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American Protest Literature

November 15, 2006
Zoe Trodd tutorial board, Harvard
Adoyo Owuor founder, Zamani Foundation
Timothy Patrick McCarthy instructor, history, Harvard
John Stauffer professor, English, Harvard
Doric Wilson playwright

Author Zoe Trodd discusses how her book celebrates an American literature that holds the nation to its highest ideals, castigating it when it falls short and pointing the way to a better collective future. Adoyo Owuor reads the Emancipation Proclamation, Timothy Patrick McCarthy reads Eugene V. Debs' Statement to the Court, John Stauffer displays a stunning collection of 20th century protest photography, and Doric Wilson presents excerpts from his play Street Theater.

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I feel grateful as I just discovered that site before my American Protest Literature exam:)

I feel quite strange that I tried to write a paper about the rhetoric strategies of protest literature analyzing the great depression texts; The Grapes of Wrath and Let us now praise famous Men. wish I could encounter this video before.

the thing I want to tell exactly is that even if I normally feel a little bit uneasy about the history, that protest genre makes me feel alerted and stimulated for the things goin on in the America(as an american culture student). and even if I am not confident enough to discuss outloud in the classroom, I feel myself moved by the texts and started to have a certain vantage point about the milestones of american history in terms of movements and protest...thank you so much:)))