Contributions by Janet Allured, Lisa Pertillar Brevard, Jami L. Carlacio, Cheryl J. Fish, Angela Hornsby-Gutting, Jennifer McFarlane-Harris, Neely McLaughlin, Darcy Metcalfe, Phillip Luke Sinitiere, P. ...

When Jimmy Carter (b. 1924) lost the presidency in 1980, it would have been reasonable to think his public life was coming to an end. The moderate, evangelical, blue-jeans-wearing peanut farmer made an ...

Jack Kent (1920–1985) had two distinct and successful careers: newspaper cartoonist and author of children’s books. For each of these he drew upon different aspects of his personality and life experiences. ...

The civil rights movement is often defined narrowly, relegated to the 1950s and 1960s and populated by such colossal figures as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Many forget that the movement was ...

The history of racism in America is also the history of ordinary Black Americans who accomplished extraordinary things in their pursuit of freedom. Faced with oppression throughout their journey, they ...

David O. Selznick (1902–1965) was one of the most prominent film producers of the Hollywood studio era, responsible for such artistic and commercial triumphs as King Kong, David Copperfield, Anna Karenina ...

Since Sylvia Plath’s death in 1963, she has become the subject of a constant stream of books, biographies, and articles. She has been hailed as a groundbreaking poet for her starkly beautiful poems ...

As the US entered World War I in 1917, a burst of patriotism in New Orleans collided with civil liberties. The city, due to its French heritage, shared a strong cultural tie to the Allies, and French ...

Christian Petzold (b. 1960) is the best-known filmmaker associated with the “Berlin School” of postunification German cinema. Identifying as an intellectual, Petzold self-consciously approaches his ...

Jerry W. Ward Jr. (b. 1943) has published nonfiction, literary criticism, encyclopedias, anthologies, and poetry. Ward is also a highly respected scholar with a specialty in African American literature ...