ENGL 360 - Cowboys and Indians

FDR: HL
Credits: 3
Planned Offering: Winter 2014 and alternate years

Prerequisite: ENGL 299. A post-modern study of the “Cowboys and Indians” motif in American literature. Beginning with some stories of Native Americans, we examine how they were depicted in early American literature and history, leading up to “Indian removal” to the West, Custer’s Last Stand, and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. We then study the rise of the Western itself as a story of national origins, psychology, policy, and destiny focused in the figure of the cowboy. We trace some competing versions of “Cowboy and Indian” stories told since then as America changes and develops, through fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and film by many famous writers and moviemakers including contemporary Native American writers. The goal is to understand why the “Cowboy and Indian” trope is one of the most powerful and widely known stories in the world. Smout.