Join us in a lively, spirited exploration of the historic transformation of the American Western, as the genre shifted from celebration to critique. Revisionist Westerns emerged in the shadow of Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and increasing skepticism toward institutional authority and national mythmaking, recasting the frontier not as destiny but as violence seen from the other side. Revisionist Westerns take the myths of cowboys, conquest, and “civilization” and turn them inside out. Violence is no longer just a climactic gunfight or dramatic rupture—it becomes the structure holding the world together, shaping towns, laws, and survival itself, long before any showdown ever takes place.
We begin with E. L. Doctorow’s Welcome to Hard Times, a grim frontier parable where survival replaces heroism and order is always temporary. Next is Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man, a sweeping counter-history of the West told through irony and shifting memory. We close with Theodore Victor Olsen’s Arrow in the Sun, confronting settler colonial violence and the collapse of Western heroic myth.
2.10.: E.L. Doctorow, Welcome to Hard Times (1960: film, 1967)
6.11.: Thomas Berger, Little Big Man (1964: novel, 1970)
4.12.: Theodore Victor Olsen, Arrow in the Sun (1970: Film: Soldier Blue)