Patrice Rankine is Professor in Classics at the University of Chicago. His research has focused on the Ulysses theme as an organizing trope in African American literature of the twentieth century; Aristotle and Black Drama, drawing from theatre and performance theory; and myth, memory and racial reckoning in America. Slavery and the Book (in progress) will continue Rankine’s study of race, modernity, and the classics through a history of the interactions with books and the publishing industry among enslaved people across time. He has spent time in Brazil, most recently doing archival research on slaves who worked in (or later owned) printing presses in the 19th century. Rankine is also a co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas (2015).