way what we imagine as deeply American? These are just some of the questions that we will attempt to answer as we interpret fiction, memoir, poems, and films by 20th- and 21st-century American westerners. Formerly a section of ENG-265.