The Global Western: Intercultural Transformations of an American Genre par Excellence

The project concerns culturally specific transformations of the Western film in Latin America (Mexico, Brazil); Asia (Japan); and Australia.

The Western as exemplary American cinema will be researched for the ways in which clear cultural transfers are enabled and thereby significant alterations experienced. These changes range across genre-constitutive variables; from base mythologies to the iconography of the Western.

The analysis and the formation of cultural studies theory works from an extension of generic concepts in order to introduce transnational and transcultural perspectives by applying the methods of postcolonial studies (i.e., the concept of appropriation). Thus the project can be understood as a pioneering study of a phenomenon of intercultural practice not previously examined in this form.

Term of Project:

August 2008-Ongoing

DFG-Support since July 2010

Project coordinator:

Dr. Thomas Klein (Ethnology)

Project Members (till 2010):
Junior Prof. Matthias Krings (Ethnology)
Cassis Kilian, M.A. (Ethnology)
Dr. Ivo Ritzer (Film Studies)
Peter W. Schulze, M.A. (Film Studies)

Publication:
KLEIN, THOMAS/ IVO RITZER/ PETER W. SCHULZE (Ed.) (2012): Crossing Frontiers. Intercultural Perspectives on the Western. Marburg, 197 p.
Content
Content (Publisher)