Even if you have never heard of Rashomon, you are still likely familiar with the plot of this 1950 Japanese film directed by the master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Television shows as diverse as All in the Family, The X-Files and King of the Hill...

First published in 1920, Claude McKay's "The Lynching" stands as a powerful condemnation of one of the most horrific chapters of American history. A form of unlawful killing carried out by mobs, lynchings increased in the years after...

"If We Must Die" is writer Claude McKay's most famous poem, showing his deft use of the form most associated with his work, the sonnet. McKay composed the poem in response to the outburst of racial violence in the summer of 1919, dubbed "The Red...

Her is a 2013 American romantic science-fiction film directed, produced, and written by Spike Jonze. The film follows Theodore, a lonely man in the final stages of a divorce. His career is writing "beautiful handwritten letters" on behalf of other...

Perhaps O'Hara's most celebrated poem, "Having A Coke With You" describes an afternoon spent in the park with a lover.

After returning from a trip to Spain in 1960, O'Hara wrote "Having A Coke With You" following an afternoon he spent with dancer...

Released in 2016, J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy was a near-instant success, receiving widespread acclaim for its sobering depiction of white, working-class Americans experiencing a collective identity crisis. It remains a controversial book, with...

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing is a children's book published in 1972, and is to date one of author Judy Blume's most famous works. It is the first book in the Fudge Series, which follows the experiences of a 9-year-old fourth grader named Peter...

Although “In an Artist’s Studio” was published posthumously in 1896, the poem’s composition occurred on December 24, 1856, a date which has proved useful for scholarly interpretation. Since its publication, scholars have assumed that Rossetti’s...

The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas’s first novel, debuted as number one on The New York Times bestseller list when it was published in February 2017. Thomas developed the novel from a short story she wrote for her senior project in Belhaven University’...

Whiplash is a 2014 movie drama written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It tells the story of Andrew Neiman, a talented young drummer who is attending a prestigious conservatory and studying jazz. He is taken under the wing of a brilliant and...

Clear Light of Day is perhaps Anita Desai’s most beloved work, notable for its lush prose and compelling, compassionate look at the inner lives of an Indian family. It is also her most autobiographical work, taking place in the same area where she...

Author Elie Wiesel wrote Night (1960) about his experience that he and his family endured in the concentration camps during World War II between 1944 and 1945, primarily taking place the notorious camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. More than just...

Nosferatu is arguably the first great horror movie. Nearly 100 years after it was made, it can still inspire terror, revulsion, and dread. But we're lucky that we even have copies to see today.

The film was made under strange circumstances, to say...

The Fisher King is a comedy-drama movie released in 1991 to critical acclaim. It was written by Richard LaGravanese and directed by Terry Gilliam and was the first movie that Gilliam directed that he had not also written. It was also the first...

The genre of horror buddy comedy was not particularly common at the time that Ghostbusters was released, and it redefined the genre in unforeseeable ways. Star and writer Dan Aykroyd initially imagined that Ghostbusters would be a star vehicle for...

Goodfellas is perhaps one of the best-known and most-loved mafia films of all time. Released in 1990 and directed by Martin Scorsese, the film is based on Nicholas Pileggi's book Wiseguy, about the real life of Henry Hill, and it takes many of its...