Flannery Burke - Back East: How Westerners Invented a Region
Presented by Left Bank Books & Left Bank Books Foundation
Join us as we welcome Flannery Burke, author and Associate Professor of American Studies at Saint Louis University, to discuss her new book Back East: How Westerners Invented a Region. By examining how westerners imagined the American East, Back East provides a fresh perspective on the American cultural landscape, offering a deeper understanding of the myths that continue to shape it.
"Flannery Burke's thematically rich and thoroughly engaging narrative style beautifully accompanies her smart, sophisticated analysis of the literature of race, gender, and regionalism, and environment and imagination. This is a powerful and profound work of personal reflection and discovery, and scholarly significance, that everyone interested in the West, regionalism, and American culture needs to read." -- David Wrobel
Burke will be in conversation with Benjamin Looker, author and SLU Associate Professor of American Studies.
Burke will personalize and sign copies after the presentation! Personalized and signed copies will be available to be mailed anywhere in the country. For personalized copies, please order before noon on September 4th.
Join us at Left Bank Books
399 N. Euclid Ave
St. Louis, MO 63108
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About the Speakers
Flannery Burke is associate professor of American studies at Saint Louis University. She is author of A Land Apart: The Southwest and the Nation in the Twentieth Century and From Greenwich Village to Taos: Primitivism and Place at Mabel Dodge Luhan's.
Benjamin Looker is an associate professor of American Studies at Saint Louis University, with a PhD in American Studies from Yale University. His most recent book, A Nation of Neighborhoods: Imagining Cities, Communities, and Democracy in Postwar America, was a recipient of "best-book" awards from organizations including the American Studies Association and the Urban History Association.
About Back East: How Westerners Invented a Region
Western imaginations of "Back East" rewrote America's cultural identity, shaping myths and realities alike
Just as easterners imagined the American West, westerners imagined the American East, reshaping American culture. Back East flips the script of American regional narratives.
In novels, travel narratives, popular histories, and dude ranch brochures, twentieth-century western US writers saw the East through the lens of their experiences and ambitions. Farmers following the railroad saw capitalists exploiting their labor, while cowboys viewed urban easterners as soft and effete. Westerners of different racial backgrounds, including African Americans and Asian Americans, projected their hopes and critiques onto an East that embodied urbanity, power, and opportunity.
This interplay between "Out West" and "Back East" influenced income inequality, land use, cultural identities, and national government. It fueled myths that reshaped public lands, higher education, and the publishing industry. The cultural exchange was not one-sided; it contributed to modern social sciences and amplified marginalized voices from Chicane poets to Native artists.
By examining how westerners imagined the American East, Back East provides a fresh perspective on the American cultural landscape, offering a deeper understanding of the myths that continue to shape it.
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