PBS
Resurrecting Zora Neale Hurston | American Masters: Alice Walker
Zora Neale Hurston, her life, her work as an anthropologist recording the customs and speech of southern Black people, and her novels would have remained largely ignored if not for the efforts of Alice Walker. An American Masters video...
PBS
The Valley of Ashes — The Great Gatsby
The Valley of Ashes, the billboard advertising Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, and Wilson's garage are haunting symbols that F. Scott Fitzgerald uses to bring into focus the dark side of the American Dream. A resource from the PBS American Masters...
PBS
A Separate Peace
Jenna and Barbara Bush, daughters of former President George W. Bush, and author Armistead Maupin share with viewers their reasons for selecting John Knowles' A Separate Peace as one of their favorite books.
PBS
To Kill a Mockingbird Setting: A Portrait of a Southern Town in the 1930s
The characters of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird are formed and informed, in part, by the distinctive historical backdrop of Alabama during the Great Depression. Watch a video that details Lee's experience growing up in...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Poetry in America: Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden's sonnet "Those Winter Sundays" offers a meditation on the fraught love between fathers and sons. Conjuring Depression-era industrial Detroit and the struggles of early 20th-century African Americans, the poem's...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: "n.y. State of Mind" by Nas
Multi-platinum hip hop artist Nas has a global reputation as one of the greatest emcees and lyricists in his contemporary art form, but what about within the history and canon, of American poetry? Learn alongside host Elisa New as Nas,...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: "The Gray Heron" by Galway Kinnell
How is the poet's eye like or unlike that of the scientist, the photographer, or of the small child first rambling around the natural world? In this environmentally-themed, visually splendid video [7:07] excerpted from Poetry in America,...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus
While "The New Colossus" once welcomed immigrants into New York Harbor from its perch on the Statue of Liberty, this video [5:22] excerpted from Poetry in America brings the discussion of poetry and immigration into our current moment....
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: "To Prisoners" by Gwendolyn Brooks
Lyric poetry carries the expression of the solitary human voice. Does it then follow that solitary confinement is a school for great poetry? This video excerpted from Poetry in America brings together a group of interpreters who learned...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: "Shirt" by Robert Pinsky
What is a cherished garment made of? What is a poem made of? Labor and raw materials, tradition and innovation, influences both local and global, and art are stitched into both. In this video [6:54] excerpted from Poetry in America, host...