ED98 - Re-creation of the Western Novel for a Weird World

ROOM 709 - Education

Sunday June 2, 2019 - 10:30 am to 11:20 am


American speculative fiction has risen in popularity with mainstream audiences as of late, with many writers and critics noting that it has subsequently lost its bite. Science fiction and fantasy especially were once areas where challenging themes and criticisms concerning American society could be rendered imaginatively. In a country progressing so quickly into cultural polem¬ics, the United States should be ripe for this kind of speculative representation and critique, yet modern fantasy and science fiction are seen as more comforting than challenging lately, unable to address the fears and schisms of recent days. So genre fiction is seen only as a mainstream comfort, having lost its roots in the creative critique of ethical concerns, and becoming difficult to justify in academic circles. My presentation proposes, however, that an imaginative genre has actually reemerged to take up the mantle of societal representation through speculative and distinctly American modes of fiction, and it is ready to be critically read by the student and scholar. It is the Weird Western that has reinvented itself in the last ten years, specifically in the medium of sequential art, and it is perfectly suited to personify the distinct religious and political movements of the present United States. Frontier themes of progress and territory, represented in over a century of American Western novels, are seen in a new light by modern readers and shown in a new life in the New Weird Western. Alienation and fear of a future askew of expectation, once portrayed in early 20th century Weird Fiction, strike new nerves in today’s world represented in the New Weird Western. So to what extent does this recreated genre subvert the categories it comprises, and how well do these attributes portray the current American cultural climate? But most importantly, if a genre has emerged that ties past and future cultural concerns together, how best can it be taught in an academic setting?


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