Return of the Western

Refracting Genre, Representing Gender in the Twenty-First Century

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Edited by Sue Matheson

Type

Studies

Subject

Genre > Western

Keywords

western, 21st century

Publishing date

2025 (February 28, 2025)

Publisher

Edinburgh University Press

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 368 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-3995-2472-8

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Book Presentation:
Transmitting the crisis that Frederick Jackson Turner and Theodore Roosevelt feared when the frontier closed, the Western has returned to reveal a cultural watershed at work in twenty-first century America, revitalized with horror, terror and the peccant. Darkened and dystopic, contemporary Westerns point to a national bankruptcy, upending the notion that regenerative, civilizing impulses direct nation-building. Exploring films like Open Range (2003), Yahşi Batı (2010), The Keeping Room (2015), Little Woods (2018), and First Cow (2019), as well as television series like Justified (2010-1015), Longmire (2012-2017), Westworld (2016-2022), and Yellowstone (2020 –), this thought-provoking collection examines re-constituted masculinities, feminine re-fashioning and new directions in Western filmmaking. Covering a wide range of aesthetic and thematic concerns, Return of the Western: Refracting Genre, Representing Gender in the Twenty-First Century reminds us how deeply this versatile genre is grounded in the American psyche.

About the Author:
Sue Mathesonis Full Professor of English at the University College of the North in Manitoba, Canada. Her interests in film, culture, and literature may be found in more than sixty articles published in a wide range of books and scholarly journals. She is the editor of Love in Western Film and Television: Happy Hearts and Lonely Trails, A Fistful of Icons: Essays on Frontier Fixtures of the American Western, Women in the Western and The Good, the Bad and the Ancient: Essays on the Greco-Roman Influence in Westerns. She is the author of The Westerns and War Films of John Ford and The John Ford Encyclopedia.

Press Reviews:
Interpreting a range of recent Western and Western-adjacent media, Matheson and her contributors see a dark mirror of contemporary America―where old myths are swept away to reveal moral decay and cultural instability. These bold and often provocative essays are sure to spark debate about what the Western means today. ― Andrew Patrick Nelson, Chief Curator of Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West

See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press