When America entered World War II in 1941, we faced an enemy that had banned and burned 100 million books. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops and gathered 20 million hardcover donations. In 1943, the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program: 120 million small, lightweight paperbacks for troops to carry in their pockets and rucksacks in every theater of war. These...

An urgent project that unravels all modes and methods of Black performance, in this moment when Black performers are coming to terms with their value, reception, and immense impact on America. With sharp insight, humor, and heart, Abdurraqib examines how Black performance happens in specific moments in time and space--midcentury Paris, the moon, or a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio. At the outset of this project, Abdurraqib became fascinated...

Story of Holden Caufield with his idiosyncrasies, penetrating insight, confusion, sensitivity and negativism. Holden, knowing he is to be expelled from school, decides to leave early. He spends three days in New York City and tells the story of what

Few movements in American social and intellectual history have been as influential as the cluster of ideas which have come to be called Transcendentalism. From Ralph Waldo Emerson's self-reliant soul and Henry David Thoreau's different drummer to modern ideas about individualism and democracy, Transcendentalism has had a powerful impact on central aspects of American life. The course begins with a study Emerson and Thoreau, the two figures at the...