EX LIBRIS is a series of virtual programs produced by the Providence Athenæum. Featuring an array of humanities scholars, authors, historians, and thought leaders, these conversations illuminate fascinating topics and inspire the intellectually curious. Attendees will have the opportunity to submit questions to the speaker after the presentation. You will need access to a computer or other internet-connected device to join the program on Zoom. Register here.

What is the role of literature in an era when one political party wages continual war on writers and the press? What is the connection between political strife in our daily lives and the way we meet our enemies on the page in fiction? How can literature, through its free exchange, affect politics? Azar Nafisi, the New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, seeks to answer these questions in her new book Read Dangerously and arms readers with a resistance reading list, ranging from James Baldwin to Zora Neale Hurston to Margaret Atwood.

Drawing on her experiences as a woman and voracious reader living in the Islamic Republic of Iran, her life as an immigrant in the United States, and her role as literature professor in both countries, she crafts an argument for why, in a genuine democracy, we must engage with the enemy, and how literature can be a vehicle for doing so.