(Re)Imagining the Midwest 4219-SD0083
In this course we will look at how texts of culture address specific aspects of the Midwest that make it stand out from other cultural regions of the US. We will start with Chicago, arguably the capital of the region, which despite its metropolitan character seems at times to be suffering from an inferiority complex vis-à-vis East-coast and West-coast metropolises such as New York or LA. Representations of the Windy City that we’ll consider in some detail include Carl Sandberg’s poetry, Nelson Algren’s poignant images of the Chicago working-class in the post-WW2 period, and the critically acclaimed TV series The Bear. We’ll delve into representations of the region’s industrial past, tackled among others by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. We’ll take a closer look at racial relations in the city and region, past and present, reading fragments of Richard Wright’s Native Son, Michelle Obama’s Becoming, listening to Vic Mensa’s “16 Shots,” and discussing the repercussions of George Floyd’s death on Minneapolis and other cities of the region. The Midwest has from the start been a magnet for immigrants, including those from Poland, who still constitute a substantial presence in the region’s ethnic mosaic. We’ll look at representations of Polish diasporics in texts by Chicagoan Stuart Dybek and Anthony Bukowski, a native of Superior, Wisconsin. We will also discuss current problems faced by the Indigenous inhabitants of these lands, based on native writer Louise Erdrich’s latest novel The Sentence. Detroit will also make its presence, through Geoffrey Eugenides’s Virgin Suicides, 8 Mile, a film on the beginnings of Eminem’s career, and recent trend of urbex. All in all, these cultural texts will help us understand the idiosyncratic character of the region and the significance that it holds in US-American imagination.
Type of course
Mode
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Upon completion of the course, a student:
Knowledge:
- knows the history and specificity of the Midwest as a cultural region;
- is familiar with the specificity of cultural representations of the Midwest.
Skills:
- can take part in discussions of representations of the Midwest in texts of culture;
- is able to offer a detailed analysis of a text of culture in speech and writing with the use of terminology proper for the studied body of texts.
Competences:
- is aware of the racial and ethnic diversity of the US, including the Midwest;
- is sensitive to the role of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, social class and other elements of identity for the functioning of individuals and groups within a larger society.
Assessment criteria
Course requirements:
- attendance and active participation in the classes – 20p
- four short response papers – 40p (10p each)
- final research paper/project – 40p
Grading scale:
0-59% - 2
60-69% - 3.0
70-74% - 3.5
75-84% - 4.0
85-89% - 4.5
90-97% - 5
98-100% - 5!
Bibliography
Anderson, Rodney, and Shaun Allshouse, eds. The Rural Midwest since World War II. NIU Press, 2014.
Barczyk, Ewa, ed. Footprints of Polonia: Polish Historical Sites Across North America. Hippocrene, 2022.
Blanke, David. Sowing the American Dream : How Consumer Culture Took Root in the Rural Midwest / David Blanke. Ohio University Press, 2000.
Bowen, William M., ed. The Road through the Rust Belt : From Preeminence to Decline to Prosperity W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2014.
Dyja, Thomas L. The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream. Penguin Press, 2013.
Harvey, David. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. Verso, 2013.
Køhlert, Frederik Byrn, ed. Chicago: A Literary History. Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Miller, Donald L. City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2003.
Neumann, Tracy. Remaking the Rust Belt : The Postindustrial Transformation of North America / Tracy Neumann. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
Smith, Carl S. Chicago and the American Literary Imagination: 1880-1920. University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: