2026 Quarry Farm Symposium “Black Childhood and Children’s Literature in the Nineteenth Cnetury”
Starting in 2008, the Center for Mark Twain Studies has hosted a number of symposia on specific topics in Mark Twain Studies and other related fields. These symposia offer scholars the opportunity to spend a few days deeply delving into a specific aspect of the nineteenth-century. Several speakers, usually experts in their specific academic field, give papers throughout the gathering, often followed by roundtable discussions.
The thirteenth Quarry Farm Symposium takes place on the property where Twain wrote most of his iconic works. Like previous symposia on, for instance, Abolition Studies and Energy Studies, the “Black Childhood and Children’s Literature in the Nineteenth-Century” symposium does not seek to center Mark Twain or his works in the proceedings, but merely to acknowledge that ongoing research and publication in this field is bound to facilitate better understanding of Twain’s life, work, legacy, and world, as is CMTS’s mission. Twain imagined the literary characters Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn at Quarry Farm and these iconic representations of childhood have contributed to white children’s overrepresentation in American popular culture. Considering Black childhood in the nineteenth century adds essential context for understanding childhood during this era.
The Symposium will take place on Friday, October 16 and Saturday, October 17 at historic Quarry Farm.
A developed proposal for 20-minute paper presentation (700 words maximum) should be emailed as a Word document to Brigitte Fielder (br**************@**sc.edu) and Joseph Lemak (jl****@****ra.edu). Include an email containing your contact information (name, mailing address, email, address, etc.) in the body of the email. The symposium organizers will contine to accept abstracts until all presentations slots are filled. Funding for Ph.D. candidates is available, including free lodging, food, and waived registration fees.
“The Banjo Lesson” by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1893)
Symposium image designed by Angelina Addison ’28
SYMPOSIUM CHAIR
Brigitte Fielder
Brigitte is a Professor in the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Relative Races: Genealogies of Interracial Kinship in Nineteenth-Century America (Duke University Press, 2020) and co-editor of Against a Sharp White Background: Infrastructures of African American Print (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019). She has written a number of journal articles and chapters on early and nineteenth-century literature, particularly focusing on African American women writers and African American children’s literature, as well as some public-facing essays for venues such as Avidly (a channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books) and the New York Times Book Review. In addition to her recovery work with TBL, Brigitte currently co-edits J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists and is a co-coordinator of Just Teach One—Early African American Print, a digital recovery project hosted by the American Antiquarian Society. She is past president of the Children’s Literature Association.
KEYNOTE EVENT
Marcus Kwame Anderson
Marcus Kwame Anderson was born in Kingston, Jamaica and moved to upstate New York at an early age. He is an illustrator and fine artist who has been creating art since I was able to lift a crayon. Much of his work is a representation of the beauty and diversity of the African Diaspora.
He graduated from S.U.N.Y. College at Fredonia with a degree in illustration. He is the co-creator of the comic book series, Snow Daze, and the illustrator of the all-ages detective series, Cash and Carrie and the Eisner Award winning graphic novel, The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History, written by David F. Walker (Ten Speed Press). His most recent book is another collaboration with David Walker, the critically acclaimed Big Jim and The White Boy (Ten Speed Press).
David F. Walker
David F. Walker is the author of the graphic novel Big Jim and the White Boy: An American Classic Reimagined (Ten Speed Graphic). Among his many other publications Walker is also the Eisner Award-winning writer of The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History, co-creator of the Eisner Award-winning series Bitter Root (Image), and author of the critically acclaimed YA novel, The Second Chance of Darius Logan (Scholastic Press).
