Monday, June 24, 2019, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EDT

JUSTIN A. JOYCE, Research Associate to Provost McBride and Managing Editor of James Baldwin Review

“Gunslinging Justice: The American Culture of Gun Violence in Westerns and the Law”

In a new book that shares its title with today’s presentation, Justin Joyce explores the cultural history of the interplay between the Western genre and American gun rights and legal paradigms. Commonly read as an indictment of the American legal system, the Western genre often imagines the procedural focus of American law as an obstacle to justice. On its face, the genre embraces justice by gun violence rather than by trial. However, Justin argues that this opposition is progressively undone by the genre’s formulaic shootouts, which carry much of the spirit—if not the letter—of American legal regimes around gun violence. He will focus his presentation on the classic 1962 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance to demonstrate that rather than being “anti-law,” the Western genre has long imagined new justifications for gun violence that American law seems ever-eager to adopt.