This volume offers approaches and methods to help teachers and their students reconceptualize early American literatures as a complex body of multifaceted works rather than merely an offshoot of British culture or a putatively American past.Different approaches are presented to literatures of Native Americans, African Americans, women, and French and Spanish colonials. Genre studies essays focus on early poetry, fiction, drama, autobiography, and captivity narratives.Teaching the Literatures of Early America shows the innovative ways in which scholars and teachers are addressing the richness and variety of early materials.