This study comprises a set of lively, diverse, and original investigations into contemporary notions of race in the oceanic interculture of the Atlantic during the early modern period. Working across institutional boundaries of "American" and "British" literature in this period, as well as between "history" and "literature," ten essays address the ways in which cultural categories of "race"-brown, red, and white, African-American and Afro-Caribbean, Spanish and Jewish, English and Celtic, native American and northern European, creole and mestizo-were constructed and adapted by early modern writers.