CFP: Mark Twain: Invention, Technology, and Science Fiction (The 10th Annual Quarry Farm Symposium)

Posted on by Center for Mark Twain Studies

 2023 Quarry Farm Symposium: “Mark Twain: Invention, Technology, and Science Fiction” 

October 6-8, 2023 – Elmira, NY 

The Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College is hosting its annual Quarry Farm Symposium during the Fall 2023 semester, from Friday, October 6, to Sunday, October 8, 2023, organized around the theme of Mark Twain: Invention, Technology, and Science Fiction. The year’s Keynote Address will be presented by Sheila Williams, the multiple Hugo award-winning editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine. The annual symposium gathers scholars from various fields around a theme related to Mark Twain studies or the nineteenth-century more broadly and is held at the historic Quarry Farm site, where Twain wrote his most famous works during summer stays with his wife’s family in Elmira, New York. 

Mark Twain in Nikola Tesla’s laboratory (1894)

In his landmark 2010 essay, “On Defining SF, or Not: Genre Theory, SF, and History,” John Rieder wrestles with the slippery definition of “science fiction.” He notes that clear genre definitions are frequently demanded by “two institutional locations, commercial publishing and the academy, and this pair of institutions bears no accidental resemblance to the oppositions between high and low culture….” (204). Building from Bourdieu and Habermas, Rieder argues that because of these “contradictory drives for economic profit and cultural prestige in commercial publishing, the history of sf is well positioned to contribute importantly to broader cultural history…” (206). 

Scholars have acknowledged that much of Twain’s work could be labeled “science fiction” if it were published today, an understanding that goes back at least as far as David Ketterer’s 1984 collection, The Science Fiction of Mark Twain. Twain’s writing appeared in the nineteenth-century literary marketplace side-by-side with dime novels about boy explorers in submarines or airships, hero-worshipping biographies of famous inventors, and the translated works of contemporaries like Jules Verne. Moreover, Twain embodies the straddling of popular success and cultural prestige that Rieder mentions; then and now, Twain’s career navigated these contradictions. Locating when and how Twain’s work fits the “science fiction” label can help us see the limits and utility of genre. 

Of course, Twain is more than just literary figure; he was part of a culture immersed in science and technology. Alan Gribben, in Mark Twain’s Literary Resources, Vol. 1 (2019), specifically notes science was one area Twain read voraciously, including “an entire set of Charles Darwin’s works” and “at least a dozen titles” on astronomy (44). Once he had money, Twain constantly 

sought new inventions to fund; his investments in new printing technology partly caused his bankruptcy. Gary Scharnhorst’s recent biography The Life of Mark Twain: The Final Years (2022) reminds us that Twain spent his later years scrutinizing osteopathy, Christian science, and other nascent medical movements, partly to help his ailing wife and daughters. Twain constantly interacted with all these developing fields and more, frequently in very public, mercurial ways. 

With all this in mind, this symposium will work to understand the “broader cultural history” Rieder mentions by placing Twain and his contemporaries within the cultural transformations of science and technology, and within the broad literary boundaries of science fiction. What do we learn if we look at science fiction through the lens of Mark Twain, or Mark Twain through the lens of science fiction? We welcome a range of papers on this theme, including any of the following topics and more: 

  • • Portrayals of science and technology in fiction by Mark Twain and/or his contemporaries 
  • • Scientific and pseudo-scientific ideas that influenced literature during Twain’s lifetime (1835-1910) 
  • • Critical interrogations of nineteenth-century scientific rhetoric, knowledge-making, and science-related art and letters 
  • • Critical examinations of the writing surrounding nineteenth-century invention and science, including patents, copyrights, planning documents, promotional materials, and more 
  • • Research on inventors in Twain’s circle of acquaintances, including James Paige, Nikola Tesla, Jan Szczepanik, or larger concerns such as Hartford’s Colt Arms Factory, and their portrayals by Twain or by other writers in “heroic” biographies, magazine features, etc. 
  • • Science fiction in nineteenth-century humor, including frontier narratives, tall tales, scientific romances, and satires 
  • • Twain’s place in the evolving definition of science fiction, including perceptions of him among writers of the Gernsback era, the “Golden Age,” the New Wave, Afrofuturists, and other movements 
  • • Modern technologies and their role in reproducing Twain in online editions, in memes, in repurposed quotations on Facebook, et al. 
  • • Studies of appropriations of Twain’s image or work in science fiction, including steampunk, space opera, or other sub-genres 

Please send 300-word abstracts and either a CV or biographical statement, preferably in PDF format, to Nathaniel Williams ([email protected]) by February 10, 2023.