Black Wests: Reshaping Race and Place in Popular Culture

Sponsored by The Book Club of California.

What does it mean to imagine the American West through Black experience? For too long, popular culture, from Hollywood Westerns to novels, music, and television, has erased or distorted Black presence in the West, leaving us with an incomplete story of American identity. Black Wests: Reshaping Race and Place in Popular Culture brings those histories back into focus.

In this talk, Dr. Sara L. Gallagher explores how Black writers, filmmakers, and performers have reimagined the Western landscape in ways that challenge dominant myths about race, land, and belonging. Moving across literature, film, and music, she examines how figures ranging from Oscar Micheaux to contemporary creators like Beyonce have reshaped what we think the “West” looks like, sounds like, and means.

The “Black West” is more than a geographic space, it is a cultural and imaginative terrain that reveals hidden histories of migration, labor, homesteading, and community-building. At the same time, it offers new perspectives on familiar genres, from the Western film to the jazz archive. This presentation will highlight how Black artists and thinkers have unsettled the frontier myth, opening up conversations about power, resistance, and the legacies of race in American culture.

A virtual presentation by Sarah Gallagher, author and Professor of Liberal Studies, Durham College, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada.

To register for this virtual event, click here.