Compulsively Aimless

I recently attended the Society of Midwest Historians conference in Des Moines, Iowa, and it got me thinking about how we came to define the Midwest. Here are a few of my incomplete thoughts on the region stimulated by the two-day conference. Before the region had a name, European settlers in the East generally referred to the land west of the Allegheny Mountains as the “Frontier.” But in 1787, the land north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River was designated as the “ Northwest” by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. This region included Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and the northeastern portion of Minnesota. As the United States expanded westward, the term “Old Northwest” emerged to distinguish it from the Pacific Northwest. But the territory of the Northwest Ordinance remained the starting point for what we now call the Midwest. Interestingly, the physical starting point of the region is represented by historical markers in East Liverpool, Ohio, where ...

  With the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, it’s worth a look back at the St. Paul native’s Midwest roots and how they appear in his most famous work. 
Introduction As a story teller of the Jazz Age and its later disillusionment, Fitzgerald also created a subtle regional distinction in his literary landscapes. For Fitzgerald, the American Midwest served as the foundation of his characters' origins, a place of inherent morality and traditional values. By contrast, the allure of the East Coast, particularly New York, represented the object of his characters' aspirations, a realm of wealth and glamour that ultimately led to their moral and emotional undoing. (New York City and Long Island can often be seen as what he means by the East .) By contrasting the values he attributed to these regions, Fitzgerald explored the corrosive effects of unchecked ambition and the recognition of what was lost in its pursuit. The geographic contrast of Midwest and East is m...