U.S. History

A New Literary History of America

Greil Marcus; Werner Sollors

About the Program

Editors Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors examine American history through the lens of literature.  Their collection of over two hundred essays from numerous contributors range from Ben Franklin's letters and George Washington's farewell address to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.  The editors are joined by Lindsay Waters, executive editor of the humanities at Harvard University Press and take questions from Homi Bhabha, Larry Buell, Glenda Carpio, Liz Cohen, Alex Keyssar, and Judith Tick at the Barker Center for the Humanities at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

About the Authors

Greil Marcus

Greil Marcus is the author of numerous books, including The Dustbin of History and The Shape of Things to Come. 


Buy the author's book from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

Werner Sollors

Werner Sollors is an English Literature and African American Studies professor at Harvard University.  He is the author of Ethnic Modernism and Neither Black nor White yet Both.

Program Information

A New Literary History of America

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Past Airings

  • Sunday, January 10th at 1pm (ET)
  • Sunday, November 1st at 9am (ET)
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