Introduction Christopher N. Phillips; Into the Renaissance: 1. Reading the American Renaissance in a Pennsylvania library Christopher N. Phillips; 2. Cooper, Simms, and the boys of summer Jeffrey Walker; 3. The trouble with the Gothic: Poe, Lippard, and the poetics of critique Russell Sbriglia; 4. Emerson and Hawthorne; or, locating the American Renaissance Gavin Jones and Judith Richardson; 5. Cosmopolite at home: global Longfellow Christoph Irmscher; Rethinking the Renaissance: 6. Sins of the rising generation: religion and the American Renaissance Zachary McLeod Hutchins; 7. Uncle Tom's Cabin and the struggle over meaning: from slavery to race Barbara Hochman; 8. The (im)possibilities of Indianness: George Copway and the problem of representativity Mark Rifkin; 9. The poetess at work Alexandra Socarides; 10. Fern, Warner, and the work of sentimentality Jennifer Brady; 11. Melville: the ocean and the city Wyn Kelley; Beyond the Renaissance: 12. Whitman, in and out of the Renaissance David Haven Blake; 13. A Renaissance-self: Frederick Douglass and the art of remaking Zoe Trodd; 14. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper 'in the situation of Ishmael' Melba J. Boyd; 15. The corner-stones of Heaven: science comes to concord Laura Dassow Walls; Coda: War and the Renaissance Christopher N. Phillips.