This panel seeks original contributions to the study of the Italian Spaghetti Western, its filmmakers, and their production through perspectives such as Feminist theory, Men’s Studies and Queer Studies, (De-)Coloniality, and Auteur Theory. Politics, the Mexican Revolution, the invention of an American Civilization through the experience of the Wilderness, and Western Symbolism are lenses that can be applied to the analysis. Original approaches that emerge from a specific ideology and/or iconography are also welcome. Particular attention will be given to those papers that examine how the Italian Spaghetti Western satirizes both American and Italian cultures through the representation of a world destabilized by violence and death.

Chair: Elisabetta Sanino D'Amanda, Rochester Institute of Technology 

Chair: Sebastiano Lucci, Hobart and William Smith Colleges