From battles over the meaning of the "border" to Chinese spy balloons, Americans today are struggling to understand what it means to be "American" and what might threaten that. This course will focus on literature about immigration in the American West, looking at the way authors think about borders and immigration. In the twentieth century, people in the U.S. moved west from the eastern and southern states; people also moved east across the Pacific and north from Latin America. During this period of intense settlement, Native Americans were displaced and cultures both clashed and assimilated to a new kind of American identity, a process that continues with new immigrants today. We will be reading literature that reveals the real transnational complexity of this American "melting pot," using the anthology "Literature, Race, and Ethnicity: Contesting American Identities."