The imagined past and its uses in the literature of the new republic for a panel at the American Literature Association 2011 (Boston, May 26-29).

From representations of the distant past (e.g. Barlow's Columbiad, Rowson's Reuben and Rachel) to early constructions of the history of the founding (Weems on Washington, Bleecker's History of Maria Kittle), writers of the early Republic turned to history as a source of meaning for their present, even in the face of the discontinuous nature of revolutionary history.

Seeking proposals for papers that deal with any aspect of the imagined past as it appears in the literature of the early Republic. Topics might include

imagining the racial and ethnic past of the United States,
world history and the revolution as turning point,
history and trauma,
historicizing sentimentality,
early American medievalism,
Enlightenment models of history in early American texts.
Please send abstract (250-600 words) and short CV to Angela Vietto, arvietto@eiu.edu, by January 3, 2011.

cfp categories:
american
eighteenth_century