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“No other nation has taken a time and place from its past and produced a construct of the imagination equal to America’s creation of the West. And having created it, America promptly and successfully exported it” (Murdoch, David Hamilton. The American West: Creation of a Myth).
The American West has been one of the most powerful concepts for the construction of American identities. Dreams, phantasies and images of the American West as an area of freedom, individualism and progress have been shared by people inside the U.S. as well as abroad, and the process of “going West” has become synonymous with crossing borders and boundaries, geographical as well as metaphorical. This seminar will look at (literary) representations of the American West and introduce students to the imaginary quality of the West as well as to important foundational myths connected to the West, like frontier, Westward Expansion, exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny. Students will be introduced to selected theoretical concepts from critical regionalism and Gender Studies. Our readings will range from excerpts from Lewis and Clark’s journal about their expedition to map the area West of the Mississippi and Bret Harte’s “The Luck of Roaring Camp” to contemporary fictionalizations of the West as, for example, Claire Vaye Watkin’s short story “Diggings” and Pete Dexter’s novel Deadwood, which we will discuss in connection with the HBO TV series Deadwood. Our textual analyses will focus on recurring motifs and themes in these texts and will pay attention to the respective social, historical, political and cultural contexts.
Please buy Pete Dexter’s novel Deadwood in the following edition:
Dexter, Pete. Deadwood. New York: Vintage, 2005. [ISBN: 9781400079711]
The shorter texts and a selection of secondary material will be made available in form of a reader.
Requirements: Class participation, including reading assignments and discussion, a short presentation in class and a seminar paper. |
