Westerns

Ranging from the novels of James Fenimore Cooper to Louis L'Amour, and from classic films like Stagecoach to spaghetti Westerns like A Fistful of Dollars, Mitchell shows how Westerns helped assuage a series of crises in American culture, including debates and nationalism, suffragetism, the White Slave Trade, liberal social policy, even Dr. Spock. At the same time, Westerns have addressed issues of masculinity by setting them against various backdrops: gender (women), maturation (sons), honor (violence, restraint), and self-transformation (the West itself). Mitchell argues, for instance, that…