The 2019 Park Church Lecture Series, hosted by the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, continues on Wednesday, August 21 in the historic and cultural landmark, The Park Church, 208 W. Gray Street, Elmira. The lecture begins at 7:00 p.m., and is free and open to the public.
Sunny Yang will give a lecture entitled “Where the ‘Wild West’ Ends and China Begins: Rethinking the Geography of Mark Twain and Bret Harte’s Ah Sin”
Playbill for the Washington, D.C. run of Ah Sin at the National Theatre, May 1877
Yang will discuss how, in the fall of 1876, Mark Twain and Bret Harte embarked on a disastrous collaboration that would culminate in the frontier melodrama known as Ah Sin. Named after its Chinese laundryman character, who was taken from Harte’s 1870 poem “Plain Language from Truthful James,” the play is widely acknowledged as a literary and financial failure that contributed to the demise of Twain and Harte’s friendship. Yet despite its dubious artistic merit, Ah Sin has captured some critical attention because of the central role played by its titular Chinese character. Scholars have debated the play’s intervention into nineteenth-century American stereotypes about the Chinese and have exclusively interpreted the work in the context of domestic debates over Chinese immigration and legal testimony. This talk takes a different approach by analyzing Ah Sin through the lens of nineteenth-century commentary on Sino-American relations, focusing in particular on the U.S. foreign policy of extraterritoriality in China. Resituating the play in this transnational legal context offers fresh insights into Twain’s anti-imperialism at this moment in his career, while also suggesting new avenues for interpreting representations of Chinese immigrants and Chinese American politics in nineteenth-century American writing.
Sunny Yang is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Houston, where she specializes in American and multi-ethnic American literature of the long nineteenth century. Her research explores the imperial contexts of U.S. racial formation and cultural production with an emphasis on the intersections of law and literature. She received her PhD in English with a certificate in Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently completing her first book project, Fictions of Territoriality, with the support of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the American Association of University Women.
About The Park Church
Founded in 1846 by a group of abolitionists, The Park Church has been a strong presence in Elmira’s history and some members of its congregation were close friends and family members to Mark Twain. Known for its striking architectural features, The Park Church contained Elmira’s first public library and has a long history of charitable service to the Elmira community. Currently, it is an “Open and Affirming Congregation,” welcoming all people to worship and participate in its communal life, regardless of ethnic origin, race, class, age, ability, gender, or sexual orientation.
About the Center for Mark Twain Studies
The Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies was founded in January 1983 with the gift of Quarry Farm to Elmira College by Jervis Langdon, the great-grand-nephew of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. The Center offers distinctive programs to foster and support Mark Twain scholarship and to strengthen the teaching of Mark Twain at all academic levels. The Center serves the Elmira College community and regional, national, and international students and scholars of Mark Twain.
The 2019 Park Church Lecture Series, hosted by the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, continues on Wednesday, August 14 in the historic and cultural landmark, The Park Church, 208 W. Gray Street, Elmira. The lecture begins at 7:00 p.m., and is free and open to the public.
Manuscript page from 3,000 Years among the Microbes, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut
The lecture, “The
Dread of Filth in Twain: Cultures of Mysophobia in Post-Pasteurian Medicine
and 3,000 Years among the Microbes,” will be presented by Don James
McLaughlin, University of Tulsa. This talk examines Mark Twain’s unfinished
manuscript 3,000 Years among the Microbes, written in Dublin, New
Hampshire in 1905. More precisely, McLaughlin will provide a historical
backdrop for the manuscript by putting it in dialogue with two major shifts in
medical thought at the end of the nineteenth century: (1) the rise of
microbiology, introducing a new discourse for articulating the relationship of
bacteria and viruses to infectious disease, established largely by Louis
Pasteur’s successes in vaccination; and (2) the emergence of an international
psychiatric discourse revolving around mysophobia, meaning a dread
of filth and contamination. Written from the perspective of a cholera germ
named Huck who has infected a tramp named Blitzowski, 3,000 Years meditates
on both discourses, exploring microbiology’s ramifications for human
understandings of life, agency, and subjectivity, while also pursuing a
mysophobic aesthetic: a state of readerly repugnance generated by the landscape
of infection and bodily functions Huck and his microbe friends inhabit. McLaughlin
uses 3,000 Years to argue that we cannot understand the rise
of mysophobia (as either a diagnosis or an aesthetic) without also
understanding its historical relationship to the landscape of invisible
infectious agents introduced to human consciousness through the birth of
microbiology as a science.
McLaughlin is an assistant professor of nineteenth-century American
literature at the University of Tulsa and the 2018-2019 Hench post-dissertation
fellow at the American Antiquarian Society. His work has been published
in American Literature and the New Republic and
is forthcoming in Literature and Medicine and J19: The
Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists.
About The
Park Church
Founded in 1846 by a group of abolitionists, The Park Church has been a
strong presence in Elmira’s history and some members of its congregation were
close friends and family members to Mark Twain.
Known for its striking architectural features, The Park Church contained
Elmira’s first public library and has a long history of charitable service to
the Elmira community. Currently, it is
an “Open and Affirming Congregation,” welcoming all people to worship and
participate in its communal life, regardless of ethnic origin, race, class,
age, ability, gender, or sexual orientation.
About the
Center for Mark Twain Studies
The Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies was founded in January 1983
with the gift of Quarry Farm to Elmira College by Jervis Langdon, the great-grand-nephew
of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. The Center offers distinctive programs to foster
and support Mark Twain scholarship and to strengthen the teaching of Mark Twain
at all academic levels. The Center serves the Elmira College community and regional,
national, and international students and scholars of Mark Twain.
Over 75 downloadable lectures have been added to the “Trouble Begins” Archives. Most of these lectures come from the years 1986 to 1999.
Louis. J. Budd at Quarry Farm
In 1985, the Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies inaugurated The Trouble Begins at Eight lecture series. The title comes from a handbill advertising Mark Twain’s October 2, 1866 lecture presented at Maguire’s Academy of Music in San Francisco. The lectures are now held in the Spring, Summer, and Fall of each year, in the barn at Quarry Farm, Peterson Chapel in Cowles Hall on Elmira College’s campus, or the Historic Park Church in downtown Elmira. All lectures are free and open to the public. We will continue to work our way back and make these lectures to everyone. Please stay tuned for more. All the downloadable lectures and copies of “The Trouble Begins Programs” can be found in The Trouble Begins Archives.
Some highlights include:
Victor Doyno, “Mark Twain’s Family Life at Quarry Farm” (July 27, 1988 – Hamilton Hall – Elmira College Campus)
Hamlin Hill, “Late Mark Twain: Fro Bad Philosophy to Worse Literature” (July 24, 1989 – Quarry Farm Barn)
Louis J. Budd, “Mark Twain’s Visual Humor” (June 5, 1995 – Quarry Farm)
Susan K. Harris, “Love Texts: The Role of Books in the Courtship of Olivia Langdon and Mark Twain” (November 13, 1996 – Quarry Farm)
Kerry Driscoll, “‘Eating Indians for Breakfast’: Racial Ambivalence and American Identity in The Innocents Abroad” (October 21, 1998 – Quarry Farm)
Chad Rohman, “‘Yours Truly, Mark Twain’: Reconsidering the Intellectual and Epistemological Dimensions of an Ironic and Elusive Mind” (May 6, 1998 – Quarry Farm)
Elmira, New York – The 2019 Park Church Lecture Series, hosted by the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, begins Wednesday, August 7 in the historic and cultural landmark, The Park Church, 208 W. Gray Street, Elmira. The lecture begins at 7:00 p.m., and is free and open to the public.
Poster from a February 8, 1873 lecture on Hawai’i
The first lecture, “’Views of Mark Twain’: Antics and Annexation in Twain’s New York Tribune Letters on Hawai’i,” will be presented by Todd Nathan Thompson, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The December 1872 death of Hawaiian monarch Kamehameha V spurred renewed interest among US citizens and politicians alike in the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands. To satisfy the public’s increased curiosity about Hawai’i, in January 1873 the New York Daily Tribune sought testimony in the form of two letters from a well-known expert on the islands: Mark Twain. Twain had gained nationwide fame based on his correspondence from the Hawai’i to the Sacramento Union in 1866 and especially from his popular comic lecture, often titled “Or Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands,” which he delivered across the US and abroad between 1866-1873. In my talk I will examine how Twain’s humorous writings and lectures about Hawai’i led American editors and readers to view him as a serious authority on the islands. I will also perform contextualized readings of reprinted excerpts of his letters to the Tribune in other newspapers and magazines and consider what these editorial choices reveal about the American reading public’s views of Twain and of Hawai’i in the early 1870s.
A professor of English, Thompson is also treasurer-secretary of the American Humor Studies Association. Thompson is author of The National Joker: Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Satire (Southern Illinois University Press, 2015). His work on political satire and pre-1900 American literature has also appeared in Scholarly Editing, Early American Literature, ESQ, Nineteenth-Century Prose, Journal of American Culture, Teaching American Literature, and elsewhere. He currently is at work on a book project entitled Savage Laughter: Nineteenth-Century American Humor and the Pacific, 1840-1880.
Professor Thompson is a 2019 Quarry Farm Fellow. Professor Thompson gave a lecture for CMTS’ 2018 Spring “Trouble Begins” Lecture Series. His lecture can be accessed here:
Todd Nathan Thompson, “An American Cannibal at Home: Comic Diplomacy in Mark Twain’s Hawai’i” (May 23, 2018 – Cowles Hall – Elmira College Campus) Lecture Images
About The Park Church
Founded in 1846 by a group of abolitionists, The Park Church has been a
strong presence in Elmira’s history and some members of its congregation were
close friends and family members to Mark Twain.
Known for its striking architectural features, The Park Church contained
Elmira’s first public library and has a long history of charitable service to
the Elmira community. Currently, it is
an “Open and Affirming Congregation,” welcoming all people to worship and
participate in its communal life, regardless of ethnic origin, race, class,
age, ability, gender, or sexual orientation.
About the
Center for Mark Twain Studies
The Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies was founded in January 1983 with the gift of Quarry Farm to Elmira College by Jervis Langdon, Jr., the great-grand-nephew of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. The Center offers distinctive programs to foster and support Mark Twain scholarship and to strengthen the teaching of Mark Twain at all academic levels. The Center serves the Elmira College community and regional, national, and international students and scholars of Mark Twain.
The 2019 “Park Church Summer Lectures” are presented by the Center for Mark Twain Studies and The Park Church. The series will feature three lectures. All the lectures will begin at 7:00 p.m. and will be located at The Park Church (208 W. Grey Street, Elmira, NY). All of these lectures are open to the public at no cost.
Wednesday, August 7 at The Park Church (7:00 p.m.)
“Views of Mark Twain”: Antics and Annexation in Twain’s New York Tribune Letters on Hawai’i”
Todd Nathan Thompson, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Poster from a February 8, 1873 lecture on Hawai’i
The December 1872 death of Hawaiian monarch Kamehameha V spurred renewed interest among US citizens and politicians alike in the annexation of the Hawaiian islands. To satisfy the public’s increased curiosity about Hawai’i, in January 1873 the New York Daily Tribune sought testimony in the form of two letters from a well-known expert on the islands: Mark Twain. Twain had gained nationwide fame based on his correspondence from the Hawai’i to the Sacramento Union in 1866 and especially from his popular comic lecture, often titled “Or Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands,” which he delivered across the US and abroad between 1866-1873. In my talk I will examine how Twain’s humorous writings and lectures about Hawai’i led American editors and readers to view him as a serious authority on the islands. I will also perform contextualized readings of reprinted excerpts of his letters to the Tribune in other newspapers and magazines and consider what these editorial choices reveal about the American reading public’s views of Twain and of Hawai’i in the early 1870s.
Todd Nathan Thompson is Professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is also Treasurer-Secretary of the American Humor Studies Association. Todd is author of The National Joker: Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Satire (Southern Illinois University Press, 2015). His work on political satire and pre-1900 American literature has also appeared in Scholarly Editing, Early American Literature, ESQ, Nineteenth-Century Prose, Journal of American Culture, Teaching American Literature, and elsewhere. He currently is at work on a book project entitled Savage Laughter: Nineteenth-Century American Humor and the Pacific, 1840-1880.
Wednesday, August 14 at The Park Church (7:00 p.m.)
“The Dread of Filth in Twain: Cultures of Mysophobia in Post-Pasteurian Medicine and 3,000 Years among the Microbes”
Don James McLaughlin, University of Tulsa
Manuscript page from 3,000 Years among the Microbes, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut
This talk examines Mark Twain’s unfinished manuscript 3,000 Years among the Microbes, written in Dublin, New Hampshire in 1905. More precisely, I provide a historical backdrop for the manuscript by putting it in dialogue with two major shifts in medical thought at the end of the nineteenth century: (1) the rise of microbiology, introducing a new discourse for articulating the relationship of bacteria and viruses to infectious disease, established largely by Louis Pasteur’s successes in vaccination; and (2) the emergence of an international psychiatric discourse revolving around mysophobia, meaning a dread of filth and contamination. Written from the perspective of a cholera germ named Huck who has infected a tramp named Blitzowski, 3,000 Years meditates on both discourses, exploring microbiology’s ramifications for human understandings of life, agency, and subjectivity, while also pursuing a mysophobic aesthetic: a state of readerly repugnance generated by the landscape of infection and bodily functions Huck and his microbe friends inhabit. I use 3,000 Years to argue that we cannot understand the rise of mysophobia (as either a diagnosis or an aesthetic) without also understanding its historical relationship to the landscape of invisible infectious agents introduced to human consciousness through the birth of microbiology as a science.
Don James McLaughlin is assistant professor of nineteenth-century American literature at the University of Tulsa and the 2018-2019 Hench post-dissertation fellow at the American Antiquarian Society. His work has been published in American Literature and the New Republic and is forthcoming in Literature and Medicine and J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists.
Wednesday, August 14 at The Park Church (7:00 p.m.)
“Where the ‘Wild West’ Ends and China Begins: Rethinking the Geography of Mark Twain and Bret Harte’s Ah Sin”
Sunny Yang, University of Houston
Playbill for the Washington, D.C. run of Ah Sin at the National Theatre, May 1877
In the fall of 1876, Mark Twain and Bret Harte embarked on a disastrous collaboration that would culminate in the frontier melodrama known as Ah Sin. Named after its Chinese laundryman character, who was taken from Harte’s 1870 poem “Plain Language from Truthful James,” the play is widely acknowledged as a literary and financial failure that contributed to the demise of Twain and Harte’s friendship. Yet despite its dubious artistic merit, Ah Sin has captured some critical attention because of the central role played by its titular Chinese character. Scholars have debated the play’s intervention into nineteenth-century American stereotypes about the Chinese and have exclusively interpreted the work in the context of domestic debates over Chinese immigration and legal testimony. This talk takes a different approach by analyzing Ah Sin through the lens of nineteenth-century commentary on Sino-American relations, focusing in particular on the U.S. foreign policy of extraterritoriality in China. Resituating the play in this transnational legal context offers fresh insights into Twain’s anti-imperialism at this moment in his career, while also suggesting new avenues for interpreting representations of Chinese immigrants and Chinese American politics in nineteenth-century American writing.
Sunny Yang is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Houston, where she specializes in American and multiethnic American literature of the long nineteenth century. Her research explores the imperial contexts of U.S. racial formation and cultural production with an emphasis on the intersections of law and literature. She received her PhD in English with a certificate in Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently completing her first book project, Fictions of Territoriality, with the support of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the American Association of University Women.
About the Center for Mark Twain Studies The Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies was founded in January 1983 with the gift of Quarry Farm to Elmira College by Jervis Langdon, the great-grand-nephew of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. The Center offers distinctive programs to foster and support Mark Twain scholarship and to strengthen the teaching of Mark Twain at all academic levels. The Center serves the Elmira College community and regional, national, and international students and scholars of Mark Twain.
About The Park Church Founded in 1846 by a group of abolitionists, The Park Church has been a strong presence in Elmira’s history and some members of its congregation were close friends and family members to Mark Twain. Known for its striking architectural features, The Park Church contained Elmira’s first public library and has a long history of charitable service to the Elmira community. Currently, it is an “Open and Affirming Congregation,” welcoming all people to worship and participate in its communal life, regardless of ethnic origin, race, class, age, ability, gender, or sexual orientation.
The spring portion of the 2019 The Trouble Begins Lecture Series, presented by the Center for Mark Twain Studies, concludes on Wednesday, May 29 with two events, a theatrical reading of Waiting for Susy at 5:30 p.m, followed by a lecture by Professor Bruce Michelson of University of Illinois at 7:00p.m. Both events will take place at Quarry Farm. Both events are free and open to the public.
Last fall Professor Bruce Michelson of the University of Illinois asked if there would be students interested in performing a staged reading of his one act play Waiting for Susy, a comedy about a famous, momentous, historic encounter between Mark Twain and “a bearded man” that actually never took place. Luckily enough, theatre students Alex Garey ’19 and Matthieu Marchal ’20 were recruited, and alumna Sarah Kaschalk ’17 agreed to take over as director and perform as Susy, Mark Twain’s daughter.
As an undergraduate Sarah was often seen on stage, both acting and singing. She was the stage manager and directed a one act play in her senior year. It had been several years since she was involved in theatre, and she said, “I didn’t realize how much I missed directing! Michelson’s play has reminded me of the joys of directing. It’s been fun to work with Alex and Matthieu who both have worked with the EC theatre department.”
Alex, who was last seen in Professor John Kelly’s play “Gra” as the character Conor Fitzgerald, said he enjoys playing the part of Mark Twain, especially because of Twain’s ties to Elmira College and his prominence in the local Elmira area. “It took awhile to find the right accent after learning an Irish accent for ‘Gra.’ Finally, I just imagined an over-the-top Southern accent because this comedy highlights Twain’s eccentric character.”
Matthieu’s experience came from taking Acting I as an elective last fall. As an art minor, he is quite comfortable in the role of painter, and his command of the French language and proper pronunciation has been indispensable in bringing this play to life. He plays the mysterious “Bearded Man,” with a wry sense of humor that comically provokes Twain to spar with him in his own less than perfect French.
Waiting for Susy will be performed in the Quarry Farm Barn on Wednesday, May 29 at 5:30p.m. Following the performance at 7:00p.m., Professor Michelson will deliver the final Trouble Begins lecture of the season titled “Mark Twain’s Homes and the Public Private Life.” The Center for Mark Twain Studies welcomes everyone to attend both events.
The spring portion of the 2018-2019 The Trouble Begins Lecture Series, presented by the Center for Mark Twain Studies, continues on Wednesday, May 29 in the Barn at Quarry Farm, with a special theatrical reading of a one-act play followed by the lecture. The play and lecture are free and open to the public.
The evening begins at 5:30 p.m.with the theatrical reading of “Waiting for Susy,” a one-act play by Bruce Michelson from the University of Illinois. The play is a one-act comedy about a famous, momentous, historic encounter that never took place. The setting is the great square in front of Rouen Cathedral in France; the time is October of 1894. Sam Clemens and his daughter Susy, living with the rest of the family in nearby Étretat, have come to town shopping for night-gowns and cigars. With brushes and an easel, and parked comfortably on a stool in this plaza, a strange, round, bearded French gentleman is dabbing at a couple of his paintings. What happens next is entirely made up, and you can safely believe every word of it.
The play will be followed by The Trouble Beings lecture, “Mark Twain’s Homes and the Public Private Life,” at 7:00 p.m., which will also be presented by Bruce Michelson. When Sam Clemens was still young, a technological revolution in publishing — including breakthroughs in printing of pictures — provided new ways to fuel and gratify an unprecedented curiosity about the private lives of famous writers, and doing so became a lucrative sport. Where they were born and where they resided; the byways they wandered for epiphanies or Deep Thoughts; where their spouses or their Lost Loves grew up or passed away – all of this and more became fair game for mass-market words and pictures. Over the course of Mark Twain’s life we can trace this cultural transformation, and see how Quarry Farm, the Hartford mansion, and other residences here and abroad figured in a long campaign by Sam and his family to live in this new limelight, and also to evade it. The Clemenses performed a “private” family life in some places, and tried to sustain the real thing in others — in an era before television, social media, paparazzi, data mining, and all the rest of it brought American personal privacy to an end.
Michelson is the author of Mark Twain on the Loose and Printer’s Devil: Mark Twain and the American Publishing Revolution, as well as many articles and book chapters about Mark Twain and other writers. He is Professor Emeritus of American Literature at the University of Illinois, and a past president of the Mark Twain Circle of America and The American Humor Studies Association. A contributing editor at Studies in American Humor, he is also a Fulbright Ambassador, having received two fellowships from the Fulbright Program. His most recent work includes a translation of George Clemenceau’s writings on Claude Monet and the fine arts, and a one-act comedy about Sam Clemens, his daughter Susy, and a Mysterious Stranger in France.
About The Trouble Begins Lecture Series – In 1984, the Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies initiated a lecture series, The Trouble Begins at Eight lecture series. The title came from the handbill advertising Mark Twain’s October 2, 1866 lecture presented at Maguire’s Academy of Music in San Francisco. The first lectures were presented in 1985. By invitation, Mark Twain scholars present lectures in the fall and spring of each year, in the Barn at Quarry Farm or at Peterson Chapel in Cowles Hall on Elmira College’s campus. All lectures are free and open to the public.
The spring portion
of the 2018-2019 The Trouble Begins Lecture Series, presented by
the Center for Mark Twain Studies, continues on Wednesday, May 22 at 7:00
p.m. in Cowles Hall at Elmira College. The lecture is free and open to
the public.
Quarry Farm in the 1870s
The lecture, “Quarry
Farm: Family Retreat with 1,631 Lightning Rods,” will be presented by preservation architect, Elise
Johnson-Schmidt, AIA. In May 1869,
Jervis Langdon purchases the land on Elmira’s east hill. It is there that he
establishes the Langdon’s summer home, Quarry Farm – a place of respite which
the family enjoys for 100 years. Sadly, Langdon dies shortly after its
completion, but his oldest daughter, Susan Crane, inherits the house. She
generously and joyously shares Quarry Farm with her sister, Olivia Clemens,
Livy’s new husband, Samuel Clemens, and the Clemens children for the next
twenty years. Sam and Livy embark on their “long European sojourn” in 1890 and
do not return until 1895. During a time of transition, before Susan and
Theodore Crane begin their chapter of life at Quarry Farm, Sam Clemens is
“running two households – one up here on the farm & one in Buffalo…and Mr.
and Mrs. Crane stay here with us, & we do have perfectly royal good times.”
This lecture will focus on how Quarry Farm was used by the family and changes
made to the house by Langdon family members. It will also discuss the
lecturer’s interpretation of a story written during Clemens’ management of the
farm – “The Lightning Rod Story” – a satire about dealing with contractors –
which could be as true today as it was then.
Quarry Farm Today
Johnson-Schmidt is a preservation architect with 35 years of experience, whose firm specializes in historic preservation. Her firm has undertaken over 200 revitalization and restoration projects. She was also formerly the director of Market Street Restoration Agency. She previously worked on the restoration of Grand Central Terminal in NYC & Boston’s Trinity Church. She is a frequent lecturer across NYS on revitalizing historic buildings, and a (former) longtime member of NYS’s Board for Historic Preservation. Her firm is currently writing the Historic Structure Report for Quarry Farm.
About The Trouble Begins Lecture Series – In 1984, the Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies initiated a lecture series, The Trouble Begins at Eight lecture series. The title came from the handbill advertising Mark Twain’s October 2, 1866 lecture presented at Maguire’s Academy of Music in San Francisco. The first lectures were presented in 1985. By invitation, Mark Twain scholars present lectures in the fall and spring of each year, in the Barn at Quarry Farm or at Peterson Chapel in Cowles Hall on Elmira College’s campus. All lectures are free and open to the public.
The spring portion of the 2018-2019 The Trouble Begins Lecture Series, presented by the Center for Mark Twain Studies, continues on Wednesday, May 15 at 7:00 p.m. in Cowles Hall at Elmira College. The lecture is free and open to the public.
From the 1899 Harper & Brothers Edition of Puddn’head Wilson
The lecture, “‘Infinitely-Divided Stardust’: Mark Twain and Lawyer Talk,” will be presented by J. Mark Baggett from Samford University. Told by the New Orleans fortune teller Madame Caprell that he should have been a lawyer, Samuel Clemens dismissed the law as “too prosy and tiresome.” But his immersion in legal language and legal fictions betrayed him. From the early days of his career, covering the Nevada Territorial legislature and reporting on the police and court beat in the Territorial Enterprise, he plied what he called the “trade language” of the law. His legal burlesques of that formative period, including the first use of the pseudonym “Mark Twain” in “Ye Sentimental Law Student,” show the emerging burlesque patterns that appear in his novels. These burlesques also parallel important 19th century movements in American law that democratized and simplified legalese. This lecture will explore these burlesques from a legal perspective and trace their influence, particularly in the dramatic stagings of court trials that appear so often in his longer works. Twain himself once pronounced that a great writer must have an “infinitely divided stardust,” a genius who understood humanity from the two essential disciplines: literature and the law.
Baggett is Associate Professor of English and Law at Samford University and Cumberland School of Law. His recent research on Twain’s use of legal rhetoric is an outgrowth of his teaching law at Cumberland since 1987. He contributed articles on legal issues in the Mark Twain Encyclopedia and is working on a book-length project on Mark Twain and the law, building on interdisciplinary research on Twain’s broad appropriation of legal rhetoric
About The Trouble Begins Lecture Series – In 1984, the Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies initiated a lecture series, The Trouble Begins at Eight lecture series. The title came from the handbill advertising Mark Twain’s October 2, 1866 lecture presented at Maguire’s Academy of Music in San Francisco. The first lectures were presented in 1985. By invitation, Mark Twain scholars present lectures in the fall and spring of each year, in the Barn at Quarry Farm or at Peterson Chapel in Cowles Hall on Elmira College’s campus. All lectures are free and open to the public.
The spring portion of the 2019 The Trouble Begins Lecture Series, presented by the Center for Mark Twain Studies, continues Wednesday, May 8 in the Barn at Quarry Farm. The lecture begins at 7:00 p.m., and is free and open to the public.
“Writing About Sexuality: Mark Twain’s Private Work Made Public”
Linda Morris, University of California, Davis
After a relatively free-wheeling period in his life in the American West, Mark Twain courted and married a genteel young women from a prominent Elmira family, and he became the paterfamilias of a thoroughly Victorian family of his own. His major published works were deemed suitable reading for young men and women alike, and he raised his three daughters in a strictly Victorian, protected, and proper mode. Nevertheless, when speaking before all-male groups, or writing privately, he addressed sexual topics with frankness suffused with humor. Later in his life, in work not intended for publication, he let loose with explicit sexual references and frank talk about both male and female sexuality. This talk will examine a range of the works in which sexuality plays a major role, the language and metaphors he used to express sexual topics, and the sometimes surprising attitudes the work reveals.
Linda A. Morris is Professor Emeritus, University of California, Davis. She has writ- ten extensively about women’s humor in 19th and 20th century America, including a book-length study on the writer Miriam Whitcher (“The Widow Bedott”), and essays on Mary Lasswell and Roz Chast. Her work on Mark Twain includes her book Gender Play in Mark Twain: Cross-Dressing and Transgression, and essays on Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, “Gender Bending as Child’s Play,” Aunt Sally Phelps in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and “Hellfire Hotchkiss.” She was the 2017 recipient of “The Olivia Langdon Clemens Award” by the Mark Twain Circle of America, and the 2018 recipient of “The Charlie Award” by the American Humor Studies Association.
About The Trouble Begins Lecture Series In 1984, the Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies initiated a lecture series, The Trouble Begins at Eight lecture series. The title came from the handbill advertising Mark Twain’s October 2, 1866 lecture presented at Maguire’s Academy of Music in San Francisco. The first lectures were presented in 1985. By invitation, Mark Twain scholars present lectures in the fall and spring of each year, in the Barn at Quarry Farm or at Peterson Chapel in Cowles Hall on Elmira College’s campus. All lectures are free and open to the public.
