Global West, American Frontier

Global West, American Frontier PDF Author: David M. Wrobel
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 0826353711
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
This thoughtful examination of a century of travel writing about the American West overturns a variety of popular and academic stereotypes. Looking at both European and American travelers’ accounts of the West, from de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America to William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways, David Wrobel offers a counter narrative to the nation’s romantic entanglement with its western past and suggests the importance of some long-overlooked authors, lively and perceptive witnesses to our history who deserve new attention. Prior to the professionalization of academic disciplines, the reading public gained much of its knowledge about the world from travel writing. Travel writers found a wide and respectful audience for their reports on history, geography, and the natural world, in addition to reporting on aboriginal cultures before the advent of anthropology as a discipline. Although in recent decades western historians have paid little attention to travel writing, Wrobel demonstrates that this genre in fact offers an important and rich understanding of the American West—one that extends and complicates a simple reading of the West that promotes the notions of Manifest Destiny or American exceptionalism. Wrobel finds counterpoints to the mythic West of the nineteenth century in such varied accounts as George Catlin’s Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium (1852), Richard Francis Burton’s The City of the Saints (1861), and Mark Twain’s Following the Equator (1897), reminders of the messy and contradictory world that people navigated in the past much as they do in the present. His book is a testament to the instructive ways in which the best travel writers have represented the West.

Re-living the American Frontier

Re-living the American Frontier PDF Author: Nancy Reagin
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1609387902
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Who owns the West? -- Buffalo Bill and Karl May : the origins of German Western fandom -- A wall runs through it : western fans in the two Germanies -- Little houses on the prairie -- "And then the American Indians came over" : fan responses to indigenous resurgence and political change -- Indians into Confederates : historical fiction fans, reenactors, and living history.

Hollywood's West

Hollywood's West PDF Author: Peter C. Rollins
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813171806
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
American historians such as Frederick Jackson Turner have argued that the West has been the region that most clearly defines American democracy and the national ethos. Throughout the twentieth century, the "frontier thesis" influenced film and television producers who used the West as a backdrop for an array of dramatic explorations of America's history and the evolution of its culture and values. The common themes found in Westerns distinguish the genre as a quintessentially American form of dramatic art. In Hollywood's West, Peter C. Rollins, John E. O'Connor, and the nation's leading film scholars analyze popular conceptions of the frontier as a fundamental element of American history and culture. This volume examines classic Western films and programs that span nearly a century, from Cimarron (1931) to Turner Network Television's recent made-for-TV movies. Many of the films discussed here are considered among the greatest cinematic landmarks of all time. The essays highlight the ways in which Westerns have both shaped and reflected the dominant social and political concerns of their respective eras. While Cimarron challenged audiences with an innovative, complex narrative, other Westerns of the early sound era such as The Great Meadow (1931) frequently presented nostalgic visions of a simpler frontier era as a temporary diversion from the hardships of the Great Depression. Westerns of the 1950s reveal the profound uncertainty cast by the cold war, whereas later Westerns display heightened violence and cynicism, products of a society marred by wars, assassinations, riots, and political scandals. The volume concludes with a comprehensive filmography and an informative bibliography of scholarly writings on the Western genre. This collection will prove useful to film scholars, historians, and both devoted and casual fans of the Western genre. Hollywood's West makes a significant contribution to the understanding of both the historic American frontier and its innumerable popular representations.

The Way West

The Way West PDF Author: James A. Crutchfield
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780765304506
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
A seasoned historian assembles a remarkable cadre of authors, who reveal forgotten, true stories of the American frontier.

Chinese on the American Frontier

Chinese on the American Frontier PDF Author: Arif Dirlik
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description
A collection of articles dealing with the Chinese presence in the late 19th century American West, when anti-Chinese sentiment was at its peak. Major themes include racial hostility and violence, Chinese resistance to discrimination, life in Chinatowns (e.g., Chinese festivities and food, the absence of women, gambling, opium use, and prostitution), labor issues, and public attitudes.

Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past

Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past PDF Author: Peter Boag
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520949951
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Americans have long cherished romantic images of the frontier and its colorful cast of characters, where the cowboys are always rugged and the ladies always fragile. But in this book, Peter Boag opens an extraordinary window onto the real Old West. Delving into countless primary sources and surveying sexological and literary sources, Boag paints a vivid picture of a West where cross-dressing—for both men and women—was pervasive, and where easterners as well as Mexicans and even Indians could redefine their gender and sexual identities. Boag asks, why has this history been forgotten and erased? Citing a cultural moment at the turn of the twentieth century—when the frontier ended, the United States entered the modern era, and homosexuality was created as a category—Boag shows how the American people, and thus the American nation, were bequeathed an unambiguous heterosexual identity.

Growing Up with the Country

Growing Up with the Country PDF Author: Elliott West
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 9780826311559
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
This illustrated study shows how frontier life shaped children's character.

Roaring Camp

Roaring Camp PDF Author: Susan Lee Johnson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393320992
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
Historical insight is the alchemy that transforms the familiar story of the Gold Rush into something sparkling and new. The world of the Gold Rush that comes down to us through fiction and film--of unshaven men named Stumpy and Kentuck raising hell and panning for gold--is one of half-truths. In this brilliant work of social history, Susan Johnson enters the well-worked diggings of Gold Rush history and strikes a rich lode. She finds a dynamic social world in which the conventions of identity--ethnic, national, and sexual--were reshaped in surprising ways. She gives us the all-male households of the diggings, the mines where the men worked, and the fandango houses where they played. With a keen eye for character and story, Johnson restores the particular social world that issued in the Gold Rush myths we still cherish.

Winning the Wild West

Winning the Wild West PDF Author: Page Stegner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
Chronicles the history of the American frontier from 1800 to 1899, discussing how the expansion into the lands west of the Mississippi influenced the nation's formation.

Annie Oakley in the Wild West Extravaganza: American Frontier: Annie Oakley in the Wild West Extravaganza - Book #9

Annie Oakley in the Wild West Extravaganza: American Frontier: Annie Oakley in the Wild West Extravaganza - Book #9 PDF Author: Disney Book Group,
Publisher: Disney Press
ISBN: 9781562824914
Category : Sharpshooters
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description
When Annie Oakley joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West show as a sharpshooter not everyone is thrilled with her celebrity.