Official Course Description

Despite the American West’s reputation as a place where “men can be men,” people of all genders have participated in creating the West’s myths as well as its realities. Through examining diverse stories of the West, this course will explore its status as an idea as much as a region as well as consider how it functioned as a site of conquest and a borderland or “contact zone” where gender, racial, ethnic, and sexual identities were destabilized and negotiated. Focusing on writers who identified as women or who inhabited or intersected with that category, we will also analyze how people used literature to represent their relationship to the landscape, and we will consider the perspectives of newcomers as well as of those who call the region not “the West” but simply “home.”

“Student” Course Description

This course examines and analyzes discrimination in the American West, focusing on gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. We strictly use texts that were written by women, as gender is the primary focus in this course. Being an English course, it’s necessary for those who take it to understand the importance of literature as both an outlet and a document to the women whose pieces we will read. Each piece we read is either based on a true story, or is a primary document from the source herself. Learning to do close reading of these texts is the most important skill you will learn as a student of literature, but learning the realities of our past and how to change from then is an important skill to learn as a person in society.