This collection of ground-breaking articles examines problems romance presents in the American Western. Looking a range of films, this book offers readers important and challenging insights into the complicated nature of love and the versatile frontier narrative that address key social, political, and ethical components of the Western genre.

This collection of ground-breaking articles examines problems romance presents in the American Western. Looking a range of films, this book offers readers important and challenging insights into the complicated nature of love and the versatile frontier narrative that address key social, political, and ethical components of the Western genre.

In Westerns, women transmit complicated cultural coding about the nature of westward expansionism, heroism, family life, manliness and American femininity. As the genre changes and matures, depictions of women have transitioned from traditional to more modern roles. Frontier Feminine charts these significant shifts in the Western's transmission of gender values and expectations and aims to expand the critical arena in which Western film is situated by acknowledging the importance of women in this genre.

Film and television scholars as well as readers interested in pop culture and queer studies will enjoy the insights of Reading the Bromance.

Focusing on twenty-first century Western films, including all major releases since the turn of the century, the essays in this volume cover a broad range of aesthetic and thematic aspects explored in these films, including gender and race. As diverse contributors focus on the individual subgenres of the traditional Western (the gunfighter, the Cavalry vs. Native American conflict, the role of women in Westerns, etc.), they share an understanding of the twenty-first century Western may be understood as a genre in itself. They argue that the films discussed here reimagine certain aspects of the more conventional Western and often reverse the ideology contained within them while employing certain forms and clichés that have become synonymous internationally with Westerns. The result is a contemporary sensibility that might be referred to as the postmodern Western.

Although Americans are no longer compelled to learn Greek and Latin, classical ideals remain embedded in American law and politics, philosophy, oratory, history and especially popular culture. In the Western genre, many film and television directors (such as John Ford, Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann and Sam Peckinpah) have drawn inspiration from antiquity, and the classical values and influences in their work have shaped our conceptions of the West for years. This thought-provoking, first-of-its-kind collection of essays celebrates, affirms and critiques the West's relationship with the classical world. Explored are films like Cheyenne Autumn, The Wild Bunch, The Track of the Cat, Trooper Hook, The Furies, Heaven's Gate, and Slow West, as well as serials like Gunsmoke and Lonesome Dove.

Ten years ago, Mark Anthony Neal’s New Black Man put forth a revolutionary model of Black masculinity for the twenty-first century—one that moved beyond patriarchy to embrace feminism and combat homophobia. Now, Neal’s book is more vital than ever, urging us to imagine a New Black Man whose strength resides in family, community, and diversity. Part memoir, part manifesto, this book celebrates the Black man of our times in all his vibrancy and virility. The tenth anniversary edition of this classic text includes a new foreword by Joan Morgan and a new introduction and postscript from Neal, which bring the issues in the book up to the present day.