Laura Rice Concludes the CCHS Mark Twain Lecture Series

As part of the Chemung County Historical Society’s Mark Twain Lectures Series, Laura Rice presented “A Turn of The Century Case of Serendipity: Lawrence Joseph ‘Cooney’ Rice, The Boys of Frog Hollow, and The Youth from Mark Twain’s Charmed Circle” on September 216, 2021.

Laura Rice is Professor Emerita in the School of Writing, Literature and Film at Oregon State University. Specializing in comparative literature, literary translation, and sustainable development, she has written widely on Colonial and Postcolonial literatures, Cultural Studies, and Gender in international context. Her books include Revolutions in Tunisian Poetry, co-edited and co-translated with Karim Hamdy, and Of Irony and Empire: Islam, the West, and the Transcultural Invention of Africa. As Principal Investigator, she designed and conducted federally-funded research and development and academic exchange projects on the MENA region, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright, US Department of Education, and the US Department of State. Her current book project, focusing on Elmira in the last two decades of Twain’s life, brings her research back to the U.S. and to archives concerning her own family.