Editor's Note

The Harvard Advocate. Calendar Magazine. Music for the Love of It. Anima. Dirt. Land of Extremes. Sequoia. Editorial work has trailed me from a young age, whether it be helping my father with his self-published newsletter, proofreading undergraduate fiction in college, flying across the country the day after graduation to take on a freebie popular culture monthly in my favorite city, escaping into a series of messy creations put together by the assortment of iconoclasts known as the San Francisco Women Writers Workshop, or long hours as a graduate student propping up an estimable, near-defunct literary journal in the company of my dear friend (now "poetry witch") Annie Finch. As many of you know, I also served as book review editor of this journal (and then coeditor for reviews) for over half a decade. And yet, despite my familiarity with the intricacies of editorial labor in a variety of contexts, as well as the ever-changing contours of our field and even the look of a galley proof, the last few months have upended any sense of expertise I may once have possessed.

In appreciation of what those who came before me made look so deceptively easy, I'd like to dedicate the bulk of this introduction to honoring the journal's two most recent prior editors, without whom I would lack both the courage and opportunity to be the person writing this note. One, Professor Sandra Gustafson, edited Early American Literature for a decade and remains close by as its advisory editor. The other, Carolina Distinguished Professor David S. Shields, who preceded Sandra in both these capacities, steps off the masthead altogether with this issue for the first time in twenty-odd years. I'll start with him.

No doubt David has entirely forgotten the episode I am about to relate. Years ago, he was kind enough to open an e-mail from a young professor he barely knew. Attached were eight pages of informal ruminations on the distinction between sentimentalism and domesticity in an early American literary context. David wrote back with some thoughts of his own, and that exchange became the germ of my first publication in EAL. The reason David probably doesn't remember this event is that for him it was entirely unremarkable. But as anyone familiar with standard practice in academic journals knows, his attention was in actual fact decidedly unusual. David's willingness to entertain whatever potentially innovative insight came his way, regardless of who held it or the shape it held, inspired me during a period when institutional walls seemed to loom particularly large. While I can't say I'll exhibit the same generosity of spirit should it come to e-mails with half-done essays attached, I remain grateful to David for valuing conversation over convention. Without sacrificing a shred of this journal's more than half century of high standards, I hope to honor his willingness not to stand on ceremony wherever new ideas are concerned.

One of David's best new ideas was appointing Sandra Gustafson to succeed him as editor of the journal. Last year I asked Sandra to reflect on where early American literature, and Early American Literature, found themselves almost a decade into her tenure. Her response, while very different in kind from David's, displays similar intellectual curiosity and personal generosity. If you ask Sandra what she is proudest about regarding her editorship, she almost always speaks first of a commitment to inclusion that extends from special issue topics to historical and theoretical methodologies, to the career stage of its contributors. Many is the graduate student whom Sandra has seen through multiple drafts of a promising article that eventually becomes the pathway to a professorial appointment. These essays sit alongside contributions by Houston Baker, Wai Chi Dimock, Annette Gordon-Reed, Annette Kolodny, Jerome McGann, Peter Onuf, Ivy Schweitzer, Kenneth Warren, and countless other luminaries. Some of Sandra's personal favorite issues include: the most recent, coedited by Rodrigo Lazo and Kirsten Silva-Gruesz, on the Spanish Americas; a joint forum with William and Mary Quarterly on "Materials and Methods in Native American and Indigenous...