Greetings

With this issue I step into the editorship of Early American Literature held by David S. Shields from 1998 to 2008. His shoes are big ones to fill. David oversaw the journal at a time of robust growth in the field of early American studies, and this growth was importantly fuelled by his efforts to expand the journal’s offerings, sponsor conferences in emerging fields, and stimulate interest in new or neglected areas of inquiry. During my years working with him as book review editor I came to appreciate how richly he contributed to the scholarly conversations of early Americanists in and beyond the pages of Early American Literature. He leaves a journal in thriving intellectual and financial shape.

The current issue consists of works accepted during David’s tenure. I selected and arranged them with an eye to illustrating several of his achievements as editor. The essays included here cover a span ranging from Cotton Mather’s witchcraft narratives of the 1690s to Sagoyewatha’s speeches of the 1820s. They speak to the varied traditions of the verbal arts that include Jewish as well as Protestant influences, women’s autobiographies alongside native American oratory. The essay that perhaps best reflects David’s personal scholarly interests is Derrick Spradlin’s reading of “Upon Prince Madoc’s Expedition to the Country now called America, in the 12^th Century,” which appeared in the Philadelphia-based American Weekly Mercury in 1734. Spradlin’s focus on a little-known poem published in a magazine opens up an unfamiliar view of American imperial ideology. Methodologically these essays range from psychoanalytical approaches, to performance studies and book history, to ideological analysis.

Future issues will further highlight current strengths and opportunities in the field. In 44.2 I have clustered a group of essays on Charles Brockden Brown and invited Bryan Waterman to write an introduction that will lay out recent developments in the thriving field of Brown studies. One area that has been a traditional strength of early American studies, but that has recently fallen into relative neglect, is the field of religion and literature. Philip Gura’s review essay in this issue speaks to this important topic, and a future special issue of Early American Literature will consider the methodological contributions that the field can make to an emerging area of broad interest. Teresa Toulouse’s review essay on current approaches to feminist scholarship forms part of an ongoing conversation that will continue with a roundtable on the subject in a subsequent issue. Bruce Burgett revisits the 2001 conference on Sexuality in Early America, 1500–1820, describes recent developments in the scholarship on this topic, and sketches ongoing methodological debates. And David Harris Sacks offers a vivid introduction to Richard Hakluyt, highlighting the period of exploration and colonization that is due for renewed scholarly attention.

One aspiration I have during my tenure as editor is to make the vibrant and wide-ranging field of early American literary studies more visible to scholars in other early Americanist fields and in other fields of American literary scholarship. I am collaborating with Gordon Hutner, the editor of American Literary History, to develop a series of forums and a joint special issue that will reintroduce people in other fields to early American literature as it has been reshaped over the last two decades.

As editor I continue to welcome the full range of scholarly topics and methodologies described in the editorial statement:

“The journal of the Modern Language Association’s American Literature Division 1, Early American Literature publishes the finest work of scholars examining American literature from its inception through the early national period, about 1830. Founded in 1965, EAL invites work treating Native American traditional expressions, colonial Ibero-American literature from North America, colonial American Francophone writings, Dutch colonial, and German American colonial literature as well as writings in English from British America and the US.” Journal business will increasingly be conducted electronically. Please send submissions as Word documents to me atgustafson.6@nd.edu. I look forward to your continued support.