‘Although I am dead, I am not entirely dead. I have left a second of myself’: Constructing Self and Persons on the Middle Ground of Early American

1997
Author(s)
eds. Ronald Hoffman, Mechal Sobel, and Fredrika J. Teute
Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
‘Although I am dead, I am not entirely dead. I have left a second of myself’: Constructing Self and Persons on the Middle Ground of Early American

“‘Although I am dead, I am not entirely dead. I have left a second of myself’: Constructing Self and Persons on the Middle Ground of Early American” in Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections on Personal Identity in Early America, eds. Ronald Hoffman, Mechal Sobel, and Fredrika J. Teute (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

These thirteen original essays are provocative explorations in the construction and representation of self in America's colonial and early republican eras. Highlighting the increasing importance of interdisciplinary research for the field of early American history, these leading scholars in the field extend their reach to literary criticism, anthropology, psychology, and material culture. The collection is organized into three parts--Histories of Self, Texts of Self, and Reflections on Defining Self. Individual essays examine the significance of dreams, diaries, and carved chests, murder and suicide, Indian kinship, and the experiences of African American sailors. Gathered in celebration of the Institute of Early American History and Culture's fiftieth anniversary, these imaginative inquiries will stimulate critical thinking and open new avenues of investigation on the forging of self-identity in early America. The contributors are W. Jeffrey Bolster, T. H. Breen, Elaine Forman Crane, Greg Dening, Philip Greven, Rhys Isaac, Kenneth A. Lockridge, James H. Merrell, Donna Merwick, Mary Beth Norton, Mechal Sobel, Alan Taylor, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and Richard White.