Toward Rust Belt Aesthetics: Exploring the Cultural Projects of the Deindustrialized U.S. Midwest

Abstract

This thesis establishes the concept of Rust Belt aesthetics, a term for the artistic and cultural narratives that define, analyze, critique, or otherwise describe the deindustrialized U.S. Midwest, a region commonly referred to as the Rust Belt. This thesis explores how aesthetic projects re-present the experience of deindustrialization. The locus of this analysis is the region, and the thesis argues that the region operates as a discursive device that can mediate between and through other spatial “levels,” like the local or the global. Rust Belt aesthetics emerge from a moment of regional, national, and global transformations, and these aesthetics can construct the region to various political ends. The thesis analyzes aesthetics projects like advertisements, literature, and visual art in order to provide insight into the shifting economic, cultural, and social forces at play in the region and beyond. The goal of my analysis is not to arrive at a static definition of Rust Belt aesthetics. Instead, I hope to understand how aesthetic projects from and about the region communicate specific narratives about the Rust Belt, often through the lens of critical regionalism and the everyday life of the working class.