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"Affecting History": Impersonating Women in the Early Republic

"Affecting History": Impersonating Women in the Early Republic lorrayne carroll University of Southern Maine ``Affecting History'' Impersonating Women in the Early Republic It is now a critical commonplace that Early American women's captivity narratives offer scholars and students alike rich material for our postmodern investigations into subjectivity and identity. The texts' representations of gender, ethnicity, and race conveniently dovetail with current theoretical work that seeks to reinterpret and expand the canon of Early American texts. Working from the older studies of Pearce, Slotkin, Vaughan, and VanDerBeets, more recent captivity scholars have presented the texts in light of contemporary concerns with performativity and gender (Christopher Castiglia), an ethics of reading (Gary Ebersole), structures of feeling (Michelle Burnham and Ebersole), and gender and race regimes (all of these scholars, as well as Kathryn Derounian-Stodola, Derounian and James Levernier, Gordon Sayre, and Strong).1 In the course of crafting important and compelling arguments about the captivity narratives' literary value and concomitant cultural effects, each of these scholars notes the persistent problem of authorial attribution. Indeed, indeterminate authorship is a hallmark of earlier women's captivity narratives; scholars routinely note the difficulty, even impossibility, of ascertaining whether a captive woman actually wrote the text herself or dictated it (with interpolated ``improvements''), or http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Early American Literature University of North Carolina Press

"Affecting History": Impersonating Women in the Early Republic

Carroll, Lorrayne.
Early American Literature , Volume 39 (3) – Jan 13, 2004
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by The University of North Carolina Press.
ISSN
1534-147X
Publisher site
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Abstract

lorrayne carroll University of Southern Maine ``Affecting History'' Impersonating Women in the Early Republic It is now a critical commonplace that Early American women's captivity narratives offer scholars and students alike rich material for our postmodern investigations into subjectivity and identity. The texts' representations of gender, ethnicity, and race conveniently dovetail with current theoretical work that seeks to reinterpret and expand the canon of Early American texts. Working from the older studies of Pearce, Slotkin, Vaughan, and VanDerBeets, more recent captivity scholars have presented the texts in light of contemporary concerns with performativity and gender (Christopher Castiglia), an ethics of reading (Gary Ebersole), structures of feeling (Michelle Burnham and Ebersole), and gender and race regimes (all of these scholars, as well as Kathryn Derounian-Stodola, Derounian and James Levernier, Gordon Sayre, and Strong).1 In the course of crafting important and compelling arguments about the captivity narratives' literary value and concomitant cultural effects, each of these scholars notes the persistent problem of authorial attribution. Indeed, indeterminate authorship is a hallmark of earlier women's captivity narratives; scholars routinely note the difficulty, even impossibility, of ascertaining whether a captive woman actually wrote the text herself or dictated it (with interpolated ``improvements''), or

Journal

Early American Literature – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Jan 13, 2004

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