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Professor Renée Laegreid
Department of History, University of Wyoming
Author of Riding Pretty: Rodeo Royalty in
the American West
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006)
Date: Wednesday, 25 March 2015
Time: 4:00 to 5:00 pm
Place: Butch’s Den at the CUB
“The Legacy of the American West in
Contemporary Italy”
In popular culture, connections between the American West and Italy rarely
extend beyond consideration of America’s western films that invaded Italy in the
post-World War II period and the rise of the so-called Italian Spaghetti Westerns
in the 1960s. Professor Laegreid’s research, however, expands and deepens our
understanding of the reciprocal influences between the U.S. and Italy, focusing on
the idea of the American frontier in Italy from the late nineteenth century to the
early twenty-first century. Based on research for her current book project,
Professor Laegreid will speak on three waves of western American influences on
Italy, and how Italians have used western American mythology for their own
personal, political, and financial purposes.
Sponsored by The Columbia Chair in the History of the American West,
Department of History, Washington State University