The "cowboys and Indians," sheriffs and outlaws, schoolmarms and barkeeps of Western films have wholly transformed our ideas about the reality of the American frontier." Westerns" is the first book to consider seriously the historical meanings and functions of the Western film genre. In "Westerns," leading scholars unpack the ways in which the form has embellished, mythologized, and erased past events. Contributors explore the mythic "Wild West" envisioned by "Buffalo Bill" Cody, the revisionist aims of recent westerns like "Posse, Lone Star," and "Dead Man," and how the genre addresses key issues of biography, authenticity, race, and representation. Included is an introduction by Janet Walker.

Janet Walker is Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Couching Resistance: Women, Film andPsychoanalytic Psychiatry and co-editor of Feminism andDocumentary.

Acknowledgements; Introduction: Westerns through History: Janet Walker; Part I Historical Metafiction: the 1990s Western; 1. Generic Subversion as Counterhistory: Mario Van Peebles's Posse: Alexandra Keller; 2. A Tale N/nobody Can Tell: the Return of a Repressed Western History in Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man: Melinda Szaloky; 3. The Burden of History and John Sayles's Lone Star: Tomas F. Sandoval, Jr.; Part II Historiophoty: Buffalo Bill, the Indians, and the Western Biopic; 4. Cowboy Wonderland, History, and Myth: It ain't all that different than real life: William G. Simon and Louise Spence; 5. Lifelike, Vivid, and Thrilling Pictures: Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Early Cinema: Joy S. Kasson; 6. Buffalo Bill (Himself): History and Memory in the Western Biopic: Corey K. Creekmur; Part III Film History: Widening Horizons; 7. How the West Was Sung: Kathryn Kalinak; 8. Drums Along the L.A. River: Scoring the Indian: Claudia Gorbman; 9. Beyond the Western Frontier: Reappropriations of the good badman in France, the French colonies, and contemporary Algeria: Peter J. Bloom; Part IV History through Narrative; 10. Captive Images in the Traumatic Western: The Searchers, Pursued, Once Upon a Time in the West and Lone Star: Janet Walker; Contributors; Index