Finding A New Midwestern History
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Finding a New Midwestern History
Author: Jon K. Lauck
language: en
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Release Date: 2018-11-01
In comparison to such regions as the South, the far West, and New England, the Midwest and its culture have been neglected both by scholars and by the popular press. Historians as well as literary and art critics tend not to examine the Midwest in depth in their academic work. And in the popular imagination, the Midwest has never really ascended to the level of the proud, literary South; the cultured, democratic Northeast; or the hip, innovative West Coast. Finding a New Midwestern History revives and identifies anew the Midwest as a field of study by promoting a diversity of viewpoints and lending legitimacy to a more in-depth, rigorous scholarly assessment of a large region of the United States that has largely been overlooked by scholars. The essays discuss facets of midwestern life worth examining more deeply, including history, religion, geography, art, race, culture, and politics, and are written by well-known scholars in the field such as Michael Allen, Jon Butler, and Nicole Etcheson.
The Oxford Handbook of Midwestern History
The Midwest region holds a pivotal place in the tapestry of American history. The Oxford Handbook of Midwestern History delves into this rich heritage with chapters on topics ranging from the early Native American and French Midwest to the impact of the Northwest Ordinance and the Great Lakes, the emergence of Midwest regional consciousness after the Civil War, and the role of the Midwest's natural resources in the region's economic success and later decline. It presents the newest research on race, ethnicity, culture, politics, and economic development. It also considers the role of religion, organized labor, the presence of a diverse population of Germans, Irish, Dutch, and Latinos, and the influence of sports, nostalgia, populism, and isolationism. This handbook moves beyond the examination of traditional topics in Midwestern history to provide significant attention to matters such as architecture, literary realism, visual culture, and constitutionalism. This treatment of Midwestern history marks a major turn towards the history of the American interior. In many ways, The Oxford Handbook of Midwestern History marks the coming of age of what scholars and commentators are calling the New Midwestern History.
Midwest Unrest
In the nation’s so-called heartland, racism is sometimes subtler than in other parts of the country but just as insidious. When Black communities across the United States went up in flames in the 1960s, Midwest cities, where racial inequity was endemic, were among those most likely to burn. Midwest Unrest explores those rebellions, paying particular attention to the ways that region, race, class, and gender all played critical and often overlapping roles in shaping Black people’s resistance to racialized oppression. Focusing on the uprisings in three midsize midwestern cities—Cincinnati, Ohio; Omaha, Nebraska; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin—Ashley Howard argues that urban rebellions were a working-class response to the failure of traditional civil rights activism and growing fissures between the Black working and middle classes. Utilizing arrest records, Kerner Commission documents, and author-conducted oral history interviews, Howard registers the significant impact the rebellions had in transforming the consciousness of African Americans and in altering the relationship between Black urban communities and the state. Specifically, multiple parties, including municipal governments, city residents, and most importantly rebels, wielded urban revolt as a political tool to achieve their own objectives. Revealing a new dimension of the Black Freedom Movement, Howard moves the understanding of these disturbances from aberrant acts of violence to historically contingent acts of resistance, highlighting the coeval nature of organized protests and violent outbursts.