On a Newly Published Book and a Forthcoming Paper

As noted previously here at Shreds and Patches, a paper of mine is forthcoming in the Journal of American Folklore. Today is one of those days that scholars dread: discovering–too late–the work of another scholar that deals exactly with the matters taken up in a work of their own that is now fixed in print, precluding acknowledgement of the newly discovered source. Here is the story.

Building upon an aside in my dissertation (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1997) and my book Yuchi Ceremonial Life (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), my forthcoming article (“The Story of Colonialism, or Rethinking the Ox-hide Purchase in Native North America and Beyond”) is based on a lecture composed for a conference–Colonization and Narrative Migrations: Legends of Occupation from the Mediterranean to the Americas–organized by the Center for Folklore Studies at the Ohio State University and held December 12, 2005. After being presented at the American Folklore Society meetings (October 19, 2006) and to the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma (January 26, 2007), the paper was revised and submitted to the Journal of American Folklore on May 27, 2011. Following peer-review and acceptance (July 10, 2011) by the journal’s editors, a final author’s version was submitted on July 30, 2011. At this time, a projected publication date was set for early 2013. On August 5, 2011, I posted (in accord with JAF author rights policies) a open access version of the paper here on my website.

I received the copy edited manuscript on August 13, 2012 and the page proofs on November 2, 2012. On Wednesday, November 21, 2012, I recieved, in my role as editor of Museum Anthropology Review, a review copy of Andrew Newman’s On Records: Delaware Indians, Colonists, and the Media of History and Memory (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012). On seeing this volume for the first time, I noticed that it covered much of the same territory addressed in my article. Interested in learning more about the author and his work, I then consulted his professional webpage and learned that the specific section of the book overlapping with my article was also presented in his contribution (“Closing the Circle: Mapping a Native Account of Colonial Land Fraud”) to the volume Early American Cartographies edited by Martin Brückner (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). The University of North Carolina Press website shows this volume as having been published in December 2011 (after my paper was in press).

I regret not knowing that Andrew Newman was pursuing work on these materials and issues concurrently with me. Had I known of his work in time to do so, I would have certainly incorporated it into my final version. The case offers an interesting opportunity to consider what two scholars at work independently and contemporaneously can make of the same set of cultural materials.

Congratulations to Professor Newman (and the University of Nebraska Press) on the publication of his new book.