The American West: Competing Visions

by Karen R. Jones, John Wills

Overview

The American West used to be a story of gunfights, glory, wagon trails, and linear progress. Historians such as Frederick Jackson Turner and Hollywood movies such as Stagecoach (1939) and Shane (1953) cast the trans-Mississippi region as a frontier of epic proportions where 'savagery' met 'civilization' and boys became men.During the late 1980s, this old way of seeing the West came under heavy fire. Scholars such as Patricia Nelson Limerick and Richard White forged a fresh story of the region, a new vision of the West, based around the conquest of peoples and landscapes.The American West: Competing Visions explores the bipolar world of Turner's Old West and Limerick's New West and reveals the values and ambiguities associated with both historical traditions. Sections on Lewis and Clark, the frontier and the cowboy sit alongside work on Indian genocide and women's trail diaries. Images of the region as seen through the arcade Western, Hollywood film and Disney theme parks confirm the West as a sym

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780748622511
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	03/21/2009
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Karen Jones is Director of American Studies and Lecturer in American History at the University of Kent.

John Wills is Senior Lecturer in American History and American Studies at the University of Kent.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations; Introduction; Part One: Old West; 1. Lewis and Clark: Mapping the West; 2. Frontier Germ Theory; 3. 'The Gun that Won the West'; 4. Cowboy Presidents and the Political Branding of the American West; Part Two: New West; 5. Women in the West: The Trailblazer and the Homesteader; 6. Women in the West: The 'Indian Princess' and the 'Lady Wildcat'; 7. The Wild West Defiled: The American Indian, Genocide and the Sand Creek Massacre; 8. The Thirsty West: Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam and Las Vegas; Part Three: Recreating the West; 9. The Western Renaissance: Brokeback Mountain and the Return of Jesse James; 10. The Arcade Western; 11. Turn here for 'The Sunny Side of the Atom': Tourism, the Bomb and Popular Culture in the Nuclear West; 12. Re-creation and the Theme Park West; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

This sprightly written book has plenty of engaging and illuminating moments.

Journal of American History - Elliott Ness

Many viewpoints have been deconstructed in this text, producing a myriad of images, some forceful, some unusual, some creative and all provocative and lively [...] Whether a big picture emerges here is debatable; but so is the notion that there should be a bigger picture. The objective is to learn about competing images.

Margaret Walsh