Early American Research Articles

Transmission, Imitation and the Question of Early American Literary Nationalism

Transmission, Imitation and the Question of Early American Literary Nationalism. This article seeks to revalue early American literature and concurrently to clarify to what extent one can talk about American literary nationalism during the formative post-revolutionary years. Although many anthologies of American literature as well as critical studies devoted to American literary historiography have underlined the national unity of American literature as a whole, they have consistently ignored this particular period in which the transmission and imitation of English models and their alteration or transformation by American booksellers and publishers, corroborated with generic instability and the absence of central publishing hubs, fail to attest to a homogenous—and, implicitly, wholly national—development of literature. In doing so, special attention will be paid to the early American novel as a site for probing the ideals of the early Republic, for appraising its historical accomplishments, and, ultimately, for lambasting its democratic failure. At the same time, despite the misleading name of “novel” attributed to various literary genres, and its hybrid form, the early American novel was instrumental in reflecting transnational concerns and cultural exchanges that were highly suggestive of the unstable cultural identity of America at the time. Keywords: the early American Republic, transatlantic exchanges, English imitations, generic instability, common property, the early American novel

The Information Isolation Trope: Isolation, Infection, and Information Silos in Early American Literature

Many early American novels feature at least one character who becomes physically isolated, is restricted access to communication, becomes ill, spreads their sickness, and then either dies or becomes permanently disabled. This repeated pattern of isolation, infection, information, and death/disability underscores just how concerned early Americans were with the potentially harmful effects of information silos. The concern with information siloing, at first glance, seems anachronistic to early America. Eli Pariser popularized the concept of a “filter bubble” in 2011 when lamenting the many ways that algorithms create echo chambers and political fragmentation. While this essay concurs that content-recommendation bubbles are exacerbated by new media technologies, early American novels suggest that people have been worrying about the regulation and isolation of information since the dawn of the new republic. Early American novels—particularly those published between 1789 and 1815—are often read as seduction narratives, didactic narratives, or both; this article argues that attending to this pattern offers a new way of reading early American fiction that underscores just how concerned readers and writers were with the potentially harmful effects of information silos and the regulation of information on the body, the body politic, and public health.

“We Fervently Pray”: Reading Afro-Protestant Prayer as Genre Intervention in “The Petition of Absalom Jones and Others—People of Colour and Freemen of Philadelphia”

Abstract: While scholars have long documented Christianity’s influence on African American literature and print, few have investigated how specific Afro-Protestant practices inform alternative modes of collective action and writing in the early American republic. This essay follows scholarship’s recent turn by reading Afro-Protestant prayer within discourses of civic and religious petition at the turn of the nineteenth century. Sanders contends that early African American advocates mobilized prayer’s genre flexibility in their public addresses to challenge America’s growing antagonism toward antislavery petitions. These early theorizations of Afro-Protestant prayer as petitionary activism reframe how we understand a tradition of circulated prayers from nineteenth-century print to the present.

The Separation of Church and State as an Imperial Project in the Philippines during the Early American Colonial Period

This paper examines the separation of church and state in the Philippines during the early American colonial period, contextualizing it within the process of American overseas expansion and considering it as one of the projects of imperial hegemony construction. After the Spanish–American War, the United States substituted Spain as the new colonial ruler of the Philippines, legitimizing its regime as the spread of ‘civilization’ to the Filipinos. On this basis, the Americans enacted laws guaranteeing religious freedom and introduced an American-style institution dealing with church–state relations. Beyond the legal and administrative initiatives, the new regime also constructed an official narrative of the transformation of political–religious relations in the Philippine that emphasized the absolute ‘difference’ between the American human rights principle, which guaranteed freedom of worship, and the Spanish theocracy, which was dedicated to the consolidation of privileges. By legislating the separation of church and state, buying up church properties, recognizing the equality of denominations, and constructing the official imperial narrative of church–state relations, the Americans hoped to ‘teach’ Filipinos that the ‘true’ belief was rooted in the inner convictions of individual Christians, not in the authority and coercion of the hierarchical church. By disciplining the construction of ‘difference’ under tutelary colonialism, the separation of church and state movement initiated by the American colonial government in the Philippines became an important source of imperial self-endowed legitimacy.

“True Canadian”: Advertising Canadian Branded Products in the Early American Press, 1760–1810

“True Canadian”: Advertising Canadian Branded Products in the Early American Press, 1760–1810

Introduction: Hog Reeves Are Part of the State , Too

Abstract: Historians of the early American republic pay the least attention to the most powerful form of government in that period: local governments. Social historians and legal historians are building a historiography of municipal power in the early republic, however, and this essay introduces a forum to expand our understanding of local governance. Focusing on nightwatchmen, overseers of the poor, justices of the peace, and sheriffs, this essay and forum flesh out the contours of the local state between the Revolutionary and Civil War eras.

Faith in Markets: Christian Capitalism in the Early American Republic. By Joseph P. Slaughter

Faith in Markets: Christian Capitalism in the Early American Republic. <i>By Joseph P. Slaughter</i>

Afterword: On Exhuming an Early American Ecogothic

Afterword: On Exhuming an Early American Ecogothic

Policy Dialogue: The Meaning and Purpose of Public Education

AbstractPublic education, at least as it has been known for the past several generations in the US, is under threat. Conservative state legislatures from Arizona to Florida have enacted sweeping voucher legislation, channeling taxpayer dollars to private schools. At the same time, a vicious culture war has engulfed the public education system in controversy, creating new political opportunities for ideologues and opponents. In this context, the editorial team at HEQ felt it important to reflect on why we have public schools in the first place. What are they good for and what should be taught? Whom should they serve, and who should govern them?For this policy dialogue, we asked Carol Burris and Johann Neem to discuss the past, present, and future of open-enrollment, taxpayer-supported public schools. Carol Burris is the executive director of the Network for Public Education Foundation and the author of several books. Prior to that role, Dr. Burris was a classroom teacher and a high school principal, earning educator of the year and principal of the year awards. Johann Neem is a professor at Western Washington University and a historian of the early American republic. The author of several books, including Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America, Dr. Neem is also a member of HEQ’s editorial board.HEQ policy dialogues are, by design, intended to promote an informal, free exchange of ideas between scholars. At the end of the exchange, we offer a list of references for readers who wish to follow up on sources relevant to the discussion.

Legal Boundaries, Organizational Fields, and Trade Union Politics: The Development of Railway Unions in the US and the UK

AbstractThroughout the nineteenth century, powerful railway unions in the USA and the UK cultivated an expansive system of voluntary sickness, death, unemployment, and superannuation benefits. By the early twentieth century, the movements had diverged: while the British Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants relinquished its commitment to voluntarism in favor of state healthcare and pensions, the American Railway Brotherhoods persisted along voluntarist lines, resisting social insurance in favor of exclusive schemes for their white male membership. What accounts for these diverging orientations? I highlight the importance of organizational forms as a lens for understanding comparative trade union strategy, emphasizing the role of law in designating legitimate forms of working-class association. I demonstrate that governing elites in both countries promoted voluntarism as a benign form of working-class organization throughout much of the nineteenth century. Consequently, I argue, early American and British trade unions adopted benefits in part because they enabled them to mimic the far more respected and legitimate friendly and fraternal mutual benefit societies. Toward the end of the century, the context had changed: while alternative organizational avenues were opened for trade unions in the UK, benefits presented an ongoing organizational lifeline for American unions. In defining and redefining the boundaries of legitimate forms of workers’ associations, legal decisions in both countries shaped not only trade union organizing strategies in the short run but also their positioning in broader social struggles.

Friends of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies 1 July 2022–30 June 2023

Friends of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies 1 July 2022–30 June 2023

Proiectul american interbelic al lui Mircea Eliade

In his first year spent in India, 1929, Mircea Eliade nurtured two projects related to America, which remained unaccomplished. On the one hand, he was planning a long return trip to his homeland, which would pass through the United States. On the other hand, he considered obtaining a teaching position in an American university, the first target being Harvard. This early American project – hitherto unexplored – becomes symbolic in the perspective of Eliade’s subsequent evolution and choices. Decades later, as a professor at the University of Chicago, he turned down an invitation to occupy a chair at Harvard, which offered him far better conditions and opportunities than those in Chicago. We present here the first results of an ongoing research that tries to clarify all the details related to the young Eliade’s American project.

The republican mother: the ideal woman in the early U.S

Despite the changing family patterns in the US, the views that originated in the early American Republic and formed American identity still largely determine societal expectations of women and the role of motherhood. The article is devoted to the ideology of Republican Motherhood , which prevailed among the upper and middle classes in the United States in the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War. It shaped the feminine ideal, turning homemaking into civic virtue and emphasizing women's moral and enlightening role. The concept viewed mothers as key in raising future patriotic leaders. From now on, the development and prosperity of the American nation depended on women. This transformed motherhood from a biological function to a socially important role, with mothers shaping children's values and beliefs. Republican Motherhood also expanded educational opportunities for women. The study also evaluates the socio-cultural influences that shaped perspectives on American women and their role as mothers.

Christine Walker Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain’s Atlantic Empire Williamsburg/Chapel Hill, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture/University of North Carolina Press, 2020, 317 p.

Christine Walker Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain’s Atlantic Empire Williamsburg/Chapel Hill, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture/University of North Carolina Press, 2020, 317 p.

Urban Rehearsals and Novel Plots in the Early American City by Betsy Klimasmith (review)

Urban Rehearsals and Novel Plots in the Early American City by Betsy Klimasmith (review)

Cords of Affection: Constructing Constitutional Union in Early American History

Cords of Affection: Constructing Constitutional Union in Early American History

Cécile Vidal Caribbean New Orleans: Empire, Race, and the Making of a Slave Society Williamsburg/Chapel Hill, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture/University of North Carolina Press, 2019, 533 p.

Cécile Vidal Caribbean New Orleans: Empire, Race, and the Making of a Slave Society Williamsburg/Chapel Hill, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture/University of North Carolina Press, 2019, 533 p.

Whiteness Catalyzes Character Disorder and Mass Violence

ABSTRACT Whiteness, understood in psychoanalytic terms as a complex emerging in relation to an invidious object, catalyzes character disorder and mass violence. Drawing on historical analyses of the early American colonial period and a 2014 mass shooting in Isla Vista, California, I articulate a theory of the workings of Whiteness, with an eye toward the interrelationship of psychodynamics and sociocultural, structural, and ideological forces. I conclude with a consideration of how and why psychoanalysis has failed to fully contend with Whiteness because of the discipline’s own investment in Whiteness and White aggression.

Hearse Pies and Pastry Coffins: Material Cultures of Food, Preservation, and Death in the Early Modern British World

ABSTRACT With a long history as a vehicle for preserving perishable fillings against spoilage, pie was imagined as both a lavish banqueting centerpiece and an edible symbol of globalization in the seventeenth and eighteenth century British and early American worlds. Filled with expensive and difficult-to-obtain ingredients, and frequently sent over long distances in a culture of performative gift-exchange, pies were complex and multivalent objects. By examining the pie’s reputation as a means of preserving food alongside its widespread – but now largely forgotten – cultural association with death and dying, we suggest that for elite consumers, these pastry “coffins” could fulfill a similar function to memento mori: a reminder of the impermanence of organic matter and the inevitability of death and decomposition. Taking pie, an edible and ephemeral food, as a subject of material-cultural analysis, we can open unexpected avenues for understanding some of the emotions evoked by global consumption.

"A Dreadful Wolf Loose in the Fold of Christ": St. Peter's Parish, Manhattan, 1806

Abstract: This essay reconstructs two accusations that roiled one of the early American nation's most prominent parishes, St. Peter's of Manhattan, in 1806. Both accusations involved violations of clerical celibacy. This small-scale study reveals the significant extent to which clergy, lay leaders, and prelate understood violations of clerical celibacy to threaten the reputation of Catholicism at a moment when Catholics were staking a claim to full participation in polity and culture. It demonstrates that despite concern over priestly misconduct, accusations were discussed only obliquely and addressed awkwardly and hesitantly. The array of perspectives evident in the archival record also offers a case study of the personal and institutional costs of alleged and real violations of celibacy: we see, albeit imperfectly, the thoughts and actions of clergy, of the bishop, and of a young woman who—in my evaluation of the evidence—was abusively treated.