A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West

Copyright © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West

Editor(s): Nicolas S. Witschi

Published Online: 27 MAY 2011 03:29AM EST

Print ISBN: 9781405187336

Online ISBN: 9781444396591

DOI: 10.1002/9781444396591

About this Book

Product Information

About The Product

A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West presents a series of essays that explore the historic and contemporary cultural expressions rooted in America's western states.

  • Offers a comprehensive approach to the wide range of cultural expressions originating in the west
  • Focuses on the intersections, complexities, and challenges found within and between the different historical and cultural groups that define the west's various distinctive regions
  • Addresses traditionally familiar icons and ideas about the west (such as cowboys, wide-open spaces, and violence) and their intersections with urbanization and other regional complexities
  • Features essays written by many of the leading scholars in western American cultural studies

Table of contents

    1. You have free access to this content
      Front Matter (pages i–xi)

  2. Part I: Introduction

    1. Chapter 1

      Imagining the West (pages 1–10)

      Nicolas S. Witschi

  3. Part II: Regions and Histories

    1. Chapter 2

      Exploration, Trading, Trapping, Travel, and Early Fiction, 1780–1850 (pages 11–28)

      Edward Watts

    2. Chapter 3

      Worlds of Wonder and Ambition: Gold Rush California and the Culture of Mining Bonanzas in the North American West (pages 29–47)

      Peter J. Blodgett

    3. Chapter 4

      The Literate West of Nineteenth-Century Periodicals (pages 48–62)

      Tara Penry

    4. Chapter 5

      A History of American Women's Western Books, 1833–1928 (pages 63–80)

      Nina Baym

    5. Chapter 6

      Literary Cultures of the American Southwest (pages 81–97)

      Daniel Worden

    6. Chapter 7

      Literary Cartography of the Great Plains (pages 98–114)

      Susan Naramore Maher

    7. Chapter 8

      The Literary Northern Rockies as The Last Best Place (pages 115–129)

      O. Alan Weltzien

    8. Chapter 9

      North by Northwest: The Last Frontier of Western Literature (pages 130–144)

      Eric Heyne

    9. Chapter 10

      Chronotopes of the Asian American West (pages 145–160)

      Hsuan L. Hsu

    10. Chapter 11

      African American Literature and Culture and the American West (pages 161–176)

      Michael K. Johnson

    11. Chapter 12

      Mythical Frontiers: Manifest Destiny, Aztlán, and the Cosmic Race (pages 177–190)

      John L. Escobedo

    12. Chapter 13

      Writing the Indigenous West (pages 191–212)

      Kathleen Washburn

    13. Chapter 14

      Framing Class in the Rural West: Cowboys, Double-Wides, and McMansions (pages 213–228)

      Nancy Cook

    14. Chapter 15

      Postcolonial West (pages 229–243)

      Alex Hunt

    15. Chapter 16

      New West, Urban and Suburban Spaces, Postwest (pages 244–260)

      Krista Comer

  4. Part III: Varieties and Forms

    1. Chapter 17

      What we talk about when we talk about Western Art (pages 261–280)

      Brian W. Dippie

    2. Chapter 18

      “All Hat and No Cattle”: Romance, Realism, and Late Nineteenth-Century Western American Fiction (pages 281–296)

      Gary Scharnhorst

    3. Chapter 19

      The Coyote Nature of Cowboy Poetry (pages 297–315)

      Barbara Barney Nelson

    4. Chapter 20

      “The Wind Blew them Away”: Folksinging the West, 1880–1930 (pages 316–335)

      David Fenimore

    5. Chapter 21

      Autobiography (pages 336–352)

      Gioia Woods

    6. Chapter 22

      Housing the American West: Western Women's Literature, Early Twentieth Century and Beyond (pages 353–366)

      Cathryn Halverson

    7. Chapter 23

      The Apple doesn't fall Far from the Tree: Western American Literature and Environmental Literary Criticism (pages 367–379)

      Hal Crimmel

    8. Chapter 24

      Detective Fiction (pages 380–394)

      Nicolas S. Witschi

    9. Chapter 25

      The American Western Film (pages 395–408)

      Corey K. Creekmur

    10. Chapter 26

      Post-Western Cinema (pages 409–424)

      Neil Campbell

  5. Part IV: Issues, Themes, Case Studies

    1. Chapter 27

      America Unscripted: Performing the Wild West (pages 425–442)

      Jefferson D. Slagle

    2. Chapter 28

      Revising Public Memory in the American West: Native American Performance in the Ramona Outdoor Play (pages 443–461)

      Karen E. Ramirez

    3. Chapter 29

      Omnimedia Marketing: The Case of The Lone Ranger (pages 462–482)

      Chadwick Allen

    4. Chapter 30

      The Nuclear Southwest (pages 483–498)

      Audrey Goodman

    5. Chapter 31

      Ranging over Stegner's Arid West: Mobility as Adaptive Strategy (pages 499–513)

      Bonney MacDonald

    6. Chapter 32

      The Global West: Temporality, Spatial Politics, and Literary Production (pages 514–527)

      Susan Kollin

    7. Chapter 33

      Tumbling Dice: The Problem of Las Vegas (pages 528–545)

      Stephen Tatum and Nathaniel Lewis

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      Index (pages 547–563)

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