Summary: Comparing The Midwest To New England

1.) In the article, Ryden’s research question or the reason for writing it is to compare the Midwest to New England, the South and the West. In doing so he uses history to construct a regional identity for each of these places.
2.) In the article Ryden defines region as ““Region” in this sense implies a historical veneer through which a section of the country is seen, understood, assigned meaning, and given identity according to some defining experience or set of experiences located deep in the past, a crucial phase or moment at which the region was broken away, stamped for life, and set on its separate cultural course within the national collective, having achieved an identity that it is believed to maintain with greater or lesser dilution to the present day.(513)” He uses region as a sense of history, that the culture and
“One does not live in New England for very long, for instance, without becoming aware of the extent to which perception of the region is filtered, and regional identity is shaped, through a particular shared vision of the colonial and Revolutionary past, a vision that blankets the landscape and continues to influence life and cultural expression.” He says that New England is so rich of culture and heritage that their “sense of place” is well known. Speaking of the Midwest “it is defined by the absence of a past, a sort of temporal emptiness. Lacking the historical touchstone of identity so readily available to other regions, Midwesterners are required to do a different sort of imaginative work.” He is saying that since there is no historical event that the Midwest can latch onto, that their “sense of place” is based on the lack of the past, and they fill in with imagination. Relating to intersubjectivity, Ryden is saying that New Englanders have a historical event to gather around culturally and socially, and Midwesterners do