INQ-271 | Cowboys and Indians

Full Title: Cowboys and Indians around the World

Topic Description:

This course will examine how the American West has been portrayed at home and in other countries to learn what this tells us about the function of cultural representations. We will use history, fiction, and film to explore how individuals have used the American West to construct new identities and to critique their own culture. This class will investigate the nature of those myths and explore how they were shaped and what effect they had on our own and other cultures. Myths of the American West have been created by other countries as well. The course will explore how some groups of Europeans adopted Indian roles and lifestyles. Both European and Asian cinema have found the Western a fertile genre for both critiques of the United States and expressions of their own archetypes. The course will relate these films to the historical circumstances that produced them.

Counts as Global? No

Topic Approved: December 2011