Poets & Writers Theater

In this video from the University of South Carolina Irvin Department of Rare Books & Special Collections, scholars talk about their special exhibit celebrating 100 years since F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was published with items ranging from first editions of the novel, editions owned by writers like Sylvia Plath, and ephemera from the author’s life.

In this installment of the Visions of America: All Stories, All People, All Places series hosted by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and PBS Books, Kaoukab Chebaro, head of Global Studies at the Columbia University Libraries, discusses the importance of first-person storytelling and her work in preserving the individual history of Arabs across the globe.

“I am afraid / that the mouths I feed will turn against me / will refuse to swallow in the silence / I am warning them to avoid.” Audre Lorde reads her poem “Blackstudies,” which appears in her book New York Head Shop and Museum (Broadside Press, 1974), in this video from the Poetry Center’s American Poetry Archives collection at San Francisco State University.