Research the life and times of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. When did he live? Where? What was the political and the social life like in his times? What were his interests?

In the 1930s, Europe's balance of power was precarious, and events such as the Spanish Civil War altered that balance. Research the years leading up to World War II in terms of competing national interests and power blocs.

Beckett's friend and mentor James Joyce experienced censorship throughout his life, and Beckett also encountered publishers and governments that refused to allow his work to circulate because of its content. What were the United States laws about this in the 1930s? How does the Supreme Court determine whether a work is "obscene?" How have the laws changed in the last seventy years?

European universities are organized very differently from the way American...