Includes bibliographical references.

Why did the European cross the ocean? A seventeenth-century riddle / M. Jehlen -- American literature discovers Columbus / T. Martin -- Charlotte Temple's remains / E. Cherniavsky -- The underheard reader in the writing of the old Southwest / J.H. Justus -- Poe, plagiarism, and the prescriptive right of the mob / J. Elmer -- Hawthorne and the making of the middle class / M.T. Gilmore -- "Margaret Garner": a Cincinnati story / C.G. Wolff -- Antinomies of liberalism: the politics of "belief" and the project of Americanist criticism / C. Wolfe -- The great mother domesticated: sexual difference and sexual indifference in D.W. Griffith's Intolerance / M. Rogin -- Choicelessness as choice: the conflation of racism and sexism / C.A. Mitchell.