This collection reimagines Melville as both a theorist and a writer, approaching his works as philosophical forms in their own right.

1. Introduction: Melville studies, old and new Cody Marrs; Part I. Feeling With Melville: 2. Paranoid reading, surface pleasures, and deadpan humor in the confidence-man Justine Murison; 3. Melville and his flowers Gillian Kidd Osborne; 4. Pip and the sounds of blackness in Moby-Dick Christopher Freeburg; 5. Melville after secularism Brian Yothers; 6. Marginal states: Melville in the Marquesas, 1842 Edward Sugden; Part II. Thinking With Melville: 7. Perfectionist Pierre Dominic Mastroianni; 8. The confidence-man between genres Elizabeth Duquette; 9. Melville's style Samuel Otter; 10. Melville and the conceits of theory Jennifer Greiman; 11. Billy Budd: pessimism for post-critique Paul Hurh; 12. Melville, Mardi, and materialism Michael Jonik; 13. Popular networks in Melville's battle-pieces Eliza Richards; 14. The biographical re-turn: writing Melville biography and the example of women John Bryant; 15. Afterword: 'new', 'old', and 'with' Robert S. Levine.