American studies in the context of "Atlantic history"

The American Renaissance period in American literature ran from about 1830 to around the Civil War. A central term in American studies, the American Renaissance was for a while considered synonymous with American Romanticism and was closely associated with Transcendentalism.

Lyman Tower Sargent (born 9 February 1940) is an American academic and professor emeritus of political science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Sargent's main academic interests are utopian studies, political theory, American studies and bibliography. He is one of the world's foremost scholars of utopian studies, founding editor of Utopian Studies, serving in that post for the journal's first fifteen years, and recipient of the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Society for Utopian Studies. Sargent was educated as an undergraduate at Macalester College and a graduate student at the University of Minnesota.

Francis Otto Matthiessen (February 19, 1902 – April 1, 1950) was an American educator, scholar, and literary critic, influential in the fields of American literature and American studies. His best known work, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman, celebrated the achievements of several 19th-century American authors and had a profound impact on a generation of scholars. It also established American Renaissance as the common term to refer to American literature of the mid-19th century. Matthiessen was known for his support of liberal causes and progressive politics. His contributions to the Harvard University community have been memorialized in several ways, including an endowed visiting professorship.