Provides a clear view of the realities of the economic and social interactions between Native groups and the expanding Euro-American population
 
The last quarter of the 18th century was a period of extensive political, economic, and social change in North America, as the continent-wide struggle between European superpowers waned. Native groups found themselves enmeshed in the market economy and new state forms of control, among other new threats to their cultural survival. Native populations throughout North America actively engaged the expanding marketplace in a variety of economic and social forms. These actions, often driven by and expressed through changes in material culture, were supported by a desire to maintain distinctive ethnic identities.
 
Illustrating the diversity of Native adaptations in an increasingly hostile and marginalized world, this volume is continental in scope—ranging from Connecticut to the Carolinas, and westward through Texas and Colorado. Calling on various theoretical perspectives, the authors provide nuanced perspectives on material culture use as a manipulation of the market economy. A thorough examination of artifacts used by Native Americans, whether of Euro-American or Native origin, this volume provides a clear view of the realities of the economic and social interactions between Native groups and the expanding Euro-American population and the engagement of these Native groups in determining their own fate.
 

Plays by Early American Women: 1775-1850 provides a comprehensive view of American women's engagement with drama. Standard histories and anthologies of American theater and drama have paid scant attention to women although they actively participated in the formation of a distinctively American drama and were vital in the production of that drama before the twentieth century. The plays in this collection -- The Group (1775) by Mercy Otis Warren, Slaves in Algiers (1794) by Susanna Haswell Rowson, The Traveller Returned (1796) by Judith Sargent Murray, The Female Enthusiast (1807) by Sarah Pogson, The Fair Americans (1815) by Mary Carr Clarke, Altorf (1819) by Frances Wright, Ernest Maltravers (1838) by Louisa Medina, and The Forest Princess (1844) by Charlotte Barnes Conner -- amply demonstrate the range, strength, popularity, and importance of women's dramatic writing during that period. Running the gamut of subject and style these plays, several of them exceptionally stageworthy, indicate the ways in which early American women defined themselves and serve to highlight common patterns in their experience of day-to-day life. At the same time, they construct ideal images of the American woman that were often explicitly held up for emulation by playwrights who evinced a lively concern with defining what it meant to be American. The book includes an introduction that discusses historical context and presents a short biography of each playwright and bibliography of American women playwrights to 1900, with over a thousand entries. This anthology is thus a valuable resource for historians, researchers, and students of American literature, American drama, and women's studies. "The selection of works is excellent. I can't imagine teaching a nineteenth-century American theater history course without it. With this book, such courses can set female dramatists side-by-side with novelists, essayists, and poets." -- Rosemarie K. Bank, Kent State University