The Self and the Sacred:
Conversion and Autobiography in Early American Protestantism
Rodger M. Payne
From about 1740 to 1850, evangelical Protestantism became a major cultural force in virtually all areas of America. Emerging from this religious movement was a rich vernacular literature of conversion narratives and spiritual autobiographies-writings in which believers described their own salvation in hopes of converting others. In The Self and the Sacred, Rodger M. Payne examines these neglected texts in depth, focusing particularly on what they reveal about notions of selfhood and how those notions were incorporated into Christian orthodoxy.
As Payne explains, conversion narratives point to a fascinating paradox that became evident among evangelicals as they were confronted by the disruptions and discontinuities marking their culture's passage into modernity. On the one hand, these narratives asserted the traditional Christian values of humility and self-effacement-an annihilation of the self in the divine. On the other hand, they created a discourse that allowed one to embrace the modern idea of an autonomous self: only by speaking from personal experience could a convert testify to the power of God. "Despite protests to the contrary," Payne writes, "the central character of any conversion account, spiritual diary, or spiritual autobiography was the convert, not God."
Using the theology of Jonathan Edwards as a key example, Payne shows how Puritan piety encouraged the development of autobiographical spiritual narratives. He goes on to explain the ways in which the discourse of conversion functioned apart from the control of the church and marked the growth of evangelicalism into "a discursive community." Finally, he considers how the language of conversion functioned as a "rhetorical space" in which believers situated themselves individually within sacred space and time before turning back to society with a renewed regard for others. Drawing throughout on the insights of such theorists as Michel Foucault and Victor Turner, Payne's penetrating analysis reveals the early conversion accounts as mythic texts through which the modern self emerged.
The Author: Rodger M. Payne is associate professor of religious studies at Louisiana State University. He is editor-in-chief of The Journal of Southern Religion, an electronic publication available on the World Wide Web.
September 136 pages, 6 x 9, LC 97-45426 ISBN 1-57233-015-5, $27.00s (cloth) American Literature, Religious Studies
Declarations of Independency in Eighteenth-Century American Autobiography
Susan Clair Imbarrato
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"Imbarrato's study . . . draws a parallel between the personal and political quests for independence in early America by rigorously examining a range of disparate 'declarations' that characterized an emerging nation. It is about no less than the struggle of early Americans to gain their own voice."--Robert Micklus, Binghamton University
"Imbarrato's special interests in conversion narratives, autobiography, and travel narratives make this an invaluable study for those interested in writing in relation to religion, psychology, and the emergence of an American 'self' in the pre-Romantic period. This book makes an essential contribution to the field of American literary studies."--Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside
In this ambitious work, Susan Clair Imbarrato examines the changes in the American autobiographical voice as it speaks through the transition from a colonial society to an independent republic.
Imbarrato charts the development of early American autobiography from the self-examination mode of the Puritan journal and diary to the self-inventive modes of eighteenth-century writings, which in turn anticipate the more romantic voices of nineteenth-century American literature. She focuses especially on the ways in which first-person narrative displayed an ever-stronger awareness of its own subjectivity. The eighteenth century, she notes, remained closer in temper to its Puritan communal foundations than to its Romantic progeny, but there emerged, nevertheless, a sense of the individual voice that anticipated the democratic celebration of the self. Through acts of self-examination, this study shows, self-construction became possible.
In tracing this development, the author focuses on six writers in three literary genres. She begins with the spiritual autobiographies of Jonathan Edwards and Elizabeth Ashbridge and then considers the travel narratives of Dr. Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth House Trist. She concludes with an examination of political autobiography as exemplified in the writings of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. These authors, Imbarrato finds, were invigorated by their choices in a social-political climate that revered the individual in proper relationship to the republic. Their writings expressed a revolutionary spirit that was neither cynical nor despairing but one that evinced a shared conviction about the bond between self and community.
The Author: Susan Clair Imbarrato lectures in writing and literary analysis at Scripps College and Pomona College in California. She assisted in the editing of two anthologies: Colonial American Travel Narratives and We Are the Stories We Tell: The Best Short Stories by North American Women Since 1945.
July 192 pages, 6 illustrations 6-1/8 x 9-1/4, LC 97-45369 ISBN 1-57233-012-0, $32.50s (cloth) American Literature
The Southern Colonial Backcountry
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Frontier Communities
Edited by David Colin Crass, Steven D. Smith, Martha A. Zierden, and Richard D. Brooks
This book brings a variety of fresh perspectives to bear on the diverse people and settlements of the eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century southern backcountry. Reflecting the growth of interdisciplinary studies in addressing the backcountry, the volume specifically points to the use of history, archaeology, geography, and material culture studies in examining communities on the southern frontier. Through a series of case studies and overviews, the contributors use cross-disciplinary analysis to look at community formation and maintenance in the backcountry areas of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
These essays demonstrate how various combinations of research strategies, conceptual frameworks, and data can afford a new look at a geographical area and its settlement. The contributors offer views on the evolution of backcountry communities by addressing such topics as migration, kinship, public institutions, transportation and communications networks, land markets and real estate claims, and the role of agricultural development in the emergence of a regional economy. In their discussions of individuals in the backcountry, they also explore the multiracial and multiethnic character of southern frontier society.
Yielding new insights unlikely to emerge under a single disciplinary analysis, The Southern Colonial Backcountry is a unique volume that highlights the need for interdisciplinary approaches to the backcountry while identifying common research problems in the field.
The Editors: David Colin Crass is the archaeological services unit manager at the Historic Preservation Division, Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
Steven D. Smith is the head of the Cultural Resources Consulting Division of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology.
Martha A. Zierden is curator of historical archaeology at The Charleston Museum.
Richard D. Brooks is the administrative manager of the Savannah River Archeological Research Program, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology.
The Contributors: Monica L. Beck, Edward Cashin, Charles H. Faulkner, Elizabeth Arnett Fields, Warren R. Hofstra, David C. Hsiung, Kenneth E. Lewis, Donald W. Linebaugh, Turk McCleskey, Robert D. Mitchell, Michael J. Puglisi, Daniel B. Thorp.
October 288 pages, 16 line drawings, 22 photos 6-1/8 x 9-1/4, LC 98-8978 ISBN 1-57233-019-8, $38.00s (cloth) Archaeology, American History, Geography, Material Culture
A Living of Words
American Women in Print Culture
Edited by Susan Albertine
"Essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the book or the history of women's writing in the United States."
--Cathy N.Davidson, Duke University
This unique collection draws together twelve biographical essays that focus on American women's entrepreneurship in print culture from the colonial period through the early twentieth century. While much recent criticism has stressed the role of women as writers, this book locates careers elsewhere in the marketplace of words--careers in printing, publishing, editing, promotion, patronage, and bookselling.
Among the women discussed here are Ann Franklin, the first woman printe colonial New England; Ida B. Wells-Burnett, an African-American publisher, journalist, and crusader who combined her business sense and reporting talents to agitate against racial injustice; and Sylvia Beach, an American expatriate in Paris whose work as a publisher, bookseller, and librarian played a central role in several eminent literary careers, including those of James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. Arranged chronologically, the essays suggest a range of professional opportunities for women in print culture that was broader and more various than has previously been noted.
The essays also show that women's careers cannot easily be placed withi confines of either high or popular culture but are fluid and dynamic, crossing all sorts of cultural boundaries. Taken together, these pieces challenge received notions about women's work and will undoubtedly encourage further research into women's entrepreneurship in the print marketplace.
The Editor: Susan Albertine is an associate professor of English Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania.
Contributors: Susan Albertine, Holly Baggett, Barbara A. Bardes and Suzanne Gossett, Mary Lynn Broe, Barbara Diggs-Brown, Noel Riley Fitch, Margaret Lane Ford, Elizabeth Horan, Karen S. Langlois, Ann Massa, Bruce A. Ronda, Rodger Streitmatter.
March, 272 pages 21 illustrations, 6 x 9, LC 94-19670 ISBN 0-87049-867-3, $38.00 cloth
Redefining the Political Novel
American Women Writers, 1797-1901
Edited by Sharon M. Harris
"These essays confirm the importance of women's ideas and voices to the political debates of their own time."
--Dana D. Nelson, Louisiana State University
While critical studies of the American political novel date from the 1920s, such considerations of the genre have failed, whether wittingly or unwittingly, to recognize works by women. The exclusion is usually based on a distinction between "social" novels and "political" novels, and the result is an understanding of the "political" as a largely male province.
In this thought-provoking collection of essays, the contributors seek not simply to add works by women to the canon of political novels but, rather, to demand a conceptual revolution--one that questions the very precepts on which the canon is based. This redefinition of the political novel takes many factors into account, including gender, race, and class and their relation to our most basic conceptions of literary and aesthetic value.
A notable feature of this collection is the challenge it poses to previous assumptions (shared even by some feminists) that few women attempted to write political novels until the 1900s. The women novelists surveyed here--Hannah Webster Foster, Susanna Rowson, Lydia Sigourney, Sara Parton, Louisa May Alcott, Mary E. Bradley, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and Pauline Hopkins--wrote political fiction long before the flourishing of the women's movement in the twentieth century. As the essayists show, the works by these women and many like them call into question the nature of political orders, the suppression of those classes and races that are not part of the dominant culture in American society, and the ways in which women's art forms have been defined and controlled under patriarchy.
The Editor: Sharon M. Harris, associate professor of English at the University of Nebraska, is the author of Rebecca Harding Davis and American Realism.
Contributors: Nina Baym, Dorothy Berkson, Christopher Castiglia, Kristie Hamilton, Sharon M. Harris, Claire Pamplin, Mary Rigsby, Duangrudi Suksang, Sandra A. Zagarell.
February, 224 pages 6 x 9, LC 94-28331 ISBN 0-87049-869-X, $32.50 cloth
Native American Interactions
Multiscalar Analyses and Interpretations in the Eastern Woodlands
Edited by Michael S. Nassaney and Kenneth E. Sassaman
While the early cultural clashes between Native Americans and Europeans have long engaged scholars, far less attention has been paid to interactions among indigenous peoples themselves prior to the contact period. The essays in this volume, derived largely from the 1992 meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, mark a major step in correcting that imbalance.
Long before Europeans sailed west in search of the East, Native Americans of various ethnic groups were encountering each other and interacting socially, both amicably and otherwise. Over the course of ten thousand years--from Paleoindian to Mississippian times--these interactions had a profound effect on the development of these societies and their material culture, social relations, and institutions of integration. In probing such encounters, the contributors reject reductive models and instead combine a variety of theoretical orientations--including world systems theory, Marxist analysis, and ecosystems approaches--with empirical evidence from the archaeological record.
The result is a book that conveys a complex, interactive sense of the prehistoric Eastern woodlands even as it examines the way archaeology understands its own history and methods.
The Editors: Michael S. Nassaney is assistant professor of anthropology at Western Michigan University. Kenneth E. Sassaman is an archaeologist with the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of South Carolina.
Contributors: David G. Anderson, Charles R. Cobb and Michael S. Nassaney, David H. Dye, Richard W. Jefferies, Jay K. Johnson and Fair Hayes, Adam King and Jennifer H. Freer, Stephen A. Kowalewski, David A. McKivergan Jr., Jon Muller, Peter Peregrine, Kenneth E. Sassaman, Mark Seeman, Don G. Wyckoff and Robert Bartlett.
October, 414 pages (est.)
53 illustrations, 6 x 9, LC 94-18772
ISBN 0-87049-895-9, $40.00 cloth
December 14, 1999