* Highlights the diverse voices that constitute American literature, embracing oral traditions, slave narratives, regional writing, literature of the environment, and more

* Demonstrates that American literature was multicultural before Europeans arrived on the continent, and even more so thereafter

* Offers three distinct paradigms for thinking about American literature, focusing on: genealogies of American literary study; writers and issues; and contemporary theories and practices

* Enables students and researchers to generate richer, more varied and more comprehensive readings of American literature