Back East: How Westerners Invented a Region with Flannery Burke

Описание: Professor Flannery Burke and The Institute of American Indian Arts' Deborah Jackson Taffa host a virtual discussion of Burke’s latest book, Back East: How Westerners Invented a Region.

Book Description:
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.

Author Bio:
Flannery Burke teaches classes in environmental humanities, regional cultures, and Native American and Indigenous Studies at Saint Louis University. Her first book, From Greenwich Village to Taos, won the Ralph Emerson Twitchell Award from the Historical Society of New Mexico. Her second, A Land Apart: The Southwest and the Nation in the Twentieth Century won the Spur Award for Best Contemporary Non-Fiction from the Western Writers of America and was a finalist for the David J. Weber-Clements Prize for the Best Non-Fiction Book on Southwestern America from the Western History Association. Her third book, Back East: How Westerners Invented a Region, will be published by the University of Washington Press in 2025. She has published in peer-reviewed journals on topics ranging from childbirth to the status of gay men in Taos, New Mexico’s art community, and her work includes prize-winning articles on dude ranches and the Sun City retirement community.

Deborah Taffa Bio:
Deborah Taffa is the director of the MFA CW Program at the IAIA. Her memoir Whiskey Tender was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award, as well as a longlisted title for a 2025 Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction. It was named a Top Ten Book of 2024 by The Atlantic, Time Magazine, and Audible, as well as a top book on longer lists at NPR, Elle, Esquire, The New Yorker and Publisher’s Weekly. Taffa is a 2024 NEA Fellow, a 2022 winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History, and has received fellowships from Tin House, the University of Iowa, MacDowell, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Ellen Meloy Fund, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. She is a citizen of the Kwatsaan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo and earned her nonfiction MFA in Iowa City.

SCHOOL FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH
Established in 1907, the School for Advanced Research (SAR) advances creative thought and innovative work in the social sciences, humanities, and Native American arts. SAR is home to the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC), a leader in community-advised and collaborative Indigenous arts engagement and collections management. Through scholar residency, seminar, and artist fellowship programs, SAR Press publications, and a range of public programs, SAR facilitates intellectual inquiry and human understanding. SAR’s historic sixteen-acre campus sits on the ancestral lands of the Tewa people in O’gah’poh geh Owingeh or Santa Fe, New Mexico. SAR is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational institution.

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