Rebellion against the status quo normally gives way to conventionality and domesticity. But what happens when it doesn’t? Popular culture is full of such cases: but why? This course looks historically at the problem via imaginative explorations of bandits, outlaws and antiheroes from the nineteenth to early twenty-first centuries, with a particular focus on contemporary film. It examines how stories of rebellion reveal crises in our understanding of conflict, politics, and, in particular, concepts of manhood. The course will normally include Australian texts in order to ground this thematic in local conditions.