Delivered at the annual PCA/ACA National Conference in Seattle, Washington in March 2016 For much of the early twentieth century, violence in Westerns was differentiated along gendered and racial lines to construct an image of nineteenth-century frontiersmen as paragons of American exceptionalist excellence that defended white ‘civilization’ from non-white ‘savagery’ through selective acts of ‘noble’ … Continue reading ‘I Ain’t the Same’: Anti-Heroism and Violence in 21st Century Westerns