Just released: the excellent special issue of Early American Literature co-edited by Drs. Tara Bynum (U Iowa), Brigitte Fielder (U Wisconsin), and Cassander Smith (U Alabama) entitled “Dear Sister: Phillis Wheatley Futures” (EAL 57.3, 2022). Published just ahead of the 250th anniversary of Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, the special issue follows on a Common Reading initiative and panel streams in African American Studies at the SEA’s Twelfth Biennial Conference (3-7 March 2021), coordinated by the three editors. For the Common Read, the SEA collaborated with administrators and faculty at colleges and universities across the country to incorporate award-winning poet and scholar Honorée Fannone Jeffers’s book The Age of Phillis (2020) and Wheatley’s poetry in their summer, fall, and spring curriculums through coursework, independent study, and book clubs. We thank Professor Jeffers for collaborating on the Common Read study guide, adjudicating the poetry prize, and dialoguing with the student-poets at her conference keynote.
Congratulations to Drs. Bynum, Fielder, Smith for their excellent editorial work on this special issue!