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Curated category

20th-century American literature

  • San Francisco RenaissanceKenneth Rexroth stood at the center of a literary circle in San Francisco during the 1940s. He was a poet, translator, and critic who corresponded with Ezra…
  • New CriticismIn 1941, John Crowe Ransom published a book titled The New Criticism. This volume gave the movement its name and signaled a break from older methods of…
  • Harlem RenaissanceIn 1903, Philip A. Payton Jr. founded the Afro-American Realty Company to fight housing discrimination and encourage Black migration into Harlem.
  • Performance poetryOn the 23rd of June 1916, Hugo Ball stood at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich. He wore a cardboard costume that forced him to be carried onto the stage.
  • Spoken wordBefore the invention of writing, a cycle of practicing, listening and memorizing shaped how each language drew on its resources of sound structure.