Date

7-21-2026

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Degree

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFA)

Chair

Sarah Rice

Keywords

Western, Mythology, Literature

Disciplines

Creative Writing

Abstract

Close to the turn of the 19th century, Frederick Jackson Turner famously proclaimed the death of the frontier, and extolled the lapsed era for the virtues and qualities which it championed - qualities which he claimed defined the American cultural identity. The Western genre of fiction carries on the traditions and values of that era to past, present, and future generations of Americans and partakes deeply in the rich tradition of human storytelling in a way that examines universal human conditions from the unique perspective engendered by frontier living and the American West. Just as Homer's work created and built on the spiritual and cultural identity of ancient Greece to build what we recognize today as a mythology, so too does the Western genre -- in all its iterations of the last 130 years -- create an American mythology of epic and still-growing proportions. From the works of Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour to the modern stories of page and screen, the Western carries with it the truth and core values of the American identity. My own work, a novella titled "The Sins of Tom Budd," attempts to continue in that rich tradition and ask a question too often missing from the Western canon: what is an American Christian? And what ought one to be?

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