Imagining the Heartland - White Supremacy and the American Midwest

"The heartland isn’t a region. It’s a race. That’s the urgent lesson of Britt E. Halvorson and Joshua O. Reno’s Imagining the Heartland. The stories we tell about the Midwest––stories of blandness, averageness, of life in Lake Wobegon––inform who is seen as virtuous, normal, and American. In a time of sensational acts of white entitlement, Halvorson and Reno have written an absorbing book about how images of boring white folks secure white dominance." ––Joseph Darda, author of How White Men Won the Culture Wars: A History of Veteran America

"A wonderful interdisciplinary trek. Halvorson and Reno unpack the performative aspects of the Midwest not just to explore how the Midwest is represented in various genres and cultural works but to delve into what is being 'done' by the strategic invention of the Midwest as a quintessential White American landscape."—Sujey Vega, author of Latino Heartland: Of Borders and Belonging in the Midwest
 

List of contents

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

About the author

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.

 

Product details

• Authors: Britt E. Halvorson, Britt E. Reno Halvorson, Joshua O. Reno, Reno Joshua O.
• Publisher: University Of California Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.05.2022
• EAN: 9780520387607
• ISBN: 978-0-520-38760-7
• No. of pages: 234
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; USA, Ethnic Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Minority Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Local History, United States of America, USA, Ethnic groups and multicultural studies, Social and cultural anthropology, History of the Americas, Ethnic minorities & multicultural studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Biracial & Multiracial Studies, US Midwest, North Central & Mid-West States, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Cultural & Ethnic Studies / General