The American West is an elusive geographical area to define and put bounds on. At the hands of the violent nation building project of the United States, its frontiers have grown to encompass the area that is now known as Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. This list may be helpful to form an idea of the space, but may be contested. Though geographically amorphous, the imagery of the cowboy, endless desert, and saloons are concrete images that come up when thinking of this area. In a huge land area with an extensive history, however, how many stories are being buried under traditional Western imagery?
This display brings together voices across time and space, forming a mosaic of stories within The American West – highlighting experiences of Indigenous, Black and people of color – through fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Some selections were purchased using the A. Keith Endowment for American History Endowment.
If you are interested in further reading, use this endowment title as a keyword search in the library catalog. There are also further acquisitions from this endowment, so be sure to check back in a few months!
This curated display is the culmination of a UT Austin School of Information capstone project by Ana A. Rico, Spring 2024.
