From the Editor

Abstract

From the Editor C. Dallett Hemphill It is my pleasure to make two announcements. The first is that, with this issue, Early American Studies becomes a quarterly publication. The main reason we decided to move from three to four issues a year is to accommodate the increasing number of submissions and McNeil Center–sponsored conferences. The latter, along with initiatives of past fellows and others, warrants the publication of two special, themed, guest-edited issues a year, along with the two regular issues. I continue to be impressed by the diversity and quality of the pieces that come before us and the dedication and care of the guest editors. This is truly a collective endeavor, so keep up the good work! I am also happy to publish the winner of the Murrin Prize for the best EAS article of 2013. The Editorial Board chose Heather Kopelson’s wonderful “Imagining the Archive in Early Bermuda.” One judge described the piece as a fascinating and creative endeavor that, absent significant archival records, imagines how Africans and indigenous Caribbean peoples transplanted to Bermuda not only inhabited, operated within, and shaped the physical environment they had been taken to, but also created a sacred space peopled by the supernatural entities, dead souls, ancestors, and “other-than-human persons” who would give meaning to their spiritual world. Kopelson uses sources innovatively in her persuasive argument about how the transcendent spiritual and mystical understandings of the enslaved could take root in the intensely local and circumscribed geography of a small Atlantic island in the early sixteenth century. Another reader called the piece “Creative, original, and insightful . . . [as well as] beautifully written!” Congratulations to Heather and many thanks to the board for taking on the tough task of deciding between the many terrific articles of 2013. I predict an equally difficult choice as they begin to consider the 2014 issues. [End Page 1] Copyright © 2015 The McNeil Center for Early American Studies