Lectures from Elmira 2022 Now Available

Elmira 2022: The Ninth International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies

August 4-6, 2022

The theme of the conference was “Growth: The Most Rigorous Law of Our Being.” Highlights of Elmira 2022 included over 50 delivered papers; 6 special panels; the humorous and informative presentation “All The Twains Meet: The Film and TV Portrayal of Mark Twain” by nationally-respected TV critics David Bianculli and Mark Dawidziak; and a keynote address by award-winning poet Jimmy Santiago Baca.

Elmira 2022 Conference Program

Four scholars and supporters received CMTS Awards at Elmira 2022. (Click on the scholar’s name to learn more about their achievements)

The following are a portion of the papers presented during the conference. (Click on the scholar’s name for a video recording of the talk)

  • Jimmy Santiago Baca, “A Sense of Twain” (August 5, 2022 – Elmira College Campus – Keynote Address)
  • Philip Bauer, “For the Sake of Growth: My Inconsistent Look at the Life of Jean Clemens” (August 4, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Donald T. Bliss, “Mark Twain’s Ten Lessons for a Workable Democracy: Or, Keeping the Republic” (August 6, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • David Bordelon, “Huckleberry Finn and 21st Century Hucksters” (August 6, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • George Cabanas, “Avatar of God: Mark Twain versus the Moral Sense and the Implications for the Contemporary World” (August 4, 2022 – Elmira College Campus”
  • Elizabeth Cantalamessa, “The Devil and Mark Twain” (August 6, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • James Caron, “Mark Twain Lying In Bed” (August 4, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Rosie Click, “‘The [Real] American Game’: Twain’s Thoughts on Soft Imperialism in Cuba” (August 6, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • John Davis, “The Pursuit of Disappointment: Growth of Status and Growth of Delusion in ‘The $30,000 Bequest’” (August 5, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Maggie E. Morris Davis, “‘[H]e realized the shabbiness of his own self’: Reading Children in Poverty in Twain’s Adaptation Network” (August 5, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Mark Dawidziak, “Big River, Lighting Out for the Tonys” (August 4, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • M.M. Dawley, “‘Only dead men can tell the truth in this world’: The Growth of Mark Twain’s Anger” (August 6, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Kerry Driscoll, “‘Talking is the thing’: Mark Twain’s Bold Experiment in Empowering Women’s Voices” (August 4, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Shelley Fisher Fishkin, “How Hal Holbrook’s Understanding of Mark Twain Grew and Changed Over Time: The First Decade” (August 4, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Harold Hellwig, “The Political Theater in Mark Twain’s Illustrated Works” (August 6, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Aleksandra Hernandez, “Disgust, Contempt, and Animal Cruelty in Twain’s Later Writings” (August 6, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Thomas W. Howard, “‘Two stories tangled together’: The Double Brain, Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins” (August 6, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Tsuyoshi Ishihara, “Time for Change: Mark Twain in US School Textbooks, 1950s-1960’s” (August 4, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Takuya Kubo, “Mark Twain’s Failures as ‘Neglected Texts’” (August 5, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Virginia Maresca, “‘Treachery on both sides’: Mark Twain’s Lessons to Modern America on White Victimhood” (August 6, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Linda A. Morris, “Susy Clemens: The Final Years (1890-1896)” (August 4, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • L.Terry Oggel, “Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson: The Tragedy of Nineteenth-Century American Race Law” (August 6, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Alan Rankin, “Nina Gabrilowitsch: Actress, Writer, Photographer” (August 4, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Matt Seybold, “Darnella Frazier’s Smartphone & Mark Twain’s Notebook: The Vigilante Origin of American Police (August 6, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Jeff Steinbrink, “Of Time and Quantum Mechanics in Roughing It” (August 4, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)
  • Mika Turim-Nygren, “Huckleberry Finn‘s ‘Effect of Indigeneity’: Native Erasure in Law and Literature” (August 4, 2022 – Elmira College Campus)