#StagecoachLife: 150 Years of Mark Twain’s Roughing It
Mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Mark Twain’s Roughing It by joining a discussion of the book with CMTS’s resident scholar.
Tag: Civil War
The Invisible Home of Frederick Douglass, John W. Jones, & Mark Twain with Jill Spivey Caddell & Shirley Samuels
Special Emancipation Week Episode of The American Vandal Podcast!
The Lessons of Emancipation To The New Generation
On August 3, 1880, Frederick Douglass provided the keynote of a large, day-long celebration of Emancipation in Elmira. His speech is reconstructed here for the first time.
New Episode of American Vandal Explores Origins of Police Departments in San Francisco & Charleston
Mark Twain and James Redpath both, in the years surrounding the American Civil War, denounced police forces for violently oppressing people of color.
Seybold concludes the 2020 Trouble Begins Lectures
The fall portion of the 2020-2021 The Trouble Begins Lecture Series presented by the Center for Mark Twain Studies concludes with a presentation by Dr. Matthew Seybold, assistant professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College. During the mid-1860s, Mark Twain waged a prolonged and inflammatory media war against the San Francisco Police. By some accounts his campaign led directly to the replacement of the SFPD’s longtime Commissioner, as […]
Life, In Arbitrage (A Twainiac Quarantine Diary)
Our resident scholar has spent his first week in self-quarantine thinking about Mark Twain, coronavirus, and the Civil War.
The Calculated Incivility of Anson Burlingame, The Only Congressman Mark Twain Could Tolerate
“His outlook upon the world and its affairs was as wide as the horizon, and his speech was of a dignity and eloquence proper to it. He dealt in no commonplaces, for he had not commonplace thoughts. He was a kindly man, and most lovable. He was not a petty politician, but a great and magnanimous statesman. He did not serve his country alone, but China as well. He held […]
Remembering Reverend Conway, Mark Twain’s Second-Favorite Clergyman
While Mark Twain’s close bond with Congregationalist minister Joseph Twichell is well known among Twainians, the friendship he shared with another man of the cloth, the Rev. Moncure Conway, often receives little more than passing reference. We read mostly of Conway’s role as Twain’s literary representative in England or of his glowing review of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Occasionally there’s a reference to the time he helped Twain arrange […]