Women’s Narratives of the Early Americas and the Formation of Empire

The essays in this collection examine the connections between the forces of empire and women's lives in the early Americas, in particular the ways their narratives contributed to empire formation. Focusing on the female body as a site of contestation, the essays describe acts of bravery, subversion, and survival expressed in a variety of genres, including the saga, letter, diary, captivity narrative, travel narrative, verse, sentimental novel, and autobiography. The volume also speaks to a range of female experience, across the Americas and across time, from the Viking exploration to early nineteenth-century United States, challenging scholars to reflect on the implications of early American literature even to the present day.

"This collection foregrounds an astoundingly diverse array of writing by and about women from the transatlantic and hemispheric Americas, documenting how women—including servants and shop-keepers, mystics and midwives, captives and converts, loyalists and criminals—situated themselves in relation to their changing worlds and served as agents and adversaries of colonization. Four decades after Annette Kolodny's The Lay of the Land, this collection charts new paths for understanding the symbolic power of women's bodies and the significance of women's writing to the work of colonization." - Jodi Schorb, Associate Professor of English, University of Florida, USA
 
"The essays in this collection skillfully incorporate a diverse body of recent scholarly emphases—empire, gender, corporality, and spatiality, to name a few—to offer a compelling and exciting new way of understanding the emergence, entrenchment, and continuing reinvention of empire throughout the early Americas. Anyone who studies any of the multitudes of cultural systems operating across early America should read these eye-opening essays." - Jim Egan, Professor of English, Brown University, USA

"A major contribution to historical and literary studies, these sixteen essays about women's engagement with and critique of empire building in the Americas should lay the foundation for an extended discussion of women and empire. The book's array of texts, time periods, and topics willmake it the go-to book on the subject for years to come. Since it ranges so widely on so many fronts, I can envision designing an entire class around the topic and using many of the texts under discussion as primary sources supplemented by these essays." - Scott Slawinski, Associate Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies, Western Michigan University, USA
 
  "This collection foregrounds an astoundingly diverse array of writing by and about women from the transatlantic and hemispheric Americas, documenting how women—including servants and shop-keepers, mystics and midwives, captives and converts, loyalists and criminals—situated themselves in relation to their changing worlds and served as agents and adversaries of colonization. Four decades after Annette Kolodny's The Lay of the Land, this collection charts new paths for understanding the symbolic power of women's bodies and the significance of women's writing to the work of colonization." - Jodi Schorb, Associate Professor of English, University of Florida, USA

 

"The essays in this collection skillfully incorporate a diverse body of recent scholarly emphases—empire, gender, corporality, and spatiality, to name a few—to offer a compelling and exciting new way of understanding the emergence, entrenchment, and continuing reinvention of empire throughout the early Americas. Anyone who studies any of the multitudes of cultural systems operating across early America should read these eye-opening essays." - Jim Egan, Professor of English, Brown University, USA

"A major contribution to historical and literary studies, these sixteen essays about women's engagement with and critique of empire building in the Americas should lay the foundation for an extended discussion of women and empire. The book's array of texts, time periods, andtopics will make it the go-to book on the subject for years to come. Since it ranges so widely on so many fronts, I can envision designing an entire class around the topic and using many of the texts under discussion as primary sources supplemented by these essays." - Scott Slawinski, Associate Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies, Western Michigan University, USA

 

 

Mary McAleer Balkun is Professor of English at Seton Hall University, USA. She is the author of The American Counterfeit: Authenticity and Identity in American Literature and Culture and an associate editor of The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry.

Susan C. Imbarrato is Professor of English at Minnesota State University Moorhead, USA. She is the author of Traveling Women: Narrative Visions of Early America and a past President of the Society of Early Americanists.