New Directions in Quaker Literary History: Deadline Extended: September 15, 2024

 While Quaker literary history is far from absent in early American studies, scholarship has yet to move significantly beyond early work that typecasted Quakers into a variety of (not completely inaccurate) roles: counterpoints to New England puritanism, radical women writers, prophetic antislavery activists, practical mystics, and friends to Indigenous peoples. More nuanced work, such as Brycchan Carey’s From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1675-1761 (2012), illustrates the contest of opinion and slow pace of change among the Friends, complicating simplistic notions of Quakers as uniformly ardent moral forerunners. From Peace to Freedom alsostretches temporal and geographic parameters for Quaker literary history by following the development of antislavery rhetoric across the Atlantic world from the mid seventeenth century to the latter half of the eighteenth century. Other scholars have begun to more rigorously assess Quaker relations with Indigenous peoples and their role in settler colonialism in America, and some have used Native American and Indigenous studies methods to read Quaker writings as sources for better understanding the perspectives of Indigenous peoples.

This special issue of Early American Literature seeks to move this research agenda forward by gathering new work in Quaker literary history that uses a wide range of methodological approaches. The goal is to resituate Quaker writing both at the level of individual texts and broader literary histories of early America, from Quakerism’s Atlantic expansion alongside English imperialism in the mid seventeenth century through the early US national period and the splintering of American Quakerism in the 1820s. Submissions might address questions, such as the following:  

 - How have narratives of Quaker exceptionalism potentially hindered our understanding of Quaker literary history? Moving beyond stereotypes of Quaker benevolence, how do we assess the role of Quakers in enslavement, settler colonialism and Indigenous relations, and the politics of colonial America more broadly? To what extent, if any, is Quaker literary history distinctive during this period? 

 - How does our understanding of Quaker literary history change by foregrounding texts produced outside Philadelphia and the mid-Atlantic colonies? Are there neglected archives or texts that alter our understanding of Quaker print and manuscript literary production in early America? What influences on or by Quaker literature have gone unstudied? 

 - What are the key genres of Quaker writing and how do they interact within the Society of Friends as well as broader networks? Are there unique stylistic features that mark Quaker writing? Does Quaker theology lend itself to a particular type of writing style? How does Quaker church history, including its historic schisms, influence the content and production of Quaker writing? 

 Inquiries and submissions from 8,000 to 10,000 word essays should be sent to Jay David Miller (jaym@georgefox.edu) and Kaitlin Tonti (ktonti2@gmail.com).   

Deadline Extended: September 15, 2024