Midwestern literature in historical and cultural context / Marcia Noe -- What is "middlewestishness"? the evolution of Midwestern literary studies / Sara Kosiba -- Complicated grief, mourning and melancholia : reading the novel of Godfrey St. Peter's compounded losses in Willa Cather's The professor's house / Sarah Warren-Riley -- For those non-Midwestern, Midwestern writers : Richard Powers, Toni Morrison and the Midwest Topos / Patricia Oman -- Patricia Hampl, Minnesota and The florist's daughter : memoir as history / Marilyn Atlas -- Your homeland is where you live and where you work : changing Midwestern pastoral(ism) in Tomas Rivera's ... And the earth did not devour him / William Barillas -- "A place to fear and love" : the imagined heartland of David Foster Wallace's The broom of the system, Jurrit Daalder -- Performing Africa in the American Midwest : memories of Africa in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Song of Solomon / Maureen Eke -- It's heaven : sports literature and Iowa's pastoral image / Scott D. Emmert -- Big shoulders, cat feet : the Midwestern dimensions of Carl Sandburg's Chicago Poems / Phillip A. Greasley -- Humor me, I'm from the Midwest : Mike Perry and the trope of poking fun at ourselves / Christian Knoeller -- "Figures in transmotion" : bison hunt narratives as Mise en Abyme in the native literatures of the American Midwest / Matthew Low -- In the heart of the land : Midwestern plays and playwrights / David Radavich -- "A discovered land" : Willa Cather's Pioneers John Rohrkemper -- Chicago and Peter DeVries' Map of desire / Guy Szuberla.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 230-233) and index.