Synopses & Reviews
These thirteen original essays are provocative explorations in the construction and representation of self in America's colonial and early republican eras. Highlighting the increasing importance of interdisciplinary research for the field of early American history, these leading scholars in the field extend their reach to literary criticism, anthropology, psychology, and material culture.
The collection is organized into three partsHistories of Self, Texts of Self, and Reflections on Defining Self. Individual essays examine the significance of dreams, diaries, and carved chests, murder and suicide, Indian kinship, and the experiences of African American sailors. Gathered in celebration of the Institute of Early American History and Culture's fiftieth anniversary, these imaginative inquiries will stimulate critical thinking and open new avenues of investigation on the forging of self-identity in early America.
The contributors are W. Jeffrey Bolster, T. H. Breen, Elaine Forman Crane, Greg Dening, Philip Greven, Rhys Isaac, Kenneth A. Lockridge, James H. Merrell, Donna Merwick, Mary Beth Norton, Mechal Sobel, Alan Taylor, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and Richard White.
Review
[V]iews of daily life are broadened and what it meant to live in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America is reexamined.
Journal of American Culture
Review
A compelling look at a growing trend in writing early American history.
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
Review
Every historian serious about early America, or historiography in general, should own this landmark collection.
Choice
Review
In addition to offering fresh insight into problems of identity, the book in all its variety makes terrific reading.
Patricia Meyer Spacks, University of Virginia
Review
[R]ich and diverse.
Reviews in American History
About the Author
Fredrika J. Teute is the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture's editor of publications.
Table of Contents
Contents
Preface
Introduction: In Search of a Metaphor / Greg Dening
PART I: Histories of Self
Histories of Self / Greg Dening
"The Cast of His Countenance": Reading Andrew Montour / James H. Merrell
Communal Definitions of Gendered Identity in Seventeenth-Century English America / Mary Beth Norton
Making History: The Force of Public Opinion and the Last Years of Slavery in Revolutionary Massachusetts / T. H. Breen
"The Unhappy Stephen Arnold": An Episode of Murder and Penitence in the Early Republic / Alan Taylor
The Suicide of a Notary: Language, Personal Identity, and Conquest in Colonial New York / Donna Merwick
PART II: Texts of Self
Texts of Self / Greg Dening
The Revolution in Selves: Black and White Inner Aliens / Mechal Sobel
Stories and Constructions of Identity: Folk Tellings and Diary Inscriptions in Revolutionary Virginia / Rhys Isaac
Hannah Barnard's Cupboard: Female Property and Identity in Eighteenth-Century New England / Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Colonial Self-Fashioning: Paradoxes and Pathologies in the Construction of Genteel Identity in Eighteenth-Century America / Kenneth A. Lockridge
PART III: Reflections on Defining Self
Reflections on Defining Self / Greg Dening
The Self Shaped and Misshaped: The Protestant Temperament Reconsidered / Philip Greven
"I Have Suffer'd Much Today": The Defining Force of Pain in Early America / Elaine Forman Crane
"Although I am dead, I am not entirely dead. I have left a second of myself": Constructing Self and Persons on the Middle Ground of Early America / Richard White
An Inner Diaspora: Black Sailors Making Selves / W. Jeffrey Bolster
Index
Notes on the Contributors