BOOK NEWS: Examining transhistorial re-imaginings of the early American past in literary and creative media

Early America and the Modern Imagination: Rewriting the Past in the Present 

Edited by Patrick M. Erben and Rebecca L. Harrison

Edinburgh UP, 2025

ISBN: 9781399536172

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-early-america-and-the-modern-imagination.html

Recurring culture war controversies in the US—ranging from reproductive freedom and gender identity to racial inequality and immigration—often turn public attention to early American precedents. At the same time, early American figures and tropes enjoy a stunning cachet in popular culture. Early America and the Modern Imagination squarely interprets the significance and cultural uses of these transhistorical re-imaginings of the early American past. While drawing productively on public memory scholarship, this volume augments its neglect of early American studies. The collection’s critical and pedagogical essays investigate how a variety of modalities—including literature, film, television, theatre, video games and graphic novels—rescript early America as a usable past for contemporary audiences. Early America and the Modern Imagination, therefore, interprets early American themes and their present-day echoes to grapple with the evolving and highly contested import of the American nation’s past in the present cultural moment.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

• Analyses the pervasive use of early American themes in contemporary culture, including literature, television series, film, theatre, graphic novels and video games
• Combines expertise in early American research methods with the study of new modalities (such as video games and graphic novels) and cultural paradigms (such as restorative approaches to Native American history and sovereignty)
• Interfaces with the burgeoning field of memory studies/public memory, especially its examination of cultural artifacts as mediators of a shared past
• Models innovative methodological approaches for navigating transhistorical topics and textualities that so far lack robust scholarly treatment
• Foregrounds particular strengths in Native American and Indigenous studies, African American studies, Gender and Sexuality studies, and Film studies

"This book is both brilliant and necessary. Each chapter links a deep knowledge of the past to its modern redeployments in contemporary media. In doing so, the book makes a powerful case for the humanities, explaining public memory and showing how important it is for literary scholars to study it. A vital project, and a terrific book." – Abram Van Engen, Washington University in St. Louis

Patrick M. Erben is professor of English at the University of West Georgia. He is the author of A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania (2013) and co-edited The Francis Daniel Pastorius Reader (2019). Erben is a past president of the Society of Early Americanists and currently serves on the editorial board for Early American Literature.

Rebecca L. Harrison is professor of English at the University of West Georgia. She is the co-editor of the Eudora Welty Review and President of the Eudora Welty Society. Her books include Inhabiting La Patria: Identity, Agency, and Antojo in the Work of Julia Alvarez (2013), Teaching, Pedagogy, and Learning: Fertile Ground for Campus and Community Innovations (2017) and Revitalizing Classrooms: Innovations and Inquiry Pedagogies in Practice (2017).