The New American West in Literature and the Arts

The story of the American West is that of a journey. It is the story of a movement, of a geographical and human transition, of the delineation of a route that would soon become a rooted myth. The story of the American West has similarly journeyed across boundaries, in a two-way movement, sometimes feeding the idea of that myth, sometimes challenging it. This collection of essays relates to the notion of the traveling essence of the myth of the American West from different geographical and disciplinary standpoints. The volume originates in Europe, in Spain, where the myth traveled, was received, assimilated, and re-presented. It intends to travel back to the West, in a two-way cross-cultural journey, which will hopefully contribute to the delineation of the New-always self-renewing-American West. It includes the work of authors of both sides of the Atlantic ocean who propose a cross-cultural, transdisciplinary dialogue upon the idea, the geography and the representation of the American West.

Amaia Ibarraran-Bigalondo is a lecturer at the University of the Basque Country, where she teaches contemporary North American Literature and Culture. Her research has been focused on the study of Chicana Literature and Culture and has published several articles in international journals. She is a member of the REWEST research group (Research Group in Western American Literature). She is author of Mexican American Women, Dress and Gender: Pachuchas, Chicanas, Cholas (2019) and editor of The Neglected West (2012), Transcontinental Reflections on the American West: Words, Images, Sounds beyond Borders (2015).

- Angel Chaparro Sainz, Best Ice Cream West of the Mississippi - Introduction, Amaia Ibarraran-Bigalondo, (A)Traveling West - Nancy S. Cook, Trends in Western American Studies, or the Road as Seen from the Borrow Pit Part One. The West Travels Across Myths - Other Western Spaces - Cristina Garrigós, Forging the Future, Forgetting the Human, or What the Los Angeles Freeways Erased: Oblivion in Helena María Viramontes's Their Dogs Came with Them - Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz, Diasporic Native Americans in Sherman Alexie's Short Stories: Roots and Routes in Urban Contexts - Gorka Braceras-Martínez, Nature, Environment and Direct Action in the American West: Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang - Other Western Voices - Megan Riley McGilchrist, Mary Hallock Foote's Reimagining of the Woman's West - Paula Barba-Guerrero, Crossing Time, Crossing Space: Traumatic Memory in Octavia Butler's Kindred Part Two. The West Travels Across Boundaries 2.1. Continental Journeys - Neil Campbell, "New Blood Time Now:" The American West if Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings - Georgia Simakou, Behind the Mask of Zorro: the Americanization of the Legend and Isabel Allende's Anticolonial Revision 2.2. Inter-continental Journeys - Matthew Cissell, Pynchon Stretches West to East in Against the Day - Fiorenzo Iuliano, No Country for Young Men. Geographies of Anxiety in My Own Private Idaho - Esra Coker Korpez, Exit West to a Borderless Frontier 2.3. Trans-continental Journeys - Alfredo Moro-Martin, The Western Before the Western: Sir Walter Scott's Waverley (1814) as a Paradigm of Pre-Western Fiction - David Río-Raigadas, Beyond the Atlantic: The American West in Twenty-first Century Southwestern European Literature - Marek Paryz, Uncovering the Western: Pastoralism, Conflict and Revenge in Agnieszka Holland's Film Spoor Part Three. The West Travels Across Disciplines Visual and Aural Journeys - Audrey Goodman, Looking Beyond the West from the Dairy Queen. Local Apertures, Planetary Visions - Nacho Guijarro-González, Comanches in Spain: (Re)visiting a Spanish Exhibition on the "Far West" - Jesús Ángel González, Genre Revisions and Hibridity: Westerns and the West in 21st Century American TV - Monika Madinabeitia, The Basque Far West: Expressions through Art and Music