The American West: Summer School 2009
Join us in Rockford, Illinois, the headquarters of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, for The Rockford Institute’s 12th Annual Summer School: “The American West.”
Theme
Robert Frost held that Americans only became American in the process of fighting wars and moving west. So much of the American identity, in fact, finds its origins in the frontier experience, that the mythology that resulted thrived in fiction and film long after the frontier disappeared. The stories from “America’s Homeric age†are tales of conflict: the conflict of man against nature, of course, but also the North-South conflict explored in Owen Wister’s The Virginian and played out in the real-life escapades of the Jameses and Youngers and in the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Films such as High Noon, Shane, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance explore the conflict between families establishing communities and the individualism and anarchy of bold and rootless men escaping their past. Finally, a more thorough understanding of the American identity can come from consideration of ethnic conflicts in the West and of conflicting religious visions. Alongside all of these are the gunfighters, gamblers, con artists, and gold-mining millionaires, and the writers and humorists who have grappled with the West and contributed to its legends: Bret Harte, Owen Wister, Mark Twain, Frederick Jackson Turner, Francis Parkman, and Robert Louis Stevenson.
Faculty
Thomas Fleming • Clyde Wilson • Chilton Williamson • James Patrick • Fr. Hugh Barbour • Roger McGrath
Prices
Full Registration
(all lectures and events, five nights’ lodging with breakfast, dinner)
Double Occupancy—$795.00
Single Occupancy—$895.00
Commuter Registration
Lectures Only—$395.00
Plus Dinner—$495.00
Details
Students will enjoy beautiful riverfront accommodations at Rockford’s premier hotel: Cliffbreakers Riverside Resort.
Register early and save! Students who register by April 15, 2009, may deduct $75.00.
Prices are per student and do not include books on the reading list.
To inquire about scholarships for full-time students, contact Christopher Check at (815) 964-5811.
To register, call (800) 383-0680.
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