This seminar charts twentieth- and twenty-first century revisions of the Western genre through a survey of Hollywood and independent film, theatre, music, experimental video and performance art, photography, painting, graphic novels, literary fiction, and life writing. Artists have repurposed the iconography of the frontier landscape, “Cowboys and Indians,” trusty steeds, sheriffs, shootouts, and beautiful women (with tragic pasts) to comment on enduring issues in American society, including histories of violence, cultural conflict, and political upheaval. The course reads together a number of high-profile queer and postcolonial appropriations, expressionist deconstructions, and sardonic cash-ins from artists such as Robert Altman, Matthew Barney, Chester Brown, Joel and Ethan Coen, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Sergio Leone, Marie Losier, Sterlin Harjo, Cormac McCarthy, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Sam Shepard, Quentin Tarantino, Andy Warhol, and Chloé Zhao.