Viewed by previous generations of scholars primarily as historical documents valuable for revealing information about famous people, letters today are increasingly accorded an independent literary status. So malleable in form that they sometimes seem to defy generic categorization, letters' flexibility renders them particularly adaptable to writers' and readers' varying uses and interpretations; as multi-authorial, intertextual documents that resist closure and address multiple audiences, letters pose a sometimes daunting critical task. Yet as the genre quite possibly read and practiced by the widest range of Americans, letters are particularly well situated to broaden understandings of the colonial, early republican, and antebellum periods.

Essays taking a wide variety of approaches to letters are welcome, including those examining the formal and material aspects of the genre; the aesthetics of the letter; the social, political, and historical contexts out of which letters emerge and within which they intervene; the ways that letters negotiate and mediate race, class, and gender relationships and national identities; challenges or opportunities letters pose to theorists of autobiography or scholars working in the fields of cultural, women's, or critical race studies; editorial, composition, or revision practices; reception; subgenres of letters (e.g. the familiar letter, letters to the editor, letters embedded in other genres, etc.). Essays may focus on a particular writer's letters or an exchange between multiple correspondents or may consider issues across authors and eras.

Essays of 25 pages (maximum) are due by Nov. 1, 2006. Inquiries are welcome. Send an email attachment and a hard copy to each editor:

Sharon M. Harris
Dept. of English
U of Connecticut
Storrs, CT 06269-4025
sharon.harris@uconn.edu
and
Theresa Strouth Gaul
TCU
Box 297270
Fort Worth, TX 76129
t.gaul@tcu.edu).