The Cambridge Companion to Early American Literature

Bryce Traister is a Canadian based academic who reads and writes mainly about early American literature, religion, and culture. He has published one monograph, Female Piety and the Invention of American Puritanism (Ohio, 2016), and edited a collection of essays, American Literature and the New Puritan Studies (Cambridge, 2017).

'This volume will broaden the horizons of even experienced scholars while orienting others to a field recently and radically transformed … Essential.' A. T. Hale, Choice

• Introduction: narratives of early America old and new Bryce Traister; Part I. How to Read Early America: 1. How to read things that weren't written down in early America Matt Cohen; 2. How to read the natural world Molly Farrell; 3. How to read early American poetry Amy Morris; 4. How to read gender Laura Stevens; 5. How to read an early American novel Marion Rust; 6. How to read democracy in early America Dana Nelson; Part II. Readings in Early America: 7. Accident, disaster, and trauma: shattered in early America Kathleen Donegan; 8. Settler Kitsch: the legacies of Puritanism in America Jonathan Beecher Field; 9. Like a prayer: the anti-slavery petition in the era of revolution Paul Downes; 10. Varieties of bondage in the early Atlantic Ramesh Mallipeddi; 11. The erotics of early America Sandra Slater; Part III. Early American Places: 12. Indigenous colonial America Caroline Wigginton; 13. Colonial Latin America Allison Bigelow; 14. The colonial Pacific Michelle Burnham; 15. Caribbean America Cassander Smith.