Reclaiming the aesthetic, emphasizing the literary in literary studies, conceptualizing a new formalism: such recent appeals represent the latest turn in ongoing debates about art and aesthetic ideology. Intervening in these debates-often characterized by predictable oppositions that set art against social action, structure against cultural practice, and the so-called imaginaries of affect against the putative reality of politics-this special issue of American Literature asks, what’s new about the new aesthetics, and what implications does this shifting ideology have for social and cultural thinking?