The temple and the forum: the American museum and cultural authority in Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, and Whitman

Forums and temples: the museum as representational site

"The emptiness of picture galleries": Hawthorne's interrogation of cultural authority in the commercial marketplace

"For unless you own the whale": Melville's cultural interregnum

"Arguing with pictures": constructing Uncle Tom's cabin on the New York stage

Walt Whitman's specimens of democracy.