Editors Note

Call for papers: the spanish americas

This special issue of Early American Literature seeks to continue discussions on the linguistic and geographic resituating of the field through an emphasis on Spanish—as a language, an empire, a spatial conception, and an ideological stand-in for an “America” that is not English. We seek essays on topics from the period of early contact through the Spanish American independence movements, engaging materials from textual, oral, or performance traditions. Essays might explore texts from or about the Spanish-occupied regions of North America that later became incorporated into the United States; perform comparative analyses of authors, works, or literary institutions from across the Americas; examine anglophone representations of Mexican and Spanish American spaces; reflect on the relationship of writing to political organization; offer models for cultures of print that account for different systems of writing and patterns of censorship and distribution; or challenge and extend the hemispheric paradigm through new spatial models like Spanish Africa or the Latin Pacific. We also invite essays that introduce EAL readers to less familiar primary-source materials in Spanish or indigenous languages, and that consider questions of translation and communication in contact zones. In addition, we welcome essays that assess the state of the field and pedagogical reflections on what it means to teach early American literature in classrooms where the presence of an increasingly Latina/o student population is felt.

Direct questions and send submissions by February 15, 2017, to:

Kirsten Silva Gruesz (ksgruesz@ucsc.edu) and Rodrigo Lazo (rlazo@uci.edu).

From the editor

Warm thanks to the outgoing members of the editorial board—Kristina Bross, Martin Brückner, Jim Egan, and Susan Scott Parrish—for their good and valued work over the last several years. The journal could not sustain its high level of scholarship without the dedication of its board, which I gratefully acknowledge. New members this year are Kathleen Donegan, Paul Downes, Edward Watts, and Edward White.

My editorial assistant for 2016−17 is Jay David Miller, a PhD student in the English Department at the University of Notre Dame. Jay’s broad interests are in early American literature, religion, and the environment. He is currently at work on a project tracing the development of Quaker ideas about land and agriculture from the mid-seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century. Jay holds an MA in English from Pennsylvania State University, and his work on John Woolman has been published in the journal Religion and Literature.

Aleksandra Hernandez has completed her term as my editorial assistant, and I thank her for her good work managing the website and handling correspondence and mailings. I’m especially grateful for her meticulous approach to fact checking. Every article that appeared in the journal this year benefited from her careful work. Aleksandra, it has been a genuine pleasure!

From the coeditor for reviews

With this issue, we are proud to introduce Abby Schroering to the EAL team as editorial assistant for reviews. Abby is currently a senior studying theater and English at the University of Kentucky. In addition to working on productions in the UK Department of Theater and Dance, Abby is a senior fellow at the Gaines Center for the Humanities, where she is completing a thesis about characterization and performance in the writings of Virginia Woolf. After graduation, she plans to pursue a PhD in dramatic literature and a career in teaching or literary management.

We would also like to offer our sincerest thanks to outgoing review editorial assistant Kelsie Potter as she begins graduate studies at the New School of Social Research. The review section expanded by leaps and bounds during her tenure, thanks largely to her adept management of an increasingly complex database. As EAL becomes the field’s most comprehensive source for assessing recent publications in our field, we owe ever more to the brilliant and dedicated undergraduates who take on the many tasks associated with this expansion.