Flyover Fictions

Polarization in U.S.-American Culture, Media, and Politics

Cornelia Klecker, Sascha Pöhlmann

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781496242525
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia nordamericana

Flyover Fictions critically engages the history and contemporary use of the “flyover country” trope in American culture and repurposes the concept as an abstract tool for cultural studies. The term “flyover” arose in the 1970s with variations—“flyover country,” “flyover states”—mainly used as synonyms for the American Midwest in intranational banter regarding cultural differences from the dominant urban centers of New York City and Los Angeles. In recent years, the trope has shifted away from this playfulness and its traditional geographic reference points to indicate larger political and cultural developments that speak of a deepening polarization in the United States.

Flyover Fictions is an exploration of the trope’s current politicization, historical contexts, and general proliferation of meanings. Instead of resolving the ambiguities inherent in the concept, the volume considers what can be done with these ambiguities, and how precisely their fuzziness might be used to create an analytic tool to describe, understand, and critique processes of cultural hierarchization. The contributors show how flyover fictions may operate in different national contexts and also internationally or transnationally, not only providing a fresh perspective on historical and contemporary American culture but also supplying a conceptual toolbox for broader use.
 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• Part 1s
• 1. Rethinking “Flyover Country” in the Age of American Hyperpolarization
• 2. Flyover Fiction as Republican Identity Politics
• Part 2
• 3. “If You Build It . . .”
• 4. Flying over the “Forgotten Man”
• 5. The Midwestern Gothic in It Follows and Only Lovers Left Alive
• Part 3
• 6. The Literary Beginnings of Flyover Fiction in the 1920s
• 7. Writing the Midwest in Exile
• 8. Flying over a Lynching
• Part 4
• 9. Aerial Views, Pedestrian Ways
• 10. “A Little Agony Was Just What This Place Needed”
• 11. Destination Flyover State
• Part 5
• 12. Looking Back to Move Forward?
• 13. Straight TikTok as Digital Flyover Country
• Literary Epilogue
• Watchmaking
• Contributors
• Index
• About Cornelia Klecker
• About Sascha Pöhlmann