BACK EAST
HOW WESTERNERS INVENTED A REGION
A fresh perspective on the American cultural landscape
Just as easterners imagined the American West, westerners imagined the American East. Back East flips the script of American regional narratives.
This short video, My Brother’s Stoop, shares the voices of some of the westerners featured in Back East.
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.
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.
Flannery Burke’s research explores North American regional cultures and environments as well as intersections of art, literature, and public policy. She is committed to sharing the Indigenous and Mexican cultures of the United States widely and incorporating those cultures and their histories into the regional, national, and global stories that scholars tell.
Books by Flannery Burke
Essays in Edited Collections
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