Editor's Notes

This issue welcomes Dr. Shevaun Watson as the managing editor of Early American Literature. Currently an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of South Carolina, Dr. Watson focuses on the rhetoric of slavery in early American discourses and African-American oratory. She is particularly interested in inserting historical consciousness into the field of composition and rhetoric study. Dr. Watson will oversee the disposition of submissions and the business dimensions of running EAL's editorial office. At various junctures during the 40 years of the journal's publication there has been a managing editor.

In the past six months a problem has arisen with electronic submissions of articles to EAL. Spam and virus safeguards on the University of South Carolina mail system have become so preemptive that numbers of submissions have been shunted to the Junk File as suspected spam. The consequence: some electronic submissions have not been received. If you have not received an acknowledgment of the receipt of a manuscript, please email the editor at dshields@gwm.sc.edu and mardalu@worldnet.att.net. I will look into the disposition of the submission.

The Library of America is contemplating the creation of a two-volume anthology of early American diary writings, a resource that promises to be of great value since such a collection does not now exist.

The American Antiquarian Society's second conference on the History of the Book, scheduled for June 16–18, 2005, is entitled LIBERTY! ÉGALITÉ! ¡INDEPENDENCIA! Print Culture, Enlightenment, and Revolution in the Americas, 1776–1826. It will explore the circulation, translation, revision, cross-cultural interpretation, and influence of key texts inciting revolt against colonial dominion and establishing independent states in the western hemisphere during the first age of Revolution. Matters to be treated include the effect of European Enlightenment books and pamphlets on independence movements throughout the Americas; the representation of revolutions in North America, France, Haiti, and Central and South America, and of the 1808–1814 Spanish War of Independence against France in the press; the publication of public documents, charters, and political declarations and their international influence; print and the reaction against Revolution in the Americas; the literature of Revolution and the creation of the "vox populi" in new American nation-states; the role of print in defining norms and excesses in liberated polities—particularly in respect to Jacobinism, factionalism, radical libertarianism, and filibusterism; and print's function in highlighting the problem of slavery in newly independent American nations.