Letters Lost and Found: Silences in the Early American Archive – Bradley Dubos
What can we ever truly know about early American lives when their stories are entangled with, in Sherri Cummings’s words, an “apathetic, biased archive”? Researching the “quotidian lives” of African women and girls in the early Atlantic world, Sherri asks challenging questions about lived experience that go beyond the colonial archive’s ability to answer. Both Sherri and Michael Monescalchi also reflect on the necessity of reading “around” the subjects they…
“Looking Over Bet’s Shoulders: The Archive and the Albany Arson Plot” – Michael Monescalchi
In the prologue to Facing East from Indian Country, Dan Richter claims that it is nearly impossible for scholars who are interested in recovering disenfranchised persons’ perspectives “to see the world through [the] eyes” of those we study.1 Rather than despair over the archive’s limitations, however, he offers a solution to this problem, arguing that we must try to look over our subjects’ shoulders to “reconstruct something of the way in…
Interview with Meg Toth, Managing Editor of Early American Studies
What inspired you to specialize in American Studies? When I started my Ph.D. at Tufts University, I was convinced I would specialize in Victorian British literature. I had taken excellent courses in Victorian studies for my M.A. degree at Boston College, and I imagined writing my dissertation on authors like Dickens, the Brontës, Hardy, and Wilkie Collins. Then, in my first semester at Tufts, I took an American literature class…
Featured Video: What Makes a Good Blog Post?
Are you interested in writing for EAS Miscellany but feel unsure about where to start? Check out our comprehensive video about what makes a good blog post, as well as what EAS Miscellany looks for when featuring one. For more videos from EAS Miscellany, click here.
Cancel Culture and Call Out Culture in Salem and Essex County, Massachusetts on the Eve of the American Revolution – Richard Morris
Today, much is made of “cancel culture,” or economically punishing those whose statements, ideas, and behaviors violate the values of various groups. Canceling can include calls for firing individuals who take objectionable stances; boycotting businesses that behave similarly; or, in the case of celebrities, steering clear of their performances. “Call out culture” also condemns offensive language and behaviors but is more often associated with pressure for apologies and reform than…
Summer 2024
The Summer 2024 issue of Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal is out now and available on Project MUSE.
Interview with Jonathan Eacott, Author of the Summer 2024 Free Access EAS Article
EAS Miscellany sat down recently with Summer 2024 author Jonathan Eacott to talk about his article, “‘Elephant Murder’: ‘Lessons on Humanity and Benevolence’.” For a short period of time, it’s freely available on Project MUSE. Why did you choose to research your topic? What interested you about the topic? I kept stumbling into elephants when I was working on my first book, Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain…
Roundtable — Facing the Archive from the Present: A Celebration of Dan Richter’s Work – Tara A. Bynum and Liz Polcha
EAS Editors’ Note: This guest-edited roundtable is a follow up to “Facing the Future of Early American Studies,” the July 2023 conference where scholars reflected on the scholarship and mentorship of Daniel K. Richter, director emeritus of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. Roundtable Introduction – Tara A. Bynum and Liz Polcha Jump to Facing the Archive from the Present Roundtable Posts As literary scholars, we want to honor…
The Ethics of Narrating the Past – Sherri V. Cummings
What are the ethics of narrating the past? I often wrestle with this question while researching the quotidian lives of African women and their daughters, in slavery and precarious freedom, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Saidiya Hartman, in her essay “Venus in Two Acts,” reminds us to respect the “shrieks, the moans, the nonsense and the opacity,” of their experiences despite the want, or rather the need, for…
Cultivating Curiosity: Phillis Wheatley in Newport – Michael Monescalchi
To more imaginatively engage with the early American archive, I think that we should go into every archive—and approach every text we read—without any kind of wishful thinking. Instead, we should be open-minded and curious about what we uncover. One of the ways that I’ve been able to enhance my curiosity is to move beyond the individual writers I research and learn more about the communities they belonged to and…