Project MUSE®: Middle West Review - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Middle West Review.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2014) through current issueLatest Articles: Middle West ReviewTWOProject MUSE®Middle West Review2372-56722372-5664Latest articles in Middle West Review. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Introduction: Narrative Inequality and the Flickering Flames of Midwestern Regionalism
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986701
<p></p>
In the spring of 2025 we received some bad news for the field of Midwestern studies. The journal Ohio History, which had published historical research on the first Midwestern state since 1887, was shutting down. Initially, the silence was deafening. Few people were discussing how a state of ten million people was losing its quarterly journal which had examined its history and culture for more than a century. Then the Toledo Blade reported on the matter and the governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, intervened and saved the journal from extinction. Our field is fortunate that Governor DeWine is a strong proponent of the study of history because saving the journal was a close-run thing. We applaud the governor's efforts and
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallIntroduction: Narrative Inequality and the Flickering Flames of Midwestern Regionalism2026-04-01text/htmlen-USIntroduction: Narrative Inequality and the Flickering Flames of Midwestern Regionalism2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®252462026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The Best Man for the Job: Ada Coleman and 1890s Reform Journalism on the Midwest Prairie
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986702
<p></p>
1892 was an auspicious year for the Populist reform movement and for Ada Coleman. The People's Party convened its first nominating convention on July 4, 1892, in Omaha, Nebraska, and garnered a million votes in the November election for its presidential candidate James Weaver. This signaled an impressive diversion of votes away from the mainstream parties; a feat no other third party had been able to accomplish in the second half of the nineteenth century. Criticizing both parties for not addressing the urgent economic and social issues created by a rapidly industrializing America, reformers envisioned a continued upward trajectory of their movement; they wanted to create a more just society for farmers and
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe Best Man for the Job: Ada Coleman and 1890s Reform Journalism on the Midwest Prairie2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe Best Man for the Job: Ada Coleman and 1890s Reform Journalism on the Midwest Prairie2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®1371002026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Was James Garfield Really a "Dark Horse" in 1880?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986703
<p></p>
"I regret that I am too much occupied to review the impressions which the year has brought. In regard to the principal political event of my life, I have to say that my chief gratification arises from the fact that the office came to me without any violation of the law of my life, viz., never to ask for an office. I came to that resolution in October, 1849 … and I have followed [it] ever since, until I have come to believe that should I violate that law, I would fail … I close the year with a sad conviction that I am bidding good-by to the freedom of private life, and to a long series of happy years, which I fear terminate with 1880."1When President-elect James A. Garfield wrote these words in his diary on New
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallWas James Garfield Really a "Dark Horse" in 1880?2026-04-01text/htmlen-USWas James Garfield Really a "Dark Horse" in 1880?2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®865202026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Built on Steel: The Development of McDonald, Ohio as a Company Town
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986704
<p></p>
What makes a model town? This is the question urban planners and industrialists asked themselves in the early twentieth century. For the captains of industry, housing their growing work force became an important priority. The giant United States Steel Corporation,1 through subsidiaries such as Carnegie Steel and Illinois Steel, experimented with building company towns in several places. The best known is Gary in northwestern Indiana, which U.S. Steel founded in 1906 to service its new Gary Works. The town of McDonald, located about six-and-a-half miles northwest of Youngstown in northeastern Ohio, was another attempt by a U.S. Steel subsidiary, Carnegie Steel, to engage in modern industrial town planning. Carnegie
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallBuilt on Steel: The Development of McDonald, Ohio as a Company Town2026-04-01text/htmlen-USBuilt on Steel: The Development of McDonald, Ohio as a Company Town2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®1000332026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The Dynamism of the Old Northwest: How the Region Shook Up Presbyterianism and Congregationalism and Invigorated Abolitionism during the Jacksonian Era
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986705
<p></p>
In December of 1834, John J. Shipherd, the Congregationalist minister who had founded the community of Oberlin, Ohio, and the college bearing the same name, found himself in a predicament familiar to others trying to establish colleges during that era. He needed more money, qualified professors, and administrators, in his case a college president and a professor of mathematics if Oberlin Collegiate Institute was going to survive. The Board of Trustees sent him to New York City to try to raise funds for the struggling college. Inspired by an "impression," Shipherd decided to first travel to Cincinnati before heading to New York. He was aware of the controversy involving the students at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe Dynamism of the Old Northwest: How the Region Shook Up Presbyterianism and Congregationalism and Invigorated Abolitionism during the Jacksonian Era2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe Dynamism of the Old Northwest: How the Region Shook Up Presbyterianism and Congregationalism and Invigorated Abolitionism during the Jacksonian Era2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®902832026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Peripheral Vision: Robert McAlmon, South Dakota, and Shaping Literary Modernism
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986706
<p></p>
Robert McAlmon's name typically surfaces in literary history as a peripheral figure in the development of Anglo-American modernism. He is always mentioned: a publisher, patron, and drinking companion to more canonical voices. While his literary contributions are often overshadowed by his role in the expatriate scene of 1920s Paris, McAlmon's most autobiographical book, Village: As It Happened Through a Fifteen-Year Period (1930), reveals a far more complex engagement with American provincial life than is often acknowledged. The novel-in-stories collection recounts life in a thinly disguised version of Madison, South Dakota, where McAlmon spent most of his youth. Alternating between detachment, satire, and
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallPeripheral Vision: Robert McAlmon, South Dakota, and Shaping Literary Modernism2026-04-01text/htmlen-USPeripheral Vision: Robert McAlmon, South Dakota, and Shaping Literary Modernism2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®781322026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The German Midwest: Tautology or Swan Song?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986707
<p></p>
When people think of German Americans, the Midwest is almost always the first region of the country that comes to mind. And when people speak of the Midwest and its culture and character, German Americans are inevitably a major part of the conversation. The Midwest was the most German part of the country, and Midwestern Germans were among the most "German" in the nation judging by their language retention and cultural footprint. But there is evidence in recent census data and some of these articles that the language and cultural imprint are fading fast in the twenty-first century.The Midwest is clearly the region with the highest percentage of Germans, who also led in absolute numbers compared to other regions. In
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe German Midwest: Tautology or Swan Song?2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe German Midwest: Tautology or Swan Song?2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®437552026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The Distribution and Origins of German Natives in the Old Northwest in 1850
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986708
<p></p>
In 1850, Germans were the largest group of immigrants (inhabitants not born in their current state of residence) with foreign birthplaces in the Old Northwest—Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.1 They numbered 228,116 according to the census, nearly one hundred thousand more than immigrants from the next ranking foreign country, Ireland, although nationwide the Irish were largest.2 Excluding those born in the Old Northwest states, Germans formed the region's third largest group of immigrants, behind New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians and ahead of Virginians and Kentuckians. Considerable state by state variation in the number of Germans in the Old Northwest existed, partly due to population differences
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe Distribution and Origins of German Natives in the Old Northwest in 18502026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe Distribution and Origins of German Natives in the Old Northwest in 18502026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®984512026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01European German Pioneers in the Kansas Territory: 1855–1865
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986709
<p></p>
While ethnic Germans1 make up the largest group of foreign-born emigrants to Kansas, the greatest scholarly attention has been paid to Germans from Russia, who settled in the more westerly counties post-Civil War. Little attention has been devoted to European German settlement, especially during the territorial period.2 The work of linguist J. Neale Carman in the mid-twentieth century on foreign-language group settlements is pioneering,3 but his focus was not strictly on ethnic Germans and he apparently did not have direct access to the original census documents.Analyzing these documents offers a singular opportunity to study German immigrants as pioneers. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "pioneer" as "one of
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallEuropean German Pioneers in the Kansas Territory: 1855–18652026-04-01text/htmlen-USEuropean German Pioneers in the Kansas Territory: 1855–18652026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®677782026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01This Must Be the Place: German-Catholic Settlement in Northwest Ohio
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986710
<p></p>
Although German Americans in Northwest Ohio have been largely assimilated for a century, traces of their cultural heritage persist, particularly through their faith and churches. Unlike earlier German immigrants, who arrived during the colonial period, these Germans primarily emigrated to escape political upheaval and economic hardships in the mid-nineteenth century. Religion, while not the primary motivator for their migration, played a significant role in shaping their unique identity once they arrived. Catholicism intertwined with German cultural traditions to become a unique ethno-religious identity in the region. The Church served as a cultural bastion for that new identity, offering German-led Masses and
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThis Must Be the Place: German-Catholic Settlement in Northwest Ohio2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThis Must Be the Place: German-Catholic Settlement in Northwest Ohio2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®519532026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01"We remember your name which you carved on a tree": A German Family in Diaspora, 1840–1920
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986711
<p></p>
Family correspondence is such an essential and ubiquitous source for the historiography of nineteenth- and twentieth-century German migration that there is a danger of taking the genre for granted.1 Yet if we pause to consider what it took to produce such letters in diaspora, let alone preserve them, it soon appears remarkable.2 The family I examine in this essay hurdled several barriers in their persistent communication from Lower Saxony to Missouri. Rural peasants without much formal education composed legible, discursive texts. Germans suffering the immiseration of an industrializing economy spent precious cash for paper and postage. An irregular, hodgepodge postal network managed to deliver (most) letters via
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmall"We remember your name which you carved on a tree": A German Family in Diaspora, 1840–19202026-04-01text/htmlen-US"We remember your name which you carved on a tree": A German Family in Diaspora, 1840–19202026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®393722026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01"Rejoice the Hearts of the Faithful in the Fatherland": Francis X. Weninger, German Immigrants, and Black Catholics
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986712
<p></p>
In 1883, after having seen the success of his fundraising efforts to open St. Ann's Colored Church and School for African Americans in Cincinnati, Ohio, Austrian Jesuit Francis X. Weninger (1805–1888) remarked in his memoirs that a yearly collection for African Americans and Indigenous peoples "seemed to me a plan which could not fail to succeed."2 At the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884, this exact idea was adopted by the bishops present and the collection began shortly thereafter. Yet, despite his seeming dedication to Catholic and non-Catholic people of color, Weninger focused much of his attention on German-speaking Catholic immigrants, many of whom, like him, fled the revolutions of
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmall"Rejoice the Hearts of the Faithful in the Fatherland": Francis X. Weninger, German Immigrants, and Black Catholics2026-04-01text/htmlen-US"Rejoice the Hearts of the Faithful in the Fatherland": Francis X. Weninger, German Immigrants, and Black Catholics2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®470312026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Between Piety and Pride: Memorializing Personal Piety and National Sentiment in the German Midwest
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986713
<p></p>
Monuments are material manifestations of memory and thus make values visible. As German-speaking emigres arrived in the American Midwest, they inscribed the region with recognizable markers. Diverse articulations of German-ness, like placenames, village structures, and communal organizations, overlay a new German homeland over the territories of Indigenous peoples whom the United States had violently dispossessed. Such markers of place-attachment continue to resonate today. The Endres Chapel near Madison, Wisconsin and the Hermann monument in New Ulm, Minnesota are examples that underscore multiple layers of German-ness in the sedimentation of settler colonialism. Both monuments show how cultural memory and the
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallBetween Piety and Pride: Memorializing Personal Piety and National Sentiment in the German Midwest2026-04-01text/htmlen-USBetween Piety and Pride: Memorializing Personal Piety and National Sentiment in the German Midwest2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®485852026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Germans Nurture "A Romantic and Miraculous" Davenport, Iowa
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986714
<p></p>
In 1851, twenty-three-year-old Theodore Guelich, a marked man, stepped off a steamboat onto the Port of Davenport's dock. Imprisoned in Germany for his part in the Schleswig-Holstein rebellion against Denmark, he had been under a death sentence when he escaped and immigrated to Iowa. Anyone else might have kept a low profile, but this guy started a newspaper! A few months after he arrived, Guelich became founding editor of the German-language Der Demokrat in which he advocated socialism, immigrants' rights, and the abolition of slavery and opposed temperance, prohibition, and religious instruction in schools. A poet, socialist, and freethinker, he was one of the founders of Davenport's Freier Deutscher Schulverein
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallGermans Nurture "A Romantic and Miraculous" Davenport, Iowa2026-04-01text/htmlen-USGermans Nurture "A Romantic and Miraculous" Davenport, Iowa2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®637632026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01A "Treasonable Letter": A German American Pastor and World War I
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986715
<p></p>
In late May 1917, federal agents arrested Pastor Charles L. Lehnert while he gardened in his back yard in Minneapolis. The pastor had replied to a letter from the Liberty Loan Committee requesting clergy to solicit loans in their sermons. In his response, Lehnert expressed opposition to the Committee's request in the margins of their letter. According to a front-page article in The Minneapolis Morning Tribune detailing the case, Lehnert also wrote: "I hope Wilson will be shot before this war is over," and was charged with sending "language tending to incite arson, murder and assassination."1 Lehnert's arrest most likely shocked the community, as he was a well-known pastor who had circuited through numerous German
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallA "Treasonable Letter": A German American Pastor and World War I2026-04-01text/htmlen-USA "Treasonable Letter": A German American Pastor and World War I2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®539512026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Enemies Within Wisconsin: German Prisoner of War Experience during World War II
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986716
<p></p>
During World War II, over 425,000 German prisoners were captured by Allied forces.1 The United States transported Germans held in their custody across the Atlantic to America, and, once stateside, the German POWs were used to fill a critical labor shortage caused by the war. Almost every state housed prisoners at some point, including those in the Midwest that were home to numerous German-American communities such as Wisconsin, Ohio, and Missouri. Most of the academic scholarship on this subject has focused on the national program that brought these POWs to America. While local histories exist for individual Midwestern states, there has not yet been research into how regional attitudes may have influenced the
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallEnemies Within Wisconsin: German Prisoner of War Experience during World War II2026-04-01text/htmlen-USEnemies Within Wisconsin: German Prisoner of War Experience during World War II2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®445722026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Submerged but Teeming: German-American Identity in the Rural Midwest in the Mid-Twentieth Century
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986717
<p></p>
When the members of St. Peter's Evangelical Church in Kawanee, Illinois celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary in 1957, they published a commemoration book. This book included a photograph of the church building, a narrative history written by Louis Charlet, Fred Mursener, and Mrs. Frank Schram, and "an appreciation" section written by the pastor. The authors of the history started with recounting the settlement by German immigrants on the "prairie lands of Illinois" in the 1850s from the province of Brandenburg. The authors did not include any details about the broader historical developments of land being appropriated by the federal government from Native Americans. They noted that these settlers "came to make
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallSubmerged but Teeming: German-American Identity in the Rural Midwest in the Mid-Twentieth Century2026-04-01text/htmlen-USSubmerged but Teeming: German-American Identity in the Rural Midwest in the Mid-Twentieth Century2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®678052026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Reviving a New Kind of Heritage: A Case for Jasper, Indiana and Its Strassenfest as an Embodiment of Midwestern Germanness
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986718
<p></p>
Nestled deep among the Indiana rural landscape lies a town of sixteen thousand people and growing: Jasper, Indiana. The quiet town springs to life once a year in a vibrant display of its complex cultural heritage. The Jasper Strassenfest, or "street festival," brings the town's deep-rooted German heritage to the forefront of life in Jasper. Buildings are decorated in festive black, red, and yellow, children are seen rehearsing dances and songs in the town square, and the general buzz of excitement builds over the months leading up to the summer celebration. Looking more closely at this small, rural, American town reveals a unique story of resilience, identity, belonging, and cultural prosperity. Jasper is not just
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallReviving a New Kind of Heritage: A Case for Jasper, Indiana and Its Strassenfest as an Embodiment of Midwestern Germanness2026-04-01text/htmlen-USReviving a New Kind of Heritage: A Case for Jasper, Indiana and Its Strassenfest as an Embodiment of Midwestern Germanness2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®342922026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Liberty's Grid: A Founding Father, a Mathematical Dreamland, and the Shaping of America by Amir Alexander (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986719
<p></p>
In Liberty's Grid, Amir Alexander explores rural and urban land development that was central to the growth of the United States. Focusing especially on the ideas of Thomas Jefferson, and their implementation, Alexander stresses the importance of the development of a national grid for land, which he calls the "Great Grid," in furthering the expansion of the new nation. In this provocative, well-argued study Alexander sees basic similarities between grid-iron developments in cities and the surveying of the countryside in square sections and townships. Eventually, about two-thirds of the United States, 1.4 billion acres, he shows, were encompassed in the "Great Grid." That grid, Alexander argues, was important to
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallLiberty's Grid: A Founding Father, a Mathematical Dreamland, and the Shaping of America by Amir Alexander (review)2026-04-01text/htmlen-USLiberty's Grid: A Founding Father, a Mathematical Dreamland, and the Shaping of America by Amir Alexander (review)2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®98742026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01James Burnham: An Intellectual Biography by David T. Byrne (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986720
<p></p>
American conservatism is as fractured and raucous as it has been in decades. One thinker's life and intellectual career, that of James Burnham's, straddles both sides of these modern divides. David T. Byrne seeks to explore Burnham's intellectual life and its influence upon these disparate factions in his new book James Burnham: An Intellectual Biography. Byrne explores Burnham's ideological journey from Marxism into conservatism, the development of his ideas, and his influence on different factions within the American Right. Byrne argues that the "two Burnhams," one optimistic, one pessimistic, left a lasting impression on the different factions of American conservatism. Byrne's book is an excellent primer on the
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallJames Burnham: An Intellectual Biography by David T. Byrne (review)2026-04-01text/htmlen-USJames Burnham: An Intellectual Biography by David T. Byrne (review)2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®71892026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The War at Home: Minnesota During the Great War, 1914–1920 by Greg Gaut (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986721
<p></p>
Midwesterners went to war reluctantly in 1917. Indeed, thirty-six of the fifty votes against the declaration of war in the House of Representatives came from the Midwest, and the most vocal opposition in the Senate came from George Norris of Nebraska and Robert La Follette of Wisconsin. Outrage over German unrestricted submarine warfare, however, threatened American commerce and pushed the country from strict neutrality to war despite vocal opposition from the heartland. The impact of the war on the Midwest is a familiar story: government mobilization of troops and public opinion, liberty bond drives, suspicion of recent immigrants, and vigilantism to support 100 percent loyalty.In this sense, Minnesota's
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe War at Home: Minnesota During the Great War, 1914–1920 by Greg Gaut (review)2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe War at Home: Minnesota During the Great War, 1914–1920 by Greg Gaut (review)2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®72122026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01An Ordinary White: My Anti-Racist Education by David Roediger (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986722
<p></p>
David Roediger is one of the most significant labor historians of the past fifty years. His now-classic Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991) captivated the field, won the Organization of American Historians' Merle Curti Award, and, as Roediger explains with a subtle self-depreciation that runs through his new autobiography, made the author "low-key famous—academic famous, that is." (138) Inspired by the "Reagan Democrats" of the 1980s, Wages of Whiteness sought to explain the deep roots of white working-class conservatism in the United States. It was also part of a broader scholarly shift toward the study of "whiteness" in the late twentieth century. Although Roediger is
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallAn Ordinary White: My Anti-Racist Education by David Roediger (review)2026-04-01text/htmlen-USAn Ordinary White: My Anti-Racist Education by David Roediger (review)2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®81812026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The Second Battle for Africa: Garveyism, the US Heartland, and Global Black Freedom by Erik S. McDuffie (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986723
<p></p>
Presented as a "manifesto," Erik S. McDuffie's incisive The Second Battle for Africa situates the Midwest as a cosmopolitan epicenter of the struggle for Black freedom. This conceptually rich monograph draws upon a decade of archival and oral history research spanning nine countries. Dismantling stereotypes of a conservative and homogenous Heartland, McDuffie reveals a "midwestern Garveyite front." (284) This front grew from the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), cofounded in 1914 by Marcus Garvey and his future spouse Amy Ashwood Garvey. Its activist networks and Black nationalist "formations" have typically been outside the bounds of scholarship focused on the left radical tradition or the mainstream
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe Second Battle for Africa: Garveyism, the US Heartland, and Global Black Freedom by Erik S. McDuffie (review)2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe Second Battle for Africa: Garveyism, the US Heartland, and Global Black Freedom by Erik S. McDuffie (review)2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®76682026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The Chicago Canon on Free Inquiry and Expression ed. by Tony Banout and Tom Ginsburg (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986724
<p></p>
Recent years have witnessed a crisis in speech and academic freedoms at America's universities. A woke cancel culture, especially at elite Ivy League schools, has suffocated expression of divergent views. But one Midwestern university has continued to stand by its free speech tradition. The University of Chicago has, since its founding in 1890, maintained a core commitment to open and diverse discourse. Throughout the tumultuous eras of World War I, the Cold War, and the 1960s cultural revolution, the University of Chicago has acted as a free speech beacon—a role the University still serves.The Chicago Canon on Free Inquiry and Expression commemorates the centrality of free speech in the University's mission. This
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe Chicago Canon on Free Inquiry and Expression ed. by Tony Banout and Tom Ginsburg (review)2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe Chicago Canon on Free Inquiry and Expression ed. by Tony Banout and Tom Ginsburg (review)2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®102282026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Giants in the Earth by O.E. Rolvaag (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986725
<p></p>
I stood on a downtown corner and cried.It was March, and I had just moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It wasn't taking a new job, moving to a new city or all the uncertainty. It wasn't even that cold.It was the wind.A month into moving to South Dakota, I realized the wind was a constant. I had already fallen in love with the bright blue skies—different from the steel grey of Cleveland, where I grew up. The clear, endless blue seemed like a daily consolation prize, your gift for enduring the winter, enduring the wind, enduring."It never stops blowing here," I thought that March day.And it doesn't. But somehow, nearly twenty-five years later, the constant of the wind seems a comfort.Almost as soon as I moved to
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallGiants in the Earth by O.E. Rolvaag (review)2026-04-01text/htmlen-USGiants in the Earth by O.E. Rolvaag (review)2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®89472026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse by Thomas Chatterton Williams (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986726
<p></p>
It was the worst of times.In his latest book, Summer of Our Discontent, Thomas Chatterton Williams provides a solidly written account of what one of my own publishers once called "the time the world went mad"—i.e., the identitarian cultural revolution that swirled around the Plague Year of 2020. A Harpers Letter sort of center-leftist, Williams appears substantially more sympathetic to the actors responsible for the social frenzy of that just-done period than I am myself. However, his detailed analysis of the roots of their behavior is worth a look.Summer is a book with a theme, and a point. Williams notes early on that 2020 was a classic "moral panic," and devotes the text to exploring the year and its lessons.
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallSummer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse by Thomas Chatterton Williams (review)2026-04-01text/htmlen-USSummer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse by Thomas Chatterton Williams (review)2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®121132026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Finding Postmodern Regionalism in Not Normal, Illinois
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986727
<p></p>
Where in the hell is Not Normal, Illinois? For an answer to that, you'll have to consult with the authors here. But since the title is a take-off on a real Normal, Illinois here are few things you may want to know. The town was founded as a city-on-on-a-hill dream for an academic community named Illinois State Normal University. It would be built apart from the sinning railroad city of Bloomington, which swarmed with Irish Catholics and Germans who enjoyed simple pleasures and papist beliefs. With the baby boom student explosion of the 1960s, the university re-branded as Illinois State University. The result of this was the destruction of much of the town's nineteenth-century landscape. Today the town houses around
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallFinding Postmodern Regionalism in Not Normal, Illinois2026-04-01text/htmlen-USFinding Postmodern Regionalism in Not Normal, Illinois2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®172732026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The Colonel: Robert R. McCormick's Midwest
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986728
<p></p>
"The Colonel might be a son of a bitch, as the old saw had it, but at least he was their son of a bitch. Certainly no one ever questioned his allegiance to Chicago, even if some doubted his loyalty to the United States during the overwrought period leading up to World War II." (356) Such is Richard Norton Smith's assessment of a man who was truly larger than life, Robert McCormick. Indeed, as longtime owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, McCormick's ideas reached millions across an empire he dubbed Chicagoland. His voice was further amplified when the "World's Greatest Newspaper" expanded into radio with WGN. Though Smith's work was published twenty years ago, it is well worth a read for the light it shines
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe Colonel: Robert R. McCormick's Midwest2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe Colonel: Robert R. McCormick's Midwest2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®137652026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Rhetorical Canadian Graydon Carter: A Regionalist Perspective
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986729
<p></p>
More than a profession, a spouse, or a family—in that order—young Graydon Carter desired to live in New York City. The ranking is his own, and it is among the revelations in When the Going Was Good, Carter's breezy chronicle of a career at the top of the New York magazine world. The book features the expected amount of name-dropping and score-settling, not to mention humble-bragging or just outright bragging. Carter shares details like the brand of his London tailor (he could barely afford his first suit and tweed jacket), the name of the exclusive Manhattan school his child attended (along with Anna Wintour's kid), the vintage of the second family home in Connecticut (a genuine colonial—but it needed work), the
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallRhetorical Canadian Graydon Carter: A Regionalist Perspective2026-04-01text/htmlen-USRhetorical Canadian Graydon Carter: A Regionalist Perspective2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®269632026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The Midwest's Eastern Borderlands as Heartland Myth and Historical Reality
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986730
<p></p>
Populist politics is an amalgam of myth and reality. FDR's "Forgotten Man" was a populist parable founded upon the Great Depression's gritty experience. But the "forgotten man" mythology fueled Democratic victories and defined political reality for a generation. In a similar fashion, Salena Zito's book, Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland, mingles populist legend with real life. Where East Meets (Mid)West: Exploring an American Regional Divide, edited by Jon Lauck and Gleaves Whitney, offers a reality check to Zito's mythology. But the space between myth and reality is where politics, especially its populist version, lives and thrives.The national
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe Midwest's Eastern Borderlands as Heartland Myth and Historical Reality2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe Midwest's Eastern Borderlands as Heartland Myth and Historical Reality2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®141192026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Leaving Place Behind: The Evolving Editorial Perspective of Kansas City's University Review
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986731
<p></p>
Founded in 1934, a year after the University of Kansas City first welcomed students to campus, the University Review began as an unequivocally regionalist literary magazine.1 Editors aspired both "to provide a medium for the finest critical and imaginative writing" and advance discussion of "larger national and international interests" by "present[ing] the best work which reflects the cultural life of this section of the United States."2The publication's opening article announced that it would be "an incentive and outlet to creative and worthwhile work in this community and region." Inspired by "cultural developments in Kansas City," editors were optimistic about "the possibilities for an organ of cultural and
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallLeaving Place Behind: The Evolving Editorial Perspective of Kansas City's University Review2026-04-01text/htmlen-USLeaving Place Behind: The Evolving Editorial Perspective of Kansas City's University Review2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®195932026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01A Regional Legacy: John R. Milton and South Dakota Review
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986732
<p></p>
What is left behind is often buried, sometimes decaying and dissolving amid the elements and before the impassive sky. Bodies, the ashen residue from a prairie fire, even the features of the land vanish in time. No monument recalls these things, for "This isolate and open prairie / needs no memorial for itself."1 Even the most well-built structure or hardiest individual will fade from view along the perpetual horizon, and yet, in those who come after, there lies the compulsion to search, to remember:
The prairie vastness comprehends itself
but lays us bare, no place to hide
beneath the weight of endless sky
…
yet vision is ours to have.2
The land holds no memory; it does not need it. However, for those who
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallA Regional Legacy: John R. Milton and South Dakota Review2026-04-01text/htmlen-USA Regional Legacy: John R. Milton and South Dakota Review2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®535912026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Prairie Schooner: At the Century Mark, Back Home?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986733
<p></p>
In 2027, The Prairie Schooner, University of Nebraska's literary magazine, celebrates its one hundredth anniversary. A century is a long time for anything, anyone, any publication. The Spoon River Quarterly, which I published (with much financial help from the Illinois Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts) from 1978 to 1986, hangs in there today as the biannual Spoon River Poetry Review, but it hasn't made a hundred years. Nor have I. Yet. We'll see.Over the course of a century, things change. A literary magazine is especially susceptible to change, shaped as it is by editors' preferences, literary and social agendas, the agendas of subscribers and funding organizations, whatever is being written
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallPrairie Schooner: At the Century Mark, Back Home?2026-04-01text/htmlen-USPrairie Schooner: At the Century Mark, Back Home?2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®299732026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The Iowa Review: A History
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986734
<p></p>
The state of Iowa has exerted a considerably Iowan influence on postwar American literature in that it has long punched above its weight and long tried to hide the fact. I mean, first, of course, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the world's first MFA program, founded in 1936 at the University of Iowa and risen unto renown under Paul Engle, "a hayseed clown, a foxy grandpa, a terrific promoter," in the words of Kurt Vonnegut.1Engle was so Iowan, so positively cornfed, that he not only wrote but even managed to publish a book really and truly titled Corn (Doubleday, 1939). Also true: he got lots of Cold War money from the CIA, the State Department, and conservative businessmen to help him gather stars and shape a dominant
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe Iowa Review: A History2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe Iowa Review: A History2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®309142026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Academicians in Chicago: The Golden Age, 1965–2005
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986735
<p></p>
For the past thirty years, at least, a pall has hung over the academic enterprise. In the humanities, enrollments fell, jobs were not replaced, funding was reduced, and administrative oversight increased. Universities introduced business models of operation and neoliberalism and the marketplace gained favor. State supported colleges and universities suffered budget cuts and began to rely on student fees to cover operations. The result was that even attending second- and third-tier schools became expensive. The four hundred odd private liberal arts colleges with small enrollments often struggled to remain open.1The 1960s saw the expansion of colleges and universities: physical plants were built, advanced degrees
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallAcademicians in Chicago: The Golden Age, 1965–20052026-04-01text/htmlen-USAcademicians in Chicago: The Golden Age, 1965–20052026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®827382026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Thoughts on Iowa City in the 1990s
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986736
<p></p>
Iowa City was founded as the new Iowa territorial capital in 1839 (previously part of the Wisconsin Territory), six years after the "Black Hawk Purchase," replacing Burlington on the Mississippi River in that role as the capital of the thriving new territory. Eight years later Iowa had become a state and Iowa City became not only the capital of the new state but also the home of Iowa's first state school, the University of Iowa. If you go to Iowa City today, at the heart of the Pentacrest, you will see the Old Capitol, built in 1842 as the new territorial capitol, and soon enough, the state capitol building. When the state capital was moved to Des Moines in 1857, the Old Capitol remained at the heart of the
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThoughts on Iowa City in the 1990s2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThoughts on Iowa City in the 1990s2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®210262026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Rescuing the Annals of Iowa
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986737
<p></p>
The State of Iowa is breaking with its past and plans to stop publishing its state history journal, the Annals of Iowa, which dates back to the mid-nineteenth century. Shortly after Iowa attained statehood and was admitted to the union, its legislature created the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI) in 1857 to "rescue from oblivion" the history of its people, places, and events. Six years later, amid the Civil War, the Society established the Annals, a quarterly journal, intended to disseminate this history. From that starting point, the journal endured, published for 163 years through the Panic of 1893, two World Wars, the Great Depression, the stagflation of the 1970s, the Farm Crisis of the 1980s, the 9/11
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallRescuing the Annals of Iowa2026-04-01text/htmlen-USRescuing the Annals of Iowa2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®175422026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01A Californian Reflects on a Third of a Century in the Midwest
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986738
<p></p>
In 1990, I made my first research trip to the Midwest to collect evidence for my study on farmers and workers in Blue Earth County, Minnesota at the end of the nineteenth century.1 In June of 1992, with my dissertation not yet complete, and a negative net worth of about $15,000, I took all of my worldly possessions from Davis, California to Marshall, Minnesota to embark on my career as a professor of history at Southwest Minnesota State University (SMSU), a small public university with a largely open enrollment mission. Thirty-three years later, I have been given this forum to reflect on my experience.The most lasting impressions of my life in the Midwest are my enduring commitment to accessible, quality, public
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallA Californian Reflects on a Third of a Century in the Midwest2026-04-01text/htmlen-USA Californian Reflects on a Third of a Century in the Midwest2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®391592026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Greg Brown and the Riddle of Midwestern Music
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986739
<p></p>
Aging hipsters and urban folkies sit in metal folding chairs in a Knights of Columbus hall, on a creaking wood floor, long dulled by decades of pinewood derbies, wedding receptions and Friday night fish fries. Metal double doors are open to let in the breeze on a warm spring evening. Near the corner, Greg Brown and Bo Ramsey effortlessly pick through a set of tunes familiar to the hundred or so fans, elevated slightly by a one-foot platform. They captivate the crowd for nearly two hours with guitars, lyrical melancholy, and Brown's stories. Touching, funny, insightful stories about our lives.The music is built on Brown's roiling, piercing baritone, a voice that from the first time it touches your ears refuses to
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallGreg Brown and the Riddle of Midwestern Music2026-04-01text/htmlen-USGreg Brown and the Riddle of Midwestern Music2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®115682026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Finding "The Good Country" South of the South: Florida and the Midwestern Diaspora
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986740
<p></p>
In 2023, shortly before moving to Florida, I read Jon Lauck's The Good Country. Jon put the American Midwest, and its values and sensibilities, center stage in the nation's history and revived the study of the region. No such field really existed when I majored in history at Kenyon College. Although a native Ohioan, I became interested in the American South—a region with a long and massive field of inquiry—and attended graduate school at the University of Mississippi. During my Southern exposure, I became immersed in the region's culture and took courses in Southern history. My graduate education also attuned me to a sense of place and regional identity, and I was fortunate to learn from Charles Reagan Wilson and
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallFinding "The Good Country" South of the South: Florida and the Midwestern Diaspora2026-04-01text/htmlen-USFinding "The Good Country" South of the South: Florida and the Midwestern Diaspora2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®211382026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01A Pretty Place to Swing: Reading Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren as a Midwestern Novel
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986741
<p></p>
In late 1974, the science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany published his novel Dhalgren, an experimental dystopian epic set in the imaginary ruined Midwestern metropolis of Bellona. Though the circumstances behind the city's devastation are unclear, Bellona has obviously been decimated. The "autumnal city," as Delany describes it in the novel's first line, has seen its population dwindle from millions to a few thousand.1 Bands of gangs rove the streets, no clear leadership has emerged to run what's left of the city, and it has no viable industries.Strolling into this milieu is the book's hero, a man who doesn't remember his name though he'll alternately be called Kidd or the Kid over the course of the novel. The
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallA Pretty Place to Swing: Reading Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren as a Midwestern Novel2026-04-01text/htmlen-USA Pretty Place to Swing: Reading Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren as a Midwestern Novel2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®461922026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01A Midwestern Pontiff: Chicago Native Robert Prevost Becomes Pope Leo XIV
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986742
<p></p>
On May 8, 2025, Chicagoans were surprised and thrilled to hear that the Vatican Conclave of the College of Cardinals selected one of the city's own to serve as the next pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. While the deliberations that led to the choice of Robert Prevost, an Augustinian priest, are confidential, Midwesterners understand how the characteristics of their region—that are both parochial and cosmopolitan—helped prepare Pope Leo XIV to assume his post as leader of the universal Church.What makes "Pope Bob," as he is now affectionately called by locals, a product of Chicago and the Midwest? Centered in the North American continent, seemingly isolated by trends and developments along its coasts, the region
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallA Midwestern Pontiff: Chicago Native Robert Prevost Becomes Pope Leo XIV2026-04-01text/htmlen-USA Midwestern Pontiff: Chicago Native Robert Prevost Becomes Pope Leo XIV2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®402892026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The New Immigration to the Midwest: A Call for Research
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986743
<p></p>
Immigration during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shaped the nature and identity of the Upper Midwest.1 Ole Rolvaag's classic novel Giants in the Earth reflected the immigrant experience on the Midwestern plains. This identification of immigrant groups with the Upper Midwest continued through the decades, providing the focus of Garrison Keillor's popular and long-standing radio program A Prairie Home Companion.Midwestern cities became identified with their immigrant groups: Milwaukee with its Germans; St. Paul with its Irish; Chicago with its Polish; Minneapolis with its Swedes; and Sioux Falls with its Norwegians. But this immigrant identity did not confine itself to large cities. Immigration
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe New Immigration to the Midwest: A Call for Research2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe New Immigration to the Midwest: A Call for Research2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®244922026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Poets on the Prairie: Learning to Love My Place Through the Work of Ted Kooser
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986744
<p></p>
"I delight in the things I discover right within reach."I first saw Ted walking on the University of Nebraska campus, when I was an undergrad, and he was a visiting professor of English, and the current Poet Laureate of the United States. My friend Jill and I, book lovers that we were, would nudge each other and comment, "There goes Ted Kooser!" He was, to my young eyes, an unassuming, short, older man. But I also saw that he walked around with a boy-ish, open countenance, like he might have been thinking something good. At that time, I did not read much poetry; I certainly didn't own any of Ted's books, and I figured that I would probably head to South America after graduation to live among the poor.Fast forward
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallPoets on the Prairie: Learning to Love My Place Through the Work of Ted Kooser2026-04-01text/htmlen-USPoets on the Prairie: Learning to Love My Place Through the Work of Ted Kooser2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®76922026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The New Midwestern Photography Movement
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986745
<p></p>
Andy Warhol, who predicted that everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes, made a similar quip about photography. "Anyone can take a good picture," he said in 1985.1 Four decades later, it does seem like everyone is taking pictures. It doesn't require an art degree or a job as a newspaper photographer to get your pictures out in front of a large audience. All you need is an account on Instagram, X, BlueSky, Facebook, or Flickr. And, of course, some good pictures. Having a nice camera helps, but even that isn't always necessary—today's cellphones have amazing photographic capabilities.Amid the deluge of social media images, some Midwestern photographers stand out, offering striking pictures of the region's
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe New Midwestern Photography Movement2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe New Midwestern Photography Movement2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®255222026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The Midwest and the Scourge of Brutalism
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986746
<p></p>
Like the law or medicine, architecture is an elite profession, practiced by expensively trained people. But it has not escaped notice that architects enjoy considerably more leeway to engage in professional malpractice than lawyers and doctors. They are charged, by Vitruvius's ancient mandate, with the creation of buildings that are stable, functional, and beautiful, but routinely fail—not least where beauty is concerned. What is more astonishing, architects who design the ugliest buildings are routinely showered with praise from their peers for doing so.1To take an example, Boston's City Hall, completed in 1968, is a Brutalist monstrosity designed by a Columbia University architecture professor and one of his
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe Midwest and the Scourge of Brutalism2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe Midwest and the Scourge of Brutalism2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®215602026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The Rediscovery of a Midwestern Opera
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986747
<p></p>
The Midwest has been somewhat of a forgotten region in American opera.1 Well-known operas are set in the American South (for example, the Gershwins' Porgy and Bess is set in South Carolina and Carlisle Floyd's Susannah is set in Tennessee) and in the American West (Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe takes place in Colorado). Giacomo Puccini, the Italian composer of some of the most prominent operas in the standard repertoire, set his La Fanciulla del West in Gold Rush California, while the final scene of Puccini's Manon Lescaut is set, rather imaginatively, on a vast desert on the periphery of New Orleans. By contrast, perhaps the best known opera set in the Midwest is Aaron Copland's The Tender Land, which
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe Rediscovery of a Midwestern Opera2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe Rediscovery of a Midwestern Opera2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®252332026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01"Up North": Reflections on Regional Identity in Northern Minnesota
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986748
<p></p>
I recently visited family in St. Cloud, Minnesota, 175 miles south of Blackduck.1 While there, we explored local shops and staple bookstores that are always on "my list." Browsing the history section, I was drawn to a sign directing people to the regional section. Most of the regional and local interest books had one thing in common: they all referenced "Up North" in some way, with covers displaying lakes, trees, and black bear silhouettes. I smiled, thinking of the ongoing regional debates we have; the debates pit Northern Minnesota against "The Metro," which includes Minneapolis and St. Paul, as well as everything south of St. Cloud, depending on who you ask. The central question: who gets to claim, "Up North?"
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmall"Up North": Reflections on Regional Identity in Northern Minnesota2026-04-01text/htmlen-US"Up North": Reflections on Regional Identity in Northern Minnesota2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®155692026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01A Viral Midwestern Tornado
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986749
<p></p>
The other day my three-year-old daughter came in squealing about tornadoes. Well, specifically, thunderstorms. They'd amassed above the splash park near our Metro station. But I appreciated the burst of nostalgic goodwill. We live in Washington D.C., leaving Minneapolis just a few months ago. I've missed the storms of my homeland. Back for a reporting trip this June, I actually found myself watching ominous, dark clouds rolling over downtown Austin, Minnesota, realizing how young we learn on the prairie to read time and danger in the sky. Minutes later, I ended mid-sentence an interview with a man who drives Mexicans up from Oaxaca as rain opened up on us. No explanation was needed. He's been here since the 1990s.
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallA Viral Midwestern Tornado2026-04-01text/htmlen-USA Viral Midwestern Tornado2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®122542026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01One Hundred Years of Regional Publishing at the University of Minnesota Press
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986750
<p></p>
The year 2025 marks the centennial anniversary of the University of Minnesota Press. The Press, long regarded as a leading academic publisher, also boasts one of the Midwest's most exciting and innovative lists in regional publishing, one which continues to push boundaries and expand horizons. I've worked for Minnesota for almost twenty years and during much of that time I have supported and contributed to its extensive list in regional history. During my first year at the Press, I was tasked with compiling data for Minnesota Archive Editions, an ambitious program that returned more than a thousand backlist titles to readers in on-demand print and e-book formats. Wading through the archives, then stored in the
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallOne Hundred Years of Regional Publishing at the University of Minnesota Press2026-04-01text/htmlen-USOne Hundred Years of Regional Publishing at the University of Minnesota Press2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®167012026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The Midwestern Tradition of Political Moderation
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986751
<p></p>
Geoffrey Kabaservice is an unapologetic moderate in an immoderate age. The author of two books about moderate Republicans is also the vice president of political studies at the moderately center-right Niskanen Center.1 In turbulent times he looks to the past and asks "Who kept their heads? Who didn't become a Maoist or have the government mow down the hippies?" In other words, who kept the moderate faith?2These days, the answer is—precious few. In 2025, masked ICE agents search the streets for the undocumented; the Democrats, meanwhile, nominated a thirty-three-year-old socialist to be mayor of the nation's most vital city. Yakety-Sax, the 1960s pop novelty song, is the walk-up music of our immoderate times. In
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe Midwestern Tradition of Political Moderation2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe Midwestern Tradition of Political Moderation2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®624212026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01The New Midwestern Regionalism
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986752
<p></p>
Once derisively referred to as "flyover country," Middle America has regained national respect and local pride. It appears that the consciousness of any given geographical locale reemerges front and center every other decade or generation—think California's tangerine-tinted groovy of the 1960s, New York City's gritty Gotham of the 1970s, and the conspicuous consumption of 1980s oil-rich Dallas.By contrast, the Midwest was called the Rust Belt, a struggling tableau of waning industrial might, racial and political unrest, and pollution—albeit with a banging soundtrack of Motown, electronica, funk, and protopunk in Detroit and blues and jazz in Indiana and Chicago. In the past, Midwestern America was also the setting
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThe New Midwestern Regionalism2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThe New Midwestern Regionalism2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®142762026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01That's Gonna Leave a Mark: Tommy Boy Fest Comes to My Hometown
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986753
<p></p>
My hometown is Sandusky, Ohio. I was born and raised there in the 1960s and 70s, and moved away after college in the mid-1980s. I've lived outside of it longer than I lived in it. Recently, I found myself going back to witness a celebration of the town—a celebration of sorts. I was coming back to my hometown to attend the Tommy Boy Fest, a three-day celebration marking the 30th anniversary of the 1995 movie Tommy Boy that was set in Sandusky.I accepted the idea of writing about the event, but with some reservations.First, I was already defensive about my hometown. Tommy Boy seemed to be one more in a progression of cheap shots by Hollywood, making Sandusky the butt of jokes, typically portraying it in a negative
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallThat's Gonna Leave a Mark: Tommy Boy Fest Comes to My Hometown2026-04-01text/htmlen-USThat's Gonna Leave a Mark: Tommy Boy Fest Comes to My Hometown2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®243392026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01General Social Survey Historical Data on the Midwest
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986754
<p></p>
National trends and shifts in popular opinion are often reported, but less attention is given to regional comparisons and thus it is hard to see the Midwest in a comparative regional perspective. National attitudes and opinions about social issues have fluctuated over the last fifty years, of course, but it is important to Midwestern studies to take a regional view and make crossregional comparisons.1 The long-running General Social Survey (GSS) is used here to capture the changing attitudes and belief systems of people in the Midwest over the last fifty years. The GSS, which started in 1972, is a national survey and one of the most widely used surveys of American attitudes and opinions.2 Over fifty years of GSS
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallGeneral Social Survey Historical Data on the Midwest2026-04-01text/htmlen-USGeneral Social Survey Historical Data on the Midwest2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®272802026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01An Interview with Tom W. Smith
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986755
<p></p>
Where were you born and raised?Bred, born, and raised in State College, Pennsylvania. My family were "townies" in this college town, having lived in the area since at least 1840.Is State College considered part of Appalachia, and why do they call it "Happy Valley"?State College is at the base of Mount Nittany in the heart of the Nittany Valley. By legend both are named after Princess Nita-Nee. One version has her falling in love with a white settler, Malachi Boyer. This romance was objected to by her family and her brothers attacked him and chased him into the largely submerged Penn's Cave. Unable to pass the brothers who guarded the flooded entrance to the cave, Boyer crawled into a remote passage and died there.
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallAn Interview with Tom W. Smith2026-04-01text/htmlen-USAn Interview with Tom W. Smith2026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®150092026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01At Home Away from Home: Joseph Amato, 1938–2025
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986756
<p></p>
Joseph Anthony Amato, founder of the Southwest Minnesota State University Rural and Regional Studies Center, was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. Tied by golf to his place during his teens, he left home for a BA in history at the University of Michigan, a MA in history and folklore at the Université de Laval, and a PhD in History at the University of Rochester. After brief stints teaching at Binghamton University and the University of California, Riverside, Amato came with his wife Cathy in 1969 to Southwest State College in Marshall, Minnesota. From its founding in 1967, Southwest experienced dramatic ups and downs, but it was rescued in 1977 by new president Jon Wefald, former Minnesota State Commissioner of
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallAt Home Away from Home: Joseph Amato, 1938–20252026-04-01text/htmlen-USAt Home Away from Home: Joseph Amato, 1938–20252026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®125082026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01Plains-Spoken Poet: Jane Greer, 1953–2025
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757
<p></p>
Jane Greer wrote from the heartland with a voice that was uniquely her own.The people who filled the pews for her funeral were surprised to hear she was a nationally renowned poet. Her neighbors in Bismarck, North Dakota, knew Jane Greer as the woman who answered the phones at the convent. Some knew her as the lady who visited their prison to teach them about Jesus. For many homeless, she was the lady who helped them write a resume and prepare for job interviews. Others knew her simply as the wife of Jim and the mother of Robert.As word of her death spread across the country, however, old media and new lit up with tributes to the poet. "You may not know her name," said Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review, "but
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986757">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/672/image/coversmallPlains-Spoken Poet: Jane Greer, 1953–20252026-04-01text/htmlen-USPlains-Spoken Poet: Jane Greer, 1953–20252026-04-012026TWOProject MUSE®88472026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-01