Guest Editors: Nishani Frazier and Keona Ervin
American Studies, an interdisciplinary humanities journal, seeks proposals for a special issue that examines the social, spatial, cultural, and economic dynamics that will give rise to Midwest Futures. Throughout 2023, The New York Times, NPR, and various media sites highlighted key cities as climate havens based on reviews of climate change reports. The majority were located around the Great Lakes and upper Midwest region, including: Ann Arbor, Michigan; Duluth, Minnesota; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Buffalo, New York; Burlington, Vermont; and Madison, Wisconsin. Duluth, Minnesota has taken advantage of this designation by advancing itself as an escape from a disastrous environmental future.
Meanwhile, Cleveland, Ohio has created and named a boulevard the Opportunity Corridor. The Opportunity Corridor slices through key black communities beginning at Interstate 490 and ending at Cleveland Clinic. The idea was baked in its 20 yr. comprehensive plan, planting building blocks for the opportunity corridor as an economic engine to bolster the city’s economy through technology and health science. Along the way, the black community was and is being displaced, dispelled from Cleveland’s tech future.
Along the way, Midwest universities like The Ohio State, University of Michigan, Indiana University, are building the foundations of an AI future through its establishment of cyber and science labs. These sites are focused on building structures for big data in health, new digital agriculture, and smart communities. However, missing from the conversation are the human implications for emerging technologies, particularly on vulnerable communities.
And now, the Midwest has become the site of larger conversations about water access and transport of its water reserves to address the drought in the west. Within the last two years, water schemes have emerged to divert the liquid resource from the Great Lakes and the Mississippi to water dry/poor locations. These battles herald a larger conflict afoot as the south burns from the climate changes that drive drought from the west and to the sun-drenched states of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and others. Ironically, this water war fight takes place in the context of environmental injustice and water conflicts in cities like Flint, Michigan and the recurring issue of the toxic dumping in the Mississippi River.
What is the future of the Midwest? And more importantly, can we utilize new frontiers in technology and science to build a utopic future? Or is it the beginning of a dystopia, where the poor are shifted and thrown out of a newly rehabilitated Midwest that has transformed from rust belt to garden of Eden?
American Studies publishes articles that are insightful and engaging to scholars and social activists, as well as articles that can be sources for teaching university students. Possible topics for this special issue include but are not limited to:
- Emergent technologies impact on the Midwest
- The rise of the mega health centers (i.e. Cleveland Clinic)
- The impact of climate change on rural and urban spaces
- Literary futures centered around the Midwest
- The Midwest and Great Lake water wars
- Climate Change and Migration patterns
- Gentrification in the Rust Belt
- Rust Belt to Scientific Juggernaut
Interested contributors are asked to submit a 500-word abstract and a brief biography (250 words) no later than April 1, 2024 for consideration. All submissions should be emailed to Nishani Frazier at nfrazier@amsjeditors.org. Abstracts will be reviewed by the special issue editors and successful authors will submit full papers for peer review no later than July 1, 2024.