Introduction: Narratives of early America old and new / Bryce Traister -- How to read (in) early America. How to read things that weren't written down in early America / Matt Cohen -- How to read the natural world / Molly Farrell -- How to read early American poetry / Amy M. E. Morris -- How to read gender in early America / Laura M. Stevens -- How to read an early American novel / Marion Rust -- How to read democracy in early United States / Dana D. Nelson -- Readings in early America. Accident, disaster, and trauma : shattered in early America / Kathleen Donegan -- Settler kitsch : the legacies of Puritanism in America / Jonathan Beecher Field -- Like a prayer : the anti-slavery petition in the era of revolution / Paul Downes -- Varieties of bondage in the early Atlantic / Ramesh Mallipeddi -- The erotics of early America / Sandra Slater -- Early American places. Indigenous colonial America / Caroline Wigginton -- Colonial Latin America / Allison Bigelow -- The colonial Pacific / Michelle Burnham -- Caribbean America / Cassander Smith.
Summary:
"Most communications are not written down. This is as true now, in a supposedly information-saturated age, as it was in early colonial America. The point stands even if we understand the Western notion of "writing" with a generously broad interpretation, as including all forms of inscribed human communication. Some of what was transmitted among people of the past, consequently, we have to leave to the void or to the imagination-the uncountable facial expressions; the furtive gestures; a thousand accents; the qualities of colors; the taste of a 1628 Madeira; the movements of an Inca khipucamayoc at work. For others, we have well-elaborated historical frameworks and methods of recovery. In the fields of art history and architecture, historical performance in music and dance, theatre history, material culture studies, and ethnobotany, for example, ways to read much of the uninscribed have been maintained and extended. And there are other domains in which the unwritten of the past has been vectored into the present, including Indigenous communities across the Americas, the church, women's communities, annual festivals from New Orleans to Rio de Janeiro, and scholarly institutions, with their many rituals and forms"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.