Situated Readings

As we write this, the 10 November 2024 release date of the highly anticipated second half of the fifth, and final, season of Taylor Sheridan’s epic neo-Western drama, Yellowstone, lies on the horizon. Within the space of eight years, Sheridan’s series, initially a niche standalone drama picked up by the Paramount Network, has expanded into a large, shared story universe. The contributions to this issue have coalesced around several focus areas which can loosely be categorised as: branding; gender and race; space and place; and situated readings of the series. This special issue of Journal of Literary Studies is, to our knowledge, the first focused publication to critically consider Yellowstone, and it successfully establishes a first critical discussion about the transcultural exchanges that can be found in popular cultural texts such as this that manage to go well beyond their intended boundaries.