ENGL 206: Storytelling: Westerns

Course Description

This course will study a specific genre, westerns, traditionally made up of stories of cowboys and conquest but more recently an expansive, often radical, mode of expression. We will study a diverse range of texts that can all be described as westerns to help us understand how cultural values are shaped by and can be challenged by imaginative texts, to understand how a diverse range of authors and audiences have used a familiar genre to tell their unique stories, and to understand how literary language works to create thematic meaning and emotional effects. This course will introduce students to the study of literature and the tools of literary analysis through the lens of storytelling, in other words: the way we make meaning about our individual and collective experiences through the act of telling stories. (YR).