Idyllic natural expanses, obliging or menacing Native American characters, scenes of “totem transfer”: these are signature features of the Western genre in the US. This set of recognizable tropes and scenes has historically consolidated ideas of settler innocence and white heroism. With a focus on literary fiction, this course will examine the Western as it is shaped by configurations of racial difference, nation, citizenship, settler colonialism, and gender. We will consider how the signature features of this genre aim to explain away, or neutralize, the violences of Indian Removal and settler claims to land. We will see how the negative portrayal of Indigenous people in Western narratives has been paired with the subtle Indigenizing of settler protagonists through stories of nativism and adoption fantasies. Our readings will examine how romanticized images of the Old West have also relied on stereotypes of Mexican, Chicano, Black, and Asian characters. For newer writers and filmmakers, the Western offers a set of parameters with which to question such racial assumptions. Readings for this course may include James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Prairie,” excerpts from Johnston McCulley’s Zorro novels, Ken Liu’s “All the Flavors,” Claudia Craven’s Lucky Red, Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, C Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills Is Gold, Tom Lin’s The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, Daniel Cooper Alarcón’s essay “All the Pretty Mexicos,” and Chloe Zhao’s film The Rider.