The following three essays were read as papers at the biennial meeting of the American Studies Association held in Minneapolis in September 1979. The panel went under the conventional rubric of “Criticism, Biography, and Popular Culture,” but its main theme is probably best conveyed by V. P. Bynack's title, “Signs of the Times.” All three essays assault traditional methods in American Studies. Their tone is iconoclastic; their defiance, supported by a roll call of new authorities: not Lovejoy but Saussure, not Miller and Matthiessen but Geertz and Kuhns. Andere Zeiten, andere Lieder. Just what was being affirmed remains hazy, even in retrospect; but it made for an extraordinarily lively discussion, and signs are that the discussion will continue, in one form or another, for some time to come.