West Texas on Film: A Conversation with Dr. Daryl Meador

Humanities Now

Humanities Now
West Texas on Film: A Conversation with Dr. Daryl Meador
Jul 09, 2025 Season 5 Episode 2
The Humanities Center at Texas Tech

On this episode, the Humanities Center's 2024-2025 Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Humanities, film scholar Dr. Daryl Meador, sits down with Michael Borshuk to speak about her research on West Texas in American cinema. Annotating five notable films that depict the region onscreen, Dr. Meador comments on settler colonialism, silent movies, John Wayne, Paul Newman, Larry McMurtry, New Hollywood, and the Coen Brothers, among other figures and contexts.

Some supplementary resources from this episode's conversation:

Christopher Kelly, "No Country for Bad Movies," a Texas Monthly article on the best Texas movies ever.

Charles Goodnight's 1916 silent movie Old Texas, from the Texas Archive of the Moving Image.


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