Editor’s Note

In this issue I have many people to thank for their service to EAL, and many people to welcome to new affiliations with the journal.

First let me extend my heartfelt gratitude to the outgoing members of the editorial board, who completed their service last spring. Joanna Brooks, Matthew Brown, Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Joseph Fichtelberg, Anne Myles, Phillip Round, Timothy Sweet, and Colin Wells have all been hard-working and valued members of the board for many years. Joe Fichtelberg, Phil Round, and Tim Sweet deserve special acknowledgment for their long service and extraordinary contributions. I also want to welcome new board members Matt Cohen, Paul Downes, Gene Jarrett, Meredith Neuman, and Christopher Phillips.

My next round of thanks goes to the members of the Early American Literature Book Prize committee. Kathleen Donegan (representing the MLA executive committee) and Hilary Wyss (representing the Society of Early Americanists) joined the EAL editorial team of Marion Rust, David Shields, and me as judges in this first annual prize competition. I was gratified by the rigor, thoughtfulness, and collegiality of the process, and I thank the committee members for their hard work and generosity.

A special shout-out as well to David Shields for his assistance managing the submissions during my NEH leave in 2014.

Finally, I want to thank Qingyuan Jiang for his service last year as my graduate assistant and welcome my new assistant, Aleksandra Hernandez. Aleksandra is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Notre Dame, with an MA from the University of Toronto. She is an Americanist studying the nineteenth century through the lenses of animal studies, media theory, and semiology.