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Home , Acid Western, Kelly Reichardt, Larry McMurtry, Man of the West, Meek Cutoff, Michael Cimino

AND THE WILD WEST Professor Wise — University of North — Spring 2017

Roy Rogers filming in Lone Pine, , 1938

This class provides a rigorous introduction to the critical study of films from an historical perspective. We will study how the ’s art and performance have helped create and subvert popular understandings of western history, and how the genre’s consistent popularity attests to its flexibility in interpreting complex historical relationships between freedom, violence, race, gender, and social inequality. So too, we will explore how imaginations of the American West as a “wild” place have opened possibilities for understanding nonhuman actors such as animals, the weather, or the earth itself as significant agents in historical transformations, a characteristic of western films that can powerfully disturb and naturalize viewers’ cultural and political expectations. Students will learn to uncover, identify, and analyze from a critical perspective the meta-narratives of western history that have framed these historical visions in both past and present.

PROFESSOR MICHAEL D. WISE COURSE LOCATION: Wooten Hall 310 EMAIL: [email protected] TIME: T/R 2:00-3:20 PM OFFICE: Wooten Hall 259 HOURS: T/R 3:30-4:30 PM

Required Text (available for purchase in the bookstore)

Philip Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2004).

Grading Criteria Written Discussion Responses 20% (4 at 5% each) A=90-100% Comparative Review Essays 45% (3 at 15% each) B=80-89% Five-Minute Film Review 15% C=70-79% Weekly Film Journal 20% D=60-69% 100% F <60% Blackboard Lecture notes, reading assignments, and other electronic course materials will be available as PDF files on the Blackboard Learn website.

Attendance and Participation Students are expected to attend all class sessions and to complete reading assignments and other assigned coursework before class. Because the collaborative format of this class requires that we all experience and participate together in our screenings and discussions, I will enforce a strict attendance policy. Only three absences are permitted, and four or more absences will result in an F.

Class Format Class sessions will consist of a mixture of lecture and discussion along with film screenings. Under these circumstances, a glowing laptop or smartphone screen is distracting to your peers, so please refrain from using electronic devices during class. Take notes using pen and paper.

Assignments There are four major categories of assignments in this course. First, at the beginning of each of four formal class discussions, students will write a short, in-class response to that day’s reading assignment. These will be graded and will constitute 20% of the final course grade. Students will also write three different 4-6 page comparative review essays, each structured around the first three units of the course. Each of these essays will constitute 15% of the final course grade. Students are also required to view one additional film outside of class, chosen from the attached list, and to present a short 5-minute review of the film in class. This class presentation will be graded on quality and clarity and will constitute 15% of the final grade. In lieu of a final exam, students will hand in their weekly film journals, which constitute the final 20% of the overall grade. More detail will be provided in class.

PART ONE Classic Westerns

Week 1: Western Beginnings January 19 Course Introduction Film: Cecil B. DeMille, The Squaw Man (1914).

January 21 Read: Phil Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places, 3-14. -cont. The Squaw Man

Week 2: Whiteness and the Studio Ranch January 24 Film: Stuart Heisler, Dallas (1950). Read: *Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893).

January 26 Read: *David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Press, 2001), 1-6. -cont. Dallas

Week 3: Native Outbreak January 31 Film: , (1956). Read: Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places, 15-51.

February 2 Read: Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places, 52-108. -cont. The Searchers

Week 4: Telling Western Stories February 7 Discussion #1 Read: *Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller,” in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Hannah Arendt (New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1968 [1936]). *Larry McMurtry, “Place, and the Memories of Place,” in Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001).

February 9 5-Minute Film Reviews (Group 1)

PART TWO Violence and Freedom

Week 5: Revisionist Westerns February 14 *** DUE: Comparative Review Essay #1 Film: Sergio Leone, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

February 16 Read: *Richard Maxwell Brown, “Violence,” in Milner, O’Connor, and Sandweiss, eds., The Oxford History of the American West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 392-425. -cont. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Week 6: Revising the February 21 Film: , Django Unchained (2012) Read: *Walter Johnson, “Acts of Sale,” in Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press): 163-188.

February 22 (extra credit opportunity): UNT Black History Month Lecture – 4PM – Location TBD “From the General Strike of Slaves to Black Lives Matter,” Prof. David Roediger, Kansas University

February 23 Read: Three reviews, write down their titles and the publication in which they appeared, and the name of each reviewer, and one or more of your favorite sentences from each review. -cont. Django Unchained

Week 7: The Awkwardness of Guns February 28 Film: , (1995) Read: *Richard Slotkin, Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), excerpts TBD.

March 2 Read: *Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Acid Western,” Reader, June 26, 1996. -cont. Dead Man

Week 8: Reconsidering Violence and Western Narratives 7 Discussion #2 Read: *Slavoj Zizek, On Violence: Six Reflections (New York: Picador, 2008), excerpts TBD.

March 9 5-Minute Film Reviews (Group 2) PART THREE Sex, Family, and the Settler Society

Week 9: The View from Behind a Bonnet March 21 Film: Kelly Reichardt, Meek’s Cutoff (2011). Read: *Lydia Allen Rudd, “Notes by the Wayside en route to , 1852,” in Lillian Schlissel, ed. Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey (New York: Shocken Books, 2004),187-198.

March 23 *** DUE: Comparative Review Essay #2 Read: *A.O Scott, “Out on the Frontier, Bringing All that Baggage With Them,” New York Times, April 7, 2011. -cont. Meek’s Cutoff

Week 10: The Gayness of Manly Work March 28 Film: , (2005). Read: *Richard White, “‘Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?’” in Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996).

March 30 Read: *Richard White, “Brokeback Mountain: A Western,” : The Magazine of Western History 56:2 (Summer 2006): 65-66. -cont. Brokeback Mountain

Week 11: Multigenerational Western History April 4 Film: John Sayles, Lone Star (1996). Read: *José E. Limón, “Tex-Sex-Mex: American Identities, Lone Stars, and the Politics of Racialized Sexuality,” American Literary History, 9:3 (1997): 598-616.

April 6 (Prof. Wise will be attending a conference; one of his graduate students will lead class) Read: *Anna Adams, “Forget the Alamo: Thinking About History in John Sayles’ Lone Star,” History Teacher, 40:3 (2007): 339-347. -cont. Lone Star

Week 12: The Domestic Western April 11 Discussion #3 Read: *Michael Wise, “ and the Revival of Western Film,” April 29, 2016, SRM.

April 13 5-Minute Film Reviews (Group 3) PART FOUR Western Pasts in the Present and Future

Week 13: Memory, Selfhood, Community Belonging April 18 *** DUE: Comparative Review Essay #3 Film: Alex Smith and Andrew Smith, Winter in the Blood (2013) Read: *James Welch, Winter in the Blood, get started.

April 20 Read: *James Welch, Winter in the Blood, skim and finish. -cont. Winter in the Blood (film)

Week 14: Western Fantasies and Cynical Amusements April 25 Film: Michael Crichton, (1973) Read: *Brian Welesko, “Interstitial Reality: Service Tunnels, Steam Pipes, and Glitches in Constructed Worlds,” Journal of Popular Culture, 47:1 (2014): 3-20.

April 27 Film: , Westworld, Season 1, Episode 1: “” (2016) -cont. Westworld (1973)

Week 15: The Neoliberal Western May 2 Game: Red Dead Redemption (2010) Read: Michel Foucault, “American neo-liberalism (I). Its context,” 14 March 1979, in The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979, trans. Graham Burchell, 2008 (: Picador, 2010), 215-238.

May 4 **Last Day of Class** Discussion #4 No Reading—bring all your notes

Finals Week Weekly Film Journals due by email ([email protected]) or by hard copy in my mail box (Wooten Hall 225) no later than Thursday, May 11th at 3:30 PM.

Film Reviews

Group 1 John Ford, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Howard Bretherton, Hop-Along Cassidy (1935) (1962) Delmer Daves, 3:10 to Yuma (1957) Howard Hawks, Red River (1948) John Sturges, (1960) , Shane (1953) , Man of the West (1958) Fred Zinneman, (1952) Arthur Rosson, Hidden Gold (1932) , The Virginian (1929) , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Wesley Ruggles, Cimarron (1931) (1948)

Group 2 , The (1969) Michael Cimino, Heaven’s Gate (1980)

Richard Harris, (1970) , Dances with Wolves (1990)

Dennis Hopper, Easy Rider (1969) , McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

Clint Eastwood, High Plains Drifter (1973) , (1992)

Arthur Penn, The Missouri Breaks (1976) Alejandro G. Iñárritu, The Revenant (2015)

Clint Eastwood, (1976) Terence Malick, Badlands (1973)

Group 3 Martin Ritt, Hud (1963) , (1971) , August: Osage County (2013) F. Gary Gray, Straight Outta Compton (2015) , Nebraska (2013) Chris Eyre, Smoke Signals (1998) Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men (2007) Frank Perry, Rancho Deluxe (1975)

Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood Jean-Marc Vallée, Wild (2014) (2007) Kelly Reichardt, Certain Women (2016) Robert Eggers, The Witch (2015)