Although Americans are no longer compelled to learn Greek and Latin, the classical ideals embedded into the U.S. have not altered. There is still a constant allusion to the Greek and Roman Greats in American law and politics, philosophy, oratory, history and play. These republican values are especially relevant in popular culture. Aristotle, Homer, Cicero and Cato are all alive and well in Hollywood. Outstanding film and television directors (such as John Ford, Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann and Sam Peckinpah) drew inspiration from antiquity when creating the Wild West, and the Graeco-Roman values and influences in their work have shaped our conceptions of the West for years. This thought-provoking, first-of-its-kind collection of essays celebrates, affirms and critiques the West's relationship with the classical world. Explored are films like Cheyenne Autumn, The Wild Bunch, The Track of the Cat, Trooper Hook, Hellgate, The Furies, Heaven's Gate, and Slow West, as well as serials like Gunsmoke and Lonesome Dove.

Whether on the big screen or small, films featuring the American Civil War are among the most classic and controversial in motion picture history. From D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) to Free State of Jones (2016), the war has provided the setting, ideologies, and character archetypes for cinematic narratives of morality, race, gender, and nation, as well as serving as historical education for a century of Americans. In The American Civil War on Film and TV: Blue and Gray in Black and White and Color, Douglas Brode, Shea T. Brode, and Cynthia J. Miller bring together nineteen essays by a diverse array of scholars across the disciplines to explore these issues. The essays included here span a wide range of films, from the silent era to the present day, including Buster Keaton's The General (1926), Red Badge of Courage (1951), Glory (1989), Gettysburg (1993), and Cold Mountain (2003), as well as television mini-series The Blue and The Gray (1982) and John Jakes' acclaimed North and South trilogy (1985-86). As an accessible volume to dedicated to a critical conversation about the Civil War on film, The American Civil War on Film and TV will appeal to not only to scholars of film, military history, American history, and cultural history, but to fans of war films and period films, as well.

After a century of reinvention and reinterpretation, Western movies continue to contribute to the cultural understanding of the United States. Western archetypes remain important emblems of the American experience, relating a complex and coded narrative about heroism and morality, masculinity and femininity, westward expansion and technological progress, and assimilation and settlement. In this collection of new essays, 21 contributors from around the globe examine the "cowboy cool" iconography of film and television Westerns-from bounty hunters in buckskin jackets to the seedy saloons and lonely deserts.

As the Western matured, women's roles became more complex and modern transmitting a subtle cultural coding about the nature of westward expansionism, heroism, family life, manliness and American femininity. In Women in the Western, a range of international scholars explores the changing roles of women in the genre through case studies of classic films like Broken Arrow (1950) and The Searchers (1956), and contemporary films and TV series like Wind River (2017) and Justified (2010 15). Considering traditional and intertextual representations of women in the Western, the book charts the significant shifts in Hollywood's transmission of gender values and expectations.

The winner of four Academy Awards for directing, John Ford is considered by many to be America’s greatest native-born director. Ford helmed some of the most memorable films in American cinema, including The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and The Quiet Man, as well as such iconic westerns as Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In The John Ford Encyclopedia, Sue Matheson provides readers with detailed information about the acclaimed director’s films, from the silent era to the 1960s. In more than 400 entries, this volume covers not only the films Ford directed and produced, but the studios for which he worked; his preferred shooting sites; his WWII documentaries; and the men and women with whom he collaborated including actors, screenwriters, technicians, and stuntmen. Encompassing the entire range of the director’s career—from his start in early cinema to his frequent work with national treasure John Wayne—this is a comprehensive overview of one of the most highly regarded filmmakers in history. The John Ford Encyclopedia will be of interest to professors, students, and the many fans of the director’s work.

Responsible for some of the greatest films of the 20th century-The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and The Quiet Man among others-John Ford was best known for motion pictures that defined the American West and the face of wartime military. A Hollywood celebrity, Ford lived his life against the background that Twentieth Century-Fox fashioned for him. As he did, the facts of his life merged with-and became inseparable from-his multifaceted legend, fostered by Hollywood's studio culture and his own imagination. In The Westerns and War Films of John Ford Sue Matheson offers an engaging look at one of America's greatest directors and the two genres of films that solidified his reputation. Drawing on previously unreleased material, this volume explores the man, the filmmaker, the veteran, and the legend-and the ways in which all of those roles shaped Ford's view of America, national character, and his creative output. Among the films discussed here in depth are Ford's early productions, such as The Iron Horse and Drums along the Mohawk, his military films, such as Submarine Patrol, The Battle of Midway, and They Were Expendable, and his Westerns, including Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Searchers, and Cheyenne Autumn. Ford imbued many of his creations with a point of view that represented his ideals, and the films discussed here illustrate their director's distinct vision of American life on the frontier and in service of the country. That vision-Ford's idealization of the American Character-would, in turn, shape the worldview of several generations. The Westerns and War Films of John Ford will appeal to critics and scholars, but also to any fan of this iconic filmmaker's work.

Whether on the big screen or small, films featuring the American Civil War are among the most classic and controversial in motion picture history. From D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) to Free State of Jones (2016), the war has provided the setting, ideologies, and character archetypes for cinematic narratives of morality, race, gender, and nation, as well as serving as historical education for a century of Americans. In The American Civil War on Film and TV: Blue and Gray in Black and White and Color, Douglas Brode, Shea T. Brode, and Cynthia J. Miller bring together nineteen essays by a diverse array of scholars across the disciplines to explore these issues. The essays included here span a wide range of films, from the silent era to the present day, including Buster Keaton's The General (1926), Red Badge of Courage (1951), Glory (1989), Gettysburg (1993), and Cold Mountain (2003), as well as television mini-series The Blue and The Gray (1982) and John Jakes' acclaimed North and South trilogy (1985-86). As an accessible volume to dedicated to a critical conversation about the Civil War on film, The American Civil War on Film and TV will appeal to not only to scholars of film, military history, American history, and cultural history, but to fans of war films and period films, as well.

In Westerns, women transmit complicated cultural coding about the nature of westward expansionism, heroism, family life, manliness and American femininity. As the genre changes and matures, depictions of women have transitioned from traditional to more modern roles. Frontier Feminine charts these significant shifts in the Western's transmission of gender values and expectations and aims to expand the critical arena in which Western film is situated by acknowledging the importance of women in this genre.

Western culture may have enshrined North as a touchstone by which all other directions are defined, but the North is not one but a number of Netherlands; like all frontiers, the North is, in its essence, imaginative, magicked out of ice and snow, muskeg and tundra. Storytelling is its generative principle, the activity through which the North and Northerners call themselves into being.In essays on topics ranging from the Aboriginal justice system in Canada to the search for the Northwest Passage to the cultural paradigms of medieval Iceland, The Fictional North examines stereotypes and iconic images of the North, the relationship of North to South, and ethnographic and fictional models of "Northerness." This diversity of subjects and methodologies not only introduces readers to the diversity found above the 53rd Parallel, but also reflects the catholicity of the North itself. Interdisciplinary and timely, The Fictional North offers insights into the North's past as well as its present to those interested in circumpolar issues and the areas of culture, literature, history, film, sociology, and education.