The Midwest is often said to be the essence of the United States, and yet it is remarkably resistant to definition. Even its putative inhabitants, when surveyed, disagree about its nature and location. Everywhere and nowhere at once, the Midwest is frequently described less as a destination than a transit zone: “a gateway” to the West, a nexus of rivers, a collection of “flyover states” and “rustbelt cities”—as if time itself had passed through on the way to more exciting locales. And yet, like “the middle class,” “the Midwest” is the object of relentless political appeals and calculations. It is said to be “the heartland,” the “bread basket,” the “bellwether,” the “real America.” Commentators regularly invoke it as a key index of national trends. Just as often, the Midwest is stereotyped as a provincial backwater—a land of rural simplicity, racial homogeneity, old-fashioned values, and general ordinariness. Scholars, artists, cultural critics, community leaders, and journalists have relentlessly contested these stereotypes, pointing to the Midwest’s overlooked diversity, complex immigrant history, artistic productivity, and economic dynamism. Yet the need to keep debunking vague and totalizing notions of midwestern identity only testifies to their persistence.

How can a place so central to American identity be so elusive? Indeed, is there such a place—or is “the Midwest” a tenacious political fiction?  What are the cultural and political effects of this concept, now and previously? What representations—in literature, visual media, journalism, history, and public culture—have underpinned conceptions of the Midwest?  How do such representations relate to the complex demographic, social, economic, and experiential dimensions of life in this part of the United States?  

The humanities are central to the study of such questions. As the Midwest resurges in political salience and becomes a growing focus of scholarly inquiry and grant funding, Miami is ideally situated to lead a pathbreaking study of the subject. Miami was home to one of the first scholarly journals on the subject, The Old Northwest, and many of our faculty are currently engaged in projects about the Midwest. At a time of increasing pressure on public universities, Miami’s humanities community has an opportunity to bring new understanding of our region to other scholars, students, alumni, and the public.

The 2025-26 Altman Program invites faculty to join a collaborative investigation of the Midwest and analogous regions, current and past. We invite applications from scholars working directly on the Midwest or similar regions and from anyone else who feels they can contribute to and benefit from the program. The preceding Call for Applications should be understood not as a final program description but a provocation for assembling a team of humanities experts who will refine the program collaboratively this winter. We invite applicants to suggest approaches and topics not specified above and to suggest additional framing questions, visiting speakers, co-collaborators, and program elements.