Rex has a Ph.D and specializes in literature, poetry, and drama. In the following essay he explores the intersection between gender and violence in Robert Schenkkan's series of plays.

Robert Schenkkan's The Kentucky Cycle has been called one of the best examples of unwritten American history; the stuff Americans do not like to talk about. Violence, racism, and domestic abuse are America's dirty little secrets. The West was the great Frontier, our "Manifest Destiny," but how often do Americans truly look at what "moving West" meant? The lands beyond the Eastern seaboard were already populated and America's expansion meant that these peoples must be displaced. Schenkkan suggests that this primary displacement of the native peoples tainted the West and the American identity. The Kentucky Cycle shows that violence, particularly men's violence, has become an inherent part of American life and history. The characters of Michael, Jed...