From the Editor

This issue of Early American Studies offers a range of articles that have unusual connections. For those absorbed by the complex issues involving cultural change and exchange, essays about New England and the Caribbean will command attention. Andrea Cremer and James Robertson focus on the ways colonial cultures seek to impose change and, in turn, are changed by competing powers. Michael Mulcahy links the Port Royal earthquake to changes in intellectual interpretations of natural phenomena and because both Robertson and Mulcahy concentrate on Jamaica, their essays flow together nicely.

Three other articles concentrate on words, albeit in different ways: words that imbue power, words that instill national loyalty, and words that create events. Antonio Bly offers evidence of a greater number of literate runaways than we have previously conceived, Neil York explores the perpetuation of patriotism through Johnny Tremain, and Jonathan Beecher Field examines the historiographical construction of the Antinomian controversy.

This issue welcomes a new department, “Lecture Notes.” Designed for authors who do not plan further revision or expansion of conference papers, this occasional department will publish presentations that concern subjects of limited or immediate interest rather than those requiring long-term research. The essays will be printed as the audience heard them: without footnotes. Michael Zuckerman’s piece on the politics of then and now fits the parameters of this new department quite nicely.

Finally, the second half of the diary of Horace Lee appears in this issue, covering the year between July 1841 and July 1842. Patrick Farmer reintroduces Lee to us, and we only wish that somewhere, sometime, someone will find—in a dusty New England attic—the missing journal that precedes the one written by this charming young man. But whether the earlier volume emerges or not, the selections published in Early American Studies must take their place alongside the most delightful of New England diaries.

Fall 2008