Mason English Professor Tamara Harvey is the guest editor of the most recent issue of Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers (Vol. 28, No. 2 (2011)), a special issue, “Women and Early America.” The articles in this issue of the journal reframe early American women within hemispheric and transoceanic contexts and with attention to a range of neglected archives. The issue also includes two primary texts of interest: a letter from Doña Inés Muñóz de Ribera requesting restitution of her encomienda, the Indian labor that sustained her wealth and status, and the declaration of Debora Proctor, a mother’s unusual attempt to circumvent legal procedures that limited her ability to bring formal charges against her daughter’s alleged rapist.
From the table of contents:
Women in Early America: Recharting Hemispheric and Atlantic Desire
Tamara Harvey
Female Bodies and Capitalist Drive: Leonora Sansay's Secret History in Transoceanic Context
Michelle Burnham
Mónica Díaz
Fulfilling the Name: Catherine Tekakwitha and Marguerite Kanenstenhawi (Eunice Williams)
Andrew Newman
Taking Possession of the New World: Powerful Female Agency of Early Colonial Accounts of Perú
Rocío Quispe-Agnoli
Hard-Hearted Women: Sentiment and the Scaffold
Jodi Schorb
“And the author of wickedness Surely is most to be blamed”: The Declaration of Debora Proctor
Abby Chandler
January 23, 2012