Sponsored  by DePaul University's School of Cinematic Arts

In the popular imagination, the Western is a mild diversion for adolescents of all ages-- a sunny, big sky backdrop for action, adventure, and Americana. For others, the genre represents an insidious endorsement of Manifest Destiny and genocide. But the Western also encompasses films that look inward, depicting the harsh realities of life beyond civilization's reach. In these films, the haggard experience of nineteenth-century life looms large, a frontier that offers no quarter to anyone unwilling to fight every damn day for their patch of earth.

The films in this series range from rare '70s efforts like DOC and ZANDY'S BRIDE (when most every Western made some kind of revisionist gesture or another) to 21st century works (MEEK'S CUTOFF, THE HOMESMAN) that push the limits of the genre. Clint Eastwood's UNFORGIVEN is perhaps the apogee of this sub-genre, a Western that posits that farming the land is tougher than gun-slinging. All these films cast a skeptical eye towards America's God-given right to expand into hostile territory, and largely express these critiques through the everyday experience of women, uprooted but still expected to keep a clean homestead built on dirt floors.