Imagining the heartland : white supremacy and the American Midwest / Britt E. Halvorson and Joshua O. Reno.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Halvorson, Britt, author.

Reno, Joshua, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

White people--Race identity.

White people.

White people--Race identity--Middle West.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (234 pages)

Place of Publication:

Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2022]

Summary:

An overdue examination of the Midwest's long influence on nationalism and white supremacy. Though many associate racism with the regional legacy of the South, it is the Midwest that has upheld some of the nation's most deep-seated convictions about the value of whiteness. From Jefferson's noble farmer to The Wizard of Oz, imagining the Midwest has quietly gone hand-in-hand with imagining whiteness as desirable and virtuous. Since at least the U.S. Civil War, the imagined Midwest has served as a screen or canvas, projecting and absorbing tropes and values of virtuous whiteness and its opposite, white deplorability, with national and global significance. Imagining the Heartland provides a poignant and timely answer to how and why the Midwest has played this role in the American imagination. In Imagining the Heartland, anthropologists Britt Halvorson and Josh Reno argue that there is an unexamined affinity between whiteness, Midwestness, and Americanness, anchored in their shared ordinary and homogenized qualities. These seemingly unremarkable qualities of the Midwest take work; they do not happen by default. Instead, creating successful representations of ordinary Midwestness, in both positive and negative senses, has required cultural expression through media ranging from Henry Ford's assembly line to Grant Wood's famous "American Gothic." Far from being just another region among others, the Midwest is a political and affective logic in racial projects of global white supremacy. Neglecting the Midwest means neglecting the production of white supremacist imaginings at their most banal and at their most influential, their most locally situated and their most globally dispersed.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Reflections 1

Section 1: Challenging Ideas of the Midwest

1. The Midwest and White Virtue

Reflections 2

2. Heartland Histories

Section II : Regional Mythmaking

3. Inside Out: The Global Production of Insular Whiteness

Reflections 3

4. No Place Like Home: The "Ordinary" Midwest through Popular Fiction and Fantasy. Coauthored with Jada Basdeo

Reflections 4

5. Theater of Whiteness: Mass Media Discourse on the Midwest Region. Coauthored with Lena Hanschka

Reflections 5

Conclusion

Appendix A: Filmography in Chapter 4

Appendix B: Bibliography of Media Articles in Chapter 5

Notes

References

Index

Series List.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780520387621

0520387627

OCLC:

1298392025