Blake Allmendinger is Professor of American Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he specializes in literature of the American West. He is the author of The Cowboy: Representations of Labor in an American Work Culture; Ten Most Wanted: The New Western Literature; Imagining the African American West; and The Melon Capital of the World: A Memoir. He is also co-editor of Over the Edge: Remapping the American West, and has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities.