Transformative Literature
David Denby discusses works of literature that influenced his thinking as a child and as a teenager. Looking back, these books transformed the reader that he is today.
Reading
Ann Wierda Rowland, “Reading the Readers: Books Clubs of the Past”
Ann Wierda Rowland discusses her current research into a particular coterie of Boston readers at the turn of the twentieth century who regularly gathered to explore the works of John Keats. Through reflecting on the shared reading practices of past audiences, she suggests, we can better understand our own modes of literary engagement in a period that has supposedly witnessed a rapidly declining interest in the written word.
“I saw, in Stephen Dedalus, myself.”
Ina Dixon explains how a letter from her grandfather to her grandmother, written just before the Battle of the Bulge in WWII, reconnects her to her grandfather and the hardships he suffered at the time. Transcript Andy Mink: My name is Andy Mink, I’m the vice president for education at the National Humanities Center. I’m … Continued