This collection of essays by a leading scholar of American literature and culture demonstrates the impressive scope and depth of Heinz Ickstadt's scholarly interventions and his intense engagement with crucial concepts and questions that have preoccupied the field of American studies over the past decades. Moving from the philosophy of pragmatism to issues of identity formation, from aesthetic experience to pluralist aesthetics, and from imaginaries of American modernism to strategies of commemoration, Ickstadt's recent work explores the complexities of the agenda of literary and cultural studies at large.