Return of the Western: Refracting Genre, Representing Gender in the Twenty-First Century - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1399524739 ISBN 13: 9781399524735

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2026

Synopsis

Approaches 21st century Westerns with a specific focus on genre and gender

• Examines how the frontier ideal is redefined in contemporary Westerns
• Investigates how American masculinity is re-constituted in contemporary Westerns
• Analyses how American femininity is refashioned in contemporary Westerns
• Explores the significance of popular Neo-Westerns and mash-ups in the twenty-first century paradigm shifts in international Westerns

Transmitting the crisis that Frederick Jackson Turner and Theodore Roosevelt feared when the frontier closed, the Western has returned to reveal a cultural watershed at work in twenty-first century America, revitalized with horror, terror and the peccant. Darkened and dystopic, contemporary Westerns point to a national bankruptcy, upending the notion that regenerative, civilizing impulses direct nation-building. Exploring films like Open Range (2003), Yahşi Batı (2010), The Keeping Room (2015), Little Woods (2018), and First Cow (2019), as well as television series like Justified (2010-1015), Longmire (2012-2017), Westworld (2016-2022), and Yellowstone (2020 –), this thought-provoking collection examines re-constituted masculinities, feminine re-fashioning and new directions in Western filmmaking. Covering a wide range of aesthetic and thematic concerns, Return of the Western: Refracting Genre, Representing Gender in the Twenty-First Century reminds us how deeply this versatile genre is grounded in the American psyche.

About this title

About the Author

Sue Matheson is Full Professor of English at the University College of the North in Manitoba, Canada. Her interests in film, culture, and literature may be found in more than sixty articles published in a wide range of books and scholarly journals. She is the editor of Love in Western Film and Television: Happy Hearts and Lonely Trails, A Fistful of Icons: Essays on Frontier Fixtures of the American Western, Women in the Western and The Good, the Bad and the Ancient: Essays on the Greco-Roman Influence in Westerns. She is the author of The Westerns and War Films of John Ford and The John Ford Encyclopedia.

Edition details

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1399524739
• ISBN 13: 9781399524735
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368
• Editor: Sue Matheson