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Where, when, and how does American literature begin? What constitutes the canon of U.S. literature, and how is it distinct? While monuments and history books are the most prominent battlefields in our current culture wars, the debate over what belongs in the canon of great American literature has not subsided. I spoke with Professor Sarah Rivett, Professor of English and American Studies and Affiliated Faculty of Indigenous Studies at Princeton University, about American literature. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Professor Rivett specializes in early American and transatlantic literature, religion, and indigenous history. She is the author of The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England (2011), which was awarded the Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History, and Unscripted America: Indigenous Languages and the Origins of  Literary Nation (2017).  I was especially interested in speaking with Professor Rivett since she enthusiastically endorsed Fictions of America: The Book of Firsts, which I co-edited with Smaran Dayal (Warbler Press, 2020)