Dr. Matt Miller, associate professor of English at Stern College for Women, is involved in efforts to improve the literary culture in New York City as part of a new nonprofit group, the Walt Whitman Initiative. These include renovations of the Walt Whitman Park in downtown Brooklyn, placing a commemorative plaque at the site where Whitman helped print the first edition of his poems, and preparation of events celebrating Whitman’s bicentennial birthday in 2019. With Dr. Marnin Young, associate professor of art history, Miller is also co-hosting an event for the YU Democrats focusing on protest art and literature, both historically and in the present, on November 14. He will be focusing on civil disobedience as a form of protest from Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi to the various resistance movements today. This spring, Miller will teach a new course, “American Countercultures.” This course focuses on the literature and counter-cultural expressions of Americans from the early 19th century to the present. Students in this course will examine and analyze the ways Americans have both rebelled, and, what's harder, created their own alternate forms of society, as well as the culture that shapes them.