News, Conferences, and Coming Events

Upcoming Events

2021 American Literature Association Conference

The James Fenimore Cooper Society will host two panels at the 32ⁿᵈ Annual Conference of the American Literature Association. Because of Covid-19, the conference has been delayed from its usual meeting time in late May to July 7-11, with an in-person gathering being held at The Westin Copley Square in Boston. See the American Literature Association Conference website for more information.

Panel 1: The Spy, Bicentennial: James Fenimore Cooper, The American Author

Chair: Lance Schachterle (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)

  1. “Cooper’s The Spy: The Sublime American Apocalypse”, Ian Pittman (University of Southern Mississippi)
  2. “There’s no profit in being an Honorable Spy: Cooper’s The Spy and the Economics of Espionage in Spy Fiction”, Luis A. Iglesias (University of Southern Mississippi)
  3. “The Spy and James Fenimore Cooper’s Revolutionary Life”, Bradley A. Lenz (Independent Scholar)
  4. “James Fenimore Cooper and the Masquerade of Neutral Ground”, Barbara Rumbinas (Independent Scholar)

Panel 2: James Fenimore Cooper: War & Society

Chair: Luis A. Iglesias (University of Southern Mississippi)

  1. “The Demon Firewater: The Drunken Indian and Native American Identity in James Fenimore Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Tales and William Apess’s A Son of the Forest”, Christopher Allan Black (Auburn University)
  2. “The dark and tangled pathway”: Navigating Space in The Last of the Mohicans”, Sheila Byers (Columbia University)
  3. “Lionel Lincoln, or Lechmere’s Revenge,” Barbara Alice Mann (University of Toledo)
  4. “Textual Ghosts: Interracial Desire in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans”, Daisy Morales Trejo (University of Iowa)

Textual Editing and The Future of Scholarly Editions: A Conference on the Bicentennial of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy

May 25-26, 2021

AAS is hosting a virtual conference that will bring together a range of scholars in conversation about new directions in textual editing and scholarly editions. Since the late 1960s the American Antiquarian Society has been a sponsor of the Cooper Edition, a scholarly edition of James Fenimore Cooper’s works with the seal of the Committee on Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association. The conference coincides with the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of Cooper’s first major novel, The Spy. Panels will address topics such as textual editing in the digital environment; the role of critical race theory, indigeneity, and the canonical author in textual editing and scholarly editions; and who should be involved in the creation and production of scholarly editions.

See the Conference page on the American Antiquarian Society website for more details.

New Books

  • (2020) James Fenimore Cooper, The Chainbearer, Or, The Littlepage Manuscripts. Edited by Lance Schachterle and James P. Elliott, with historial introduction by Lance Schachterle, Wesley T. Mott, and John McWilliams, and explanatory notes by Lance Schachterle. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2020 (originally published by AMS Press, New York, in 2016, but with limited distribution because of the AMS bankruptcy).
  • (2019) James Fenimore Cooper, The Wing-And-Wing, Or Le Feu-Follet: A Tale. Edited with historical introduction and annotations by Lance Schachterle and Anna Scannavini. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2019.
  • (2019) Bill Christophersen, Resurrecting Leather-Stocking: Pathfinding in Jacksonian America. 305 p. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2019.
  • (2017) Wayne Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper: The Later Years. 840 p. boards. Yale University Press, 2017.
  • (2017) James Fenimore Cooper, Recollections of Europe. (Published in England in 1837 as “Recollections of Europe”; published in America in 1837 as “Gleanings in Europe”; Published in Cooper Edition in 1983 as “Gleanings in Europe: France”) 294 p., CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017.
  • (2016) Rosaly Torna Kurth, Susan Fenimore Cooper: New Perspectives on Her Works; With an Introduction to Her Life. 466 p., boards/paper. IUniverse, 2016
  • (2016) Daniel Davis Wood, Frontier Justice in the Novels of James Fenimore Cooper and Cormac McCarthy . 265 p., boards. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016.
  • (2016) Nick Louras, James Fenimore Cooper: A Life. 376 p., boards. Chronos Publishers, 2016.
  • (2016) Gerald Kennedy, Strange Nation: Literary Nationalism and Cultural Conflict in the Age of Poe. Chapter 2: “Writing Against the Nation: Cooper’s Gleanings.” 472 p., boards. Oxford University Press, 2016.
  • (2016) Agnès Derail and Cécile, eds., James Fenimore Cooper ou la frontière mélancolique: The Last of the Mohicans et The Leatherstocking Tales . 153 p., paper. Paris: Éditions Rue d’Ulm, 2016.
  • (2015) James Fenimore Cooper, Homeward Bound, Or, The Chase. A Tale of the Sea., Text Established with Historical Introduction and Textual Notes by Stephen Carl Arch. 654 p., boards. New York: AMS Press, 2015.
  • (2014) Barbara Alice Mann, The Cooper Connection: The Influence of Jane Austen on James Fenimore Cooper. 251 p., boards. New York: AMS Press, 2014.
  • (2012) James Fenimore Cooper, The Autobiography of a Pocket Handkerchief, Edited by Matthew Wynn Sivils and James P. Elliott. 169 p., boards. New York: AMS Press, 2012.
  • (2011) James Fenimore Cooper, The Bravo: A Venetian Story, Edited by Lance Schachterle and James A. Sappenfield; historical introduction by Kay Seymour House; explanatory notes by Anna Scannavini. 482 p., boards. New York: AMS Press, 2011.
  • (2011) Geoffrey Sanborn, Whipscars and Tattoos: The Last of the Mohicans, Moby Dick, and the Maori. Oxford University Press, 2011.
  • (2011) Leather-Stocking Redux; Or, Old Tales, New Essays, edited by Jeffrey Walker. New York: AMS Press, 2011.
    • Jeffrey Walker — Leather-Stocking Redux: An Introduction Anew, and Anon;
    • William Merrill Decker — The Africanist Presence in The Pioneers;
    • Allan M. Axelrad — The Last of the Mohicans, Race Mixing, and America’s Destiny;
    • Barbara Alice Mann — Sex and the Single Mixed-Blood;
    • Robert Daly — Mohicans, Virtue Ethics, Literature, and Life;
    • Signe O. Wegener — Marmaduke Temple: James Fenimore Cooper’s Portrait of an American Man of Leisure;
    • Lance Schachterle — On The Prairie;
    • John McWilliams — Inscribing the Prairie Sunset: Cooper, Cather, and Momaday;
    • Matthew Wynn Sivils — “It’s Ghastly Visage”: Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Tales and the Grotesque;
    • Stephen P. Harthorn — The Pathfinder and Cooper’s Return to Popular Literature;
    • Wayne Franklin — “One More Scene”: The Marketing Context of Cooper’s “Sixth” Leather-Stocking Tale

(2010) James Fenimore Cooper, The Water-Witch; or, The Skimmer of the Seas. Edited, with an Historical Introduction, by Thomas Philbrick and Marianne Philbrick. 645 p., boards. New York: AMS Press, 2010.

(2007) Wayne Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper: The Early Years. 708 p. boards. Yale University Press, 2007.

Periodicals

Literature in the Early American Republic: Annual Studies on Cooper and His Contemporaries. Wayne Franklin and Jason Berger, eds. [originally Matthew Wynn Sivils and Jeffrey Walker] New York: AMS Press.

Note: Only articles pertaining to James Fenimore Cooper or Susan Fenimore Cooper are listed here.

Volume I (2009)

  • Rochelle Raineri Zuck — Cultivation, Commerce, and Cupidity: Late-Jacksonian Virtue in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Crater;
  • Lance Schachterle — The Themes of Land and Leadership in “The Littlepage Manuscripts”;
  • Allan M. Axelrad — Cooper’s Literary Landscape Art and American Landscape Painting: From Mountain Gothic to Forest Gothic and Luminism;
  • Leland S. Person — The Ways of the Hour: Cooper’s Scarlet Letter;
  • Barbara Alice Mann — Aunt Jane and Father Fenimore: The Influence of Jane Austen on James Fenimore Cooper;
  • John C. Havard — The Ideological Significance of Dualistic Native American Characterization in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans and Juan Leòn Mera’s Cumandá

Volume 2 (2010)

  • Rebecca Lush — “Louisianian Lady”: Racial Ambiguity, Gender, and National Identity in Cooper’s The Prairie;
  • Stephen Carl Arch — Cooper’s Turn: Satire and the Age of Jackson.

Volume 3 (2011)

  • Wayne Franklin — Writing America from Abroad: Cooper’s Recollected Sources in The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish;
  • Luis A. Iglesias — Pirates, Patriots, and the Mexican War: Jack Tier and Cooper’s Argument with the Nation;
  • Proceedings of the Association for Documentary Editing/Allied Session on the Cooper Edition;
    • Allan M. Axelrad — Introduction: 2008 MLA Cooper Edition Session;
    • James A. Sappenfield — A Conservative Reconsiders the Rationale of Copy-Text;
    • Karen Lentz Madison and R. D. Madison — The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish: Noting Cooper’s Narragansett Novel;
    • Stephen Carl Arch — All Afloat: Cooper’s Composition of Homeward Bound.

Volume 4 (2012)

  • Anna Scannavini — Cooper in Venice; Or, the “Telling” Subtext of The Bravo;
  • Lance Schachterle — Cooper and the Revolutionary War Novel, 1784-1825.

Volume 5 (2013)

  • Steven Harthorn — An Unfired Shot in the Literary Battle of Lake Erie: Cooper’s Unpublished Reply to Alexander Slidell Mackenzie;
  • Adam Charles Lewis — Naturalization, Empire and the Pacific Historical Romances of James Fenimore Cooper and James Jackson Jarvis.

Volume 6 (2014)

  • Allan M. Axelrad — James Fenimore Cooper, American English, and the Significance of Aristocracy in a Republic;
  • Lance Schachterle — Patriotism and Caste in The Chainbearer: Cooper’s Fifth Revolutionary War Novel;
  • Sarah Sillin — Foreign Friendship: James Fenimore Cooper and America’s International Origins;
  • Donna Richardson — Cooper’s Revision of Paradise Lost and of Romantic Satanism in The Last of the Mohicans;
  • John Hay — Narratives of Extinction: James Fenimore Cooper and the Last Man.

Volume 7 (2015)

  • Bill Christophersen — Cooper’s The Prairie as a Southern Tale;
  • Wayne Franklin — Horatio Greenough, “The Cooper Monument,” and Form and Function;
  • Horatio Greenough, “The Cooper Monument” (1852).