Podcast Summary: "Back East: How Westerners Invented a Region"

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Dr. Flannery Burke
Release Date: September 3, 2025
Book: Back East: How Westerners Invented a Region (University of Washington Press, 2025)

Overview of the Episode

In this engaging episode, Dr. Miranda Melcher interviews Dr. Flannery Burke about her groundbreaking new book, Back East: How Westerners Invented a Region. The discussion flips the traditional narrative of American regional imagination, exploring not how the East crafted myths of the West, but how Westerners themselves constructed and imagined “Back East.” Burke traces these imaginative processes across literature, hospitality industries (like dude ranches), railroads, politics, and even contemporary pop culture. The conversation delves into issues of perspective, race, policy, and the ongoing relevance of regional identity in America.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Motivation & Framing the Research

• [02:44] Dr. Burke’s background in New Mexico and Kansas gave her a unique perspective—her family didn't have “move west” migration stories, but rather two regional roots.
• She was inspired to flip the academic lens, making Westerners the subject (not object) of regional imagination:

  "I wanted to write a book where Westerners were not the object of investigation, but the subjects, the ones doing the imagining."
  — Dr. Flannery Burke [03:34]

2. Defining “Back East” and Sources of Imagination

• [04:25] Dr. Burke clarifies her subjects: all were Westerners, born west of the Mississippi, imagining “Back East” chiefly through books and local cultural influences—not personal migration from the East.
• These “Western imaginaries” were constructed through a mix of family stories, literature, and the local literary world.

3. The Role of Dude Ranches and Railroads in Shaping Regional Imagination

• [05:51] Early 20th-century hospitality—dude ranches and their collaboration with railroads—played a big role in building images of East and West. These advertisements and experiences were co-produced, with both sides projecting their expectations onto the other.

  “The advertising was a product of both–both the ranches who were anticipating their customers and the advertisers back East…”
  — Dr. Flannery Burke [07:09]

• Notably, individual actors like Max Big Man, a Crow (Absaroka) man, used railroad-sponsored travel for both cultural and personal advocacy, cleverly manipulating Eastern expectations.

  “He was a modern man, just like the advertisers that he was talking to. But there was this expectation that he would be primitive... He played on that expectation.”
  — Dr. Flannery Burke [08:53]

4. Post-World War II: Movement, Identity, and Regional Reflection

• [09:39] Wars prompt massive population shifts. After WWII, Westerners’ exposure to the East, combined with a New Deal-celebrated focus on regionalism, fueled these imaginative constructs.
• Rising prosperity supported a flourishing print culture that reflected and cemented ideas about regional differences.

5. Chicago and the Multiplicity of “Back Easts”

• [12:11] Burke unpacks how “Back East” is a matter of perspective—even Chicago is "back east" from the viewpoint of the Rockies or West Coast, but “back east” for Chicagoans might mean New York.

  “There were multiple Back Easts for Westerners depending on where in the West a person began and what their situation in the west was.”
  — Dr. Flannery Burke [13:56]

6. The Marginal Man Thesis and Its Limitations

• [14:24] Discussion of sociologist Robert Park’s “Marginal Man” theory—originally about ethnic groups on the edges of mainstream society.
• Burke examines how two Seattle-born Westerners, Horace Caton (African American) and Frank Miyamoto (Japanese American), engaged with but ultimately critiqued Park’s ideas, recognizing that structural racism was a continuing barrier to full societal integration.

  “It was not assimilation on the part of marginal men that would lead to equality, but an interrogation and dismantling of American structural racism.”
  — Dr. Flannery Burke [17:39]

7. From Imagination to Policy: Liberalism, Land, and Influence

• [19:08] Western writers like Wallace Stegner and Bernard DeVoto used regional imaginaries to advocate for land conservation—and successfully influenced some policy shifts (e.g., national monuments to national parks).
• However, their perspectives often reflected the voices and interests of powerful white men, not those of Native Americans or Mexican Americans, signaling the exclusions inherent even in well-meaning liberal policy-making.

  “Compromise is a necessary part of liberal democratic decision-making. And that did not always… grant to Native voices and Mexican American voices the same weight…”
  — Dr. Flannery Burke [22:35]

8. Regional Identity and White Nationalist Radicalism

• [22:54] Burke points out how Western myths and iconography were co-opted by white nationalist and white power movements, both as an internal organizing tool and as a way to play into broader national prejudices.
• Regional stereotypes became both a cudgel and a camouflage for these movements.

  “Part of the false association of the rural west with white power was a product of Eastern prejudice and Eastern stereotype. And part of it was… rural Western white power reactionaries using that prejudice to their own strategic advantage.”
  — Dr. Flannery Burke [24:48]

9. Contemporary Resonance of Mid-20th Century Regional Imaginaries

• [25:23] Dr. Burke sees current pop culture (e.g., TV shows like Yellowstone) and political debate as shaped by these enduring constructs.
• Misperceptions about who works on farms, where certain populations are located, and what constitutes “elite” or “working class” still echo these invented regional identities.

  “I think all of that is still at play in contemporary American culture.”
  — Dr. Flannery Burke [26:34]

10. Easterns: The Missing Genre?

• [26:58] If there’s a robust “Western” film genre, do “Easterns” exist as a counterpart? Burke suggests yes, even if unnamed, citing films like The Royal Tenenbaums and Lady Bird as stories shaped by Westerners’ imaginaries of the East.

  “Something I say in the book is that once you know how to look, Back East is all over the place.”
  — Dr. Flannery Burke [28:43]

11. Inventing Agrarian Populism as a Western Phenomenon

• [28:54] Burke reflects on her research process and how historians of the 1930s, like John Hicks, helped retroactively construct agrarian populism's “Western” character—a label later appropriated by reactionary groups.
• Reactionaries misused this history—agrarian populists had, in fact, often been more leftist than the right-wing groups citing them.

  “I really think that agrarian populism was kind of invented as a Western phenomenon by historians of the 1930s.”
  — Dr. Flannery Burke [30:46]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “He was a modern man, just like the advertisers that he was talking to. But there was this expectation that he would be primitive...”
  — Dr. Flannery Burke on Max Big Man [08:53]

• “It was not assimilation on the part of marginal men that would lead to equality, but an interrogation and a dismantling of American structural racism.”
  — Dr. Flannery Burke [17:39]

• “Compromise is a necessary part of liberal democratic decision making. And that did not always grant to Native voices and Mexican American voices the same weight...”
  — Dr. Flannery Burke [22:35]

• “Once you know how to look, Back East is all over the place.”
  — Dr. Flannery Burke [28:43]

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:44] — Burke’s personal and scholarly backstory
• [04:25] — Definition of “Back East” from a Westerner’s perspective
• [05:51] — Dude ranches, railroads, hospitality, and advertising
• [07:29] — Max Big Man and performative Western-ness
• [09:39] — Postwar migration, New Deal regionalism, and print culture
• [12:11] — Chicago as a shifting “Back East,” and perspective’s importance
• [14:24] — Marginal man thesis, its appeal and critique
• [19:08] — Liberalism, land conservation, and exclusion in policymaking
• [22:54] — White nationalist radicalism and regional mythology
• [25:23] — Ongoing influence of regional imaginaries in contemporary culture
• [26:58] — The idea and examples of “Easterns” in popular culture
• [28:54] — Agrarian populism and its historical invention
• [31:55] — Burke’s forthcoming project on Watrous, NM: Hercules Junior and the Lost Territory

Upcoming Work

• Dr. Burke previews her next book-in-progress, Hercules Junior and the Lost Territory, exploring family and community history around Watrous, New Mexico, local/cosmopolitan tensions, and legacies of land and loss.

  “This kind of tension between local and cosmopolitanism that I explore in Back East, I think it’s going to be present in Hercules Junior and the Lost Territory, too.”
  — Dr. Flannery Burke [34:14]

For more, read Flannery Burke’s Back East: How Westerners Invented a Region (University of Washington Press, 2025).