The Western and Political Thought

Damien K. Picariello is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina Sumter, USA. He is also the author of Politics in Gotham: The Batman Universe and Political Thought (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) and The Politics of Horror (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

Introduction:Thus in the beginning all the World was America.- Part I: Foundings, Law, Lawlessness, and John Ford.- Chapter 1. Virtue, Tyranny, and Political Rule in David Milch's Deadwood.- Chapter 2. Print the Legend: Violence, Virtue, and the Social Contract in Hang 'Em High and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.- Chapter 3. John Ford's Legendary Western Ambiguity and White Settler Colonialism.- Chapter 4. This is Our Town': Political Community in High Noon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.- Part II: The Western as Mirror and Teacher.- Chapter 5. Simmering Madness: Mob Justice and The Ox-Bow Incident.- Chapter 6. The Loner on the 'Frontier of Unfilled Hopes and Unfilled Threats': Serling's Old West in Kennedy's New Frontier.- Chapter 7. No Man's Land: Film Cycles, Femininity, and Female Empowerment in the Modern Western.- Chapter 8. Horse Operas Talk Back: History, Memory, and the Black Cowboy Performing.- Chapter 9. Aristophanes in Spurs: Blazing Saddles, Attic Comedy, HBO, and the Politics of Democratic Laughter.- Part III: The Adaptable, International West.- Chapter 10. Towards Assimilationist Politics on the Filmic Frontier: Mid-Twentieth Century Westerns in Australia.- Chapter 11.Ideological Uses of the Western in Film Depictions of Post-War Polish Borderlands.- Chapter 12.Magnificent Strangers: Violence and Difference.