The two largest collections of Dickinson papers are held by the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Other collections, large and small, are scattered at archives around the country. Taken together, Dickinson published and unpublished writings and correspondence are a significant cache of unexplored sources from the late-Colonial period into the Early Republic. Because of prior lack of access to them, very little scholarship has been done on Dickinson, much of it unreliable. Most of the extant scholarship is on his political contributions, with emphasis on his controversial decision not to vote on or sign the Declaration of Independence. Suggestive of the wealth of possibilities in this corpus, the papers for the symposium range far beyond this topic. The scholars bring a variety of interests and disciplinary approaches. Their papers cover such intriguing—and currently relevant—topics as abolitionism, aging, democracy, education, freedom of the press, the military, Native Americans, pluralism, rights, tax policy, and trans-Atlantic epistolary networks. The publication of Dickinson’s writings and correspondence will result in a new field of Dickinson studies; these papers are just a sample of what is possible.