Reenacting Justice: Guns in America

Reenacting Justice: Guns in America
HISTORY 209, Spring 2024
Instructor: Jennifer Tucker
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This seminar, developed in collaboration with visiting guest instructor Glenn LaVertu (Parsons), combined readings, discussion, archival research, storyboarding, project-based learning, legal analysis, and filmmaking in presenting new takes on an old genre: Westerns. We read and watched Westerns alongside study of the development of the American legal system, considering the aesthetics of justice, narrative, and guns. Students worked on film and theater projects related to the manufacturing, use, and mythologization of the “Old West” in popular culture, television, and film. Film projects were screened and discussed at the Center for the Study of Guns and Society’s annual undergraduate conference on Thursday, April 25, and Friday April 26, 2024, and at the presentation of “Stories of Carceral Connecticut,” a celebration of student projects for the Mellon Foundation project, “Carceral Connecticut,” on Friday, May 3, 2024. The course considered the aesthetics of storytelling, guns, and justice, and functioned as a lab for creating and narrating new stories. Engaging with contemporary debates about Westerns as manifestations of American gun culture, the purpose of the project was to draw parallels between the ways in which gun violence is portrayed in film, particularly period, Western movies, and the realities of gun violence today. The final project was an opportunity for students to expose multiple points of view regarding gun violence, justice, and their socio-political effects. It was also an invitation to write and develop new scripts, storyboards, and film scenes, as well as study old ones.