Description
Book SynopsisPossible Pasts represents a landmark in early American studies, bringing to that field the theoretical richness and innovative potential of the scholarship on colonial discourse and postcolonial theory.
Trade ReviewA significant addition to the literature on early American history and culture... The most striking feature of this impressive volume is not the quality of its components but how those components relate to the central question of postcolonial theory and early American studies.
-- Eliga H. Gould, University of New Hampshire * Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History *
An impressive collection of essays on early American history and culture... The anthology is a useful and welcome addition to historical discourse... A review this brief cannot justly convey the richness of the work. The seventeen contributors to the volume have given us a multifaceted work that draws on history, art history, folklore, anthropology, and textual analysis... The work deserves to be read, absorbed, and discussed.
-- Don Duhadaway * History *
Precisely because so much work went into it, and precisely because the essays contained here are so well-polished, Possible Pasts asks to be considered as more than another conference book... It is a bellwether for the progress, achievements, and limitations of an early American history attentive to what St. George names variously as 'recent ciritical theory,' post-structuralism, and cultural studies.
-- David Waldstreicher, University of Notre Dame * William and Mary Quarterly *
Offers such a diversity of topics, ranging from Incan witches to Roger Williams, that it will appeal to historians and literary scholars with interests throughout the Americas and the Atlantic world from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries.
-- Troy Bickham, Southeast Missouri State University * The Journal of American History *
One of the book's main achievements is to make important contributions to our understanding of colonial identity writ large while also emphasizing the varieties of experience in the Americas... It is a brilliant collection throughout, carefully conceived and edited, that should direct scholars of early America toward further conceptual research on the nature of colonialismand identity formation.
-- Carolyn Eastman, University of Texas * The Pennyslvania Magazine of History and Biography *
One of the wonderful things about good essay collections is the way in which their introductions richly overview the collection's field of study. St. George's opening essay in Possible Pasts stands as vivid testimony to just how rewarding introductory material can be... This is a collection that will richly reward the reading of a wide range of scholars, particularly those interested in postcolonial and interdisciplinary studies—whether those studies be concerned with the early Americas or not.
-- Paul Gutjahr, Indiana University * American Literature *
