Convening a diverse group of graduate students from many academic disciplines, this conference will explore the multifaceted power of stories and narrative in early America. Citizens and subjects of early America deployed stories to demonstrate scientific or professional authority, to shore up or challenge the tenuous bonds of coerced labor and gender ideologies, to manipulate the collective politics of violence, to frame the evolving rhetoric and practice of law, and to fashion personal subjectivities and group identities. The stories early Americans told appeared in many guises, including didactic literature, rumors, public performances, memoirs, local histories, and court testimonies. The conference, through its presentations and discussions, should illuminate not only the myriad forms and uses of stories in early America, but also the value of the story as an analytical category accessible to scholars from a wide range of disciplines.