Class Details
Rodeos and Raiders Caps: Exploring African American History through Popular Culture in the American West
What does it mean to be western in the context of the United States? This course will be an exploration of how Black identity and western Americana converge throughout the US and abroad, using selected examples from film, literature, popular music, and television. Students will consider how western regional identity can be interpreted outside stock images of cowboy boots and hats and reimagined as a race critical interpretation of liberation; individual rights; and social progress in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will also explore the concept of the “Yeehaw Agenda” and its role in remixing western tropes.
Enrollment
- Enrollment through your home campus
- OSLEP provides all required reading materials at no additional cost-NO books to buy!
Scholar
Kalenda Eaton
University of Oklahoma
Dr. Kalenda Eaton is the author of publications on African American literature and African American cultural history. Her first book, Womanism, Literature, and the Transformation of the Black Community, 1965-1980, has been frequently cited in scholarly research for over a decade. She has co-edited and co-written projects such as New Directions in Black Western Studies and “Teaching the Black American West,” and has a chapter titled “Black Women Writers Reclaiming Western Literature” in Gender and the American West. Currently, Eaton is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma and the Director of Oklahoma Research for the Black Homesteader Project sponsored by the National Park Service/US Department of the Interior.
Class Prep