Imagining the Heartland

White Supremacy and the American Midwest
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-0-520-38761-4
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 234 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 228 mm, Gewicht: 334 g

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Halvorson, Britt E

Reno, Joshua O

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Historische & Regionale Volkskunde
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien Faschismus, Rechtsextremismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziale Ungleichheit, Armut, Rassismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Minderheiten, Interkulturelle & Multikulturelle Fragen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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

Über Autor(innen)

Britt E. Halvorson is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Colby College and author of Conversionary Sites: Transforming Medical Aid and Global Christianity from Madagascar to Minnesota.
 
Joshua O. Reno is Professor of Anthropology at Binghamton University and author of Waste Away: Working and Living with a North American Landfill and Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness.