thewestern film genre and the American frontier myth

Fall 2015 questionnaire

Type your responses to the questions using the template on the website. You will turn in a hard copy on Wednesday, October 7. Please INCLUDE the question (and number) above each of your responses.

General Questions:

1.Carefully review the program description on the syllabus. Devise a substantial question that you would like to explore this quarter. Do not repeat a question that’s already on the syllabus.

2.How many Evergreen programs have you taken? Describe something about your favorite program thus far that has left a lasting impression on your learning?

3.Carefully review the covenant and note two or three agreements that are especially important to being a successful participant in our learning community.

4.What academic skills do you need to work on? Also, please describe yourself as a reader and a writer.

5.How might this program fit into your larger academic and career goals?

6.Have you started work on your Academic Statement? If so, how far along are you?

7.Are you a working student—full or part-time? If you don’t mind answering, what kind of work do you do? Feel free to include anything else you’d like your faculty to know about you.

Questions about Film (these will require a little research on your part)

1.Briefly describe your experience in film studies and/or filmmaking. If you have no experience, then describe yourself as an observer.

2.Choose a genre of film, other than the Western, and describe five or six important characteristics—in terms of style, narrative, conventions, representative films, and so on—that define the genre.

3.**Research three Westerns, not included in our screening list (on the web) and answer the following for each:

a. When was the film produced and what was going on at the time?

b. What period is the film attempting to represent? Briefly describe the action/
events that are being portrayed.

c. What is the connection between a. and b.?

**For example, Red River was released in 1948 (actually filmed in 1946), soon after World War II, when the U.S. was entering a period of significant economic expansion, political, cultural, and military influence around the world. The “setting”of Red River is Texas and the story of the film dramatizes a 14 year period, prior to and after the Civil War, when white settlers were crossing the frontier in huge numbers, Native Americans were being forcibly removed from their ancestral lands, and the first cattle drives were moving a valuable commodity to the newly constructed railroad for shipment other parts of the country.