Megan Kate Nelson: New Tropes for Western Histories

In this episode, award-winning writer and historian Dr. Megan Kate Nelson joins us to talk about why certain stories and icons depicting outdated ideas of the American frontier are so persistent in popular culture today despite having been widely critiqued within academia; what kinds of stories might replace such depictions; and why we should care about more honestly accounting for the diverse cast of historical figures whose interwoven lives profoundly shaped the nineteenth-century West.