The American Vandal, from The Center for Mark Twain Studies: Recent Episodes
Center for Mark Twain Studies
An ever-growing collection of conversations and presentations about literature, humor, and history in America, produced by the premier source for programming and funding scholarship on Mark Twain's life and legacy.
Earlier this month, The Atlantic published an essay by our guest, Ian Bogost, titled "The Age of Social Media is Ending." Since then there have been layoffs at several social media companies, including Facebook and Twitter, and collapsing stock prices throughout the industry. What's happening? And what's next?
For more about this episode, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Downscaling
With the end of Twitter seemingly imminent, content moderation and social media expert, Sarah T. Roberts, discusses Elon Musk's ideology, the labor of social media, and the migration to Mastodon.
For more about this episode, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TheEndOfTwitter
The series finale finds "Dear Television" correspondents joining the podcast to discuss the Fall 2022 franchise season, foremost HBO's "House of the Dragon," but also Disney+'s "Andor" and Amazon's "Rings of Power."
For more about this episode, including a bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/CashDragons
A ranging conversation inspired by two forthcoming books about genre, work, and visual culture. The authors consider HBO series like "The Baby," "Barry," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and "The Larry Sanders Show."
For more about this episode, including a bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Cringe
Inspired by HBO shows "Insecure" and "Rap Sh!t," as well as Yvonne Orji's new stand-up special and recent Emmy wins for Quinta Brunson's "Abbott Elementary" and Jerrod Carmichael's "Rothaniel," Matt Seybold discusses the often precarious role of Black comic creators with two scholars of race, gender, and comedy in the U.S.
For more about this episode, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/RootingForEverybodyBlack
No single program transformed the HBO brand like "The Sopranos," which became a hit all over again upon the launch of HBOMax in the midst of the 2020 lockdown.
For more about this episode, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TheSopranosRevival
Is Nathan Fielder's "The Rehearsal" a critique of Reality TV? Moreover, might it be read as an attack on HBO's new parent company, Warner Bros Discovery? A conversation about the show, the network, the conglomerate, and the streaming wars.
For more about this episode, including a bibliography of works mentioned, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TheRehearsal
Our sixth season - "HBO, From Pulp to Prestige" - kicks off with a discussion of conglomeration, collective intention, and corporate authorship through HBO's original programming and especially "Succession," the Emmy-winning tentpole drama produced by Jesse Armstrong and Adam McKay.
For more about this episode, including a bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Succession
In the concluding episode of our series on Kerry Driscoll's field-shaping book, Mika Turim-Nygren seeks reception of the work in Native Studies and from Native communities.
For more about this episode, including a bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/ReconsideringTwain
This seminal book in Twain Studies was a decades-long undertaking. Kerry Driscoll explains how she became "an accidental Twain scholar," and discusses with Mika Turim-Nygren the multifold archival discoveries - "good instincts and good luck" - which took Mark Twain Among The Indians from a short paper to a magnum opus.
For more about this episode, including a bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TalkingTwain
A new series hosted by Mika Turim-Nygren premieres with a discussion of Kerry Driscoll's 2019 book, "Mark Twain Among The Indians & Other Indigenous Peoples," featuring three established scholars in Twain Studies, all of whom regard in as one of the most important works in the field in the past quarter century.
For more about this episode, including an extensive bibliography of works discussed, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/ReviewingTwain
Produced in observance of and solidarity with the Worldwide Teach-In On Climate & Justice taking place on many campuses today, including Elmira College, we host discussion of a CliFi novel by Kim Stanley Robinson which helps us get "Beyond Climate Despair."
For more about this episode, include a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/MinistryForTheFuture
Is is possible to imagine a world without work? Or, at least, a world in which work is not romanticized, is not treated as defining element of social and individual achievement? James Livingston has predicted that we need to prepare for a postwork world, and David Graeber has challenged us to imagine alternatives to organization by bureaucracy, credit, and corporations. This episode features Livingston talking to Matt Seybold and Corey McCall about Graeber's posthumous book (The Dawn of Everything), the Great Resignation, QuitToks, Risk Shifts, and much more.
For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/FuckWork
Wes Anderson's acclaimed new movie, The French Dispatch, draws inspiration from the Golden Age of The New Yorker magazine, a period from roughly the early 1940s to the mid 1970s. This episode features two scholars researching that period in the publication's history. They are uniquely situated to consider the selections from the magazine's back catalog which make Anderson's cut, as well as what he chooses to leave out.
For more about this episode, including a bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/FrenchDispatch
How do we explain the Great Resignation? Or, for that matter, other mysteries of the contemporary economy, like the high price of culture work and the low wages of culture workers? Two scholars of Post45 literature and culture discuss the work of art and the art of work.
For more about this episode, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/GreatResignation
A conversation about the personal essay boom, iterations of the memoir in other literary genres, the constructive use of social media, the style of "too late capitalism," and other means of self-indulgence with two decorated literary critics and theorists.
For more about this episode, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/AutoEverything
A ranging conversation with two scholars - Heather Berg (Porn Work: Sex, Labor, & Late Capitalism) and Michelle Chihara ("Radical Flexibility: Driving for Lyft & The Future of Work in The Platform Economy") - about platform capitalism from the perspective of gigworkers.
For more about this episode, including a bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Gigwork
"The World's Work" begins with a discussion of student debt, faculty deskilling, outsourcing, adjunctification, EdTech, and the financialization of U.S. higher education.
Special theme music: "Work Song" by Dan Reeder
For more information, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/EdWork
The season finale of Billions aired exactly 17 months after the season premiere. This was not by design. In this episode, scholars of finance and popular culture discuss the popular Showtime series and how its handling of the pandemic disruption is represented in both content and form.
For more about this episode, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Billions
A discussion of the Antiracism project sponsored by University of Maryland's Center For Literary & Comparative Studies with three faculty members heavily involved in the project, as well as their insights into the Netflix original series, The Chair, which dramatizes a contemporary university English department.
In her recent PMLA essay, "The Shush," Kyla Wazana Tompkins writes, "The future of the English department cannot be the same as its past." The recent Netflix original series, "The Chair," offers one vision of that past and thus serves to generate conversation about "The Shush," the state of literary studies, and higher education.
To learn more, including an episode bibliography, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TheShush
The new Netflix original series, The Chair, focus on the first woman of color to Chair the English Department at fictional Pembroke University. Dr. Karen Tongson (University of Southern California) can empathize with this character, played by Sandra Oh, but she is also an exceptional media critic. She talks with Matt Seybold about the reception of The Chair, its representation of literary studies, and where it fits in the history of the U.S. sitcom.
For more about this episode, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TheChair
On a special Emancipation Week episode, three scholars with both personal and professional ties to the Southern Tier of New York, discuss the recently-reconstructed speech by Frederick Douglass which was part of the Emancipation Day celebration which took place in Elmira in August of 1880.
For more information about this episode, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/InvisibleHome
To read Frederick Douglass's "Lessons of Emancipation To The New Generation" & other Emancipation Week materials, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/LessonsOfEmancipation
With a series of recent events indicating bipartisan interest in antitrust reform from Congress and the Supreme Court, host Matt Seybold speaks with Law Professor, Sanjukta Paul, and economist, Marshall Steinbaum, about the history of antitrust movements in the United States from Mark Twain's Gilded Age to the New Gilded Age, as well as why they advocate for antitrust as a mechanism for improving worker welfare, reducing inequality, and protecting democracy.
For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Antitrust
The coordinators of the 2021 Summer Teachers Institute sponsored by the Center For Mark Twain Studies converse about the upcoming event, the state of U.S. education, the resonance of Mark Twain for contemporary students, and much more.
For more about the Institute, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/2021-Summer-Teachers-Institute/
The co-editors of a new collection on "Race, Resistance, & Reality in The Classroom" discuss the "flash point" of 2008 for American education, the recent Critical Race Theory panic, pedagogical strategies for teaching with tension, and Mark Twain's 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.'
For more information about this episode, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TeachingWithTension
To Register for the 2021 Summer Teachers Institute, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/2021-Summer-Teachers-Institute
The authors of Genus Americanus (2020) join host Matt Seybold to discuss their 2011 road trip. Inspired by Mark Twain, they went looking for American identity through interviews with other journalists, scholars, immigrants, and nomads. What did the find? And how has it shaped their understanding of the decade which followed?
For more information, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/GenusAmericanus
The recent HBO documentary series, directed by Raoul Peck, offers a grand narrative of European colonialism and American imperialism which is broadly sympathetic with the works of Mark Twain from the final decade of his life. In this episode, a diverse group of scholars discuss Peck's film, as well as where it fits in global cinema, the U.S. media ecosystem, and postcolonial scholarship.
A beloved member of the Mark Twain Studies community, author, and St. Louis University Professor, Hal Bush, recently suffered a traumatic brain injury which has put him into a coma. In this episode, friends and fellow scholars read to him from a series of his favorite works, mostly by Mark Twain. To learn more about how you can help, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/HalBush.
Special Thanks to St. Louis University for providing theme music for this episode, a composition by Roberto Murguia and Róisín Malone.
Following on the heels of the grounding of the Ever Given in the Suez Canal last month, Matt Seybold speaks with Dr. Laleh Khalili, whose 2020 book, Sinew of War & Trade: Shipping & Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula, covers the history, present, & potential futures of maritime transport.
For a bibliography of this episode, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/SuezCanal
This episode brings together three scholars who have been researching and writing about Mark Twain's musical tastes and the role of music education and performance in the Clemens family household.
For more information about the guests and a bibliography of works discussed during this episode, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TwainMusic
Very few embargoed archives are as momentous as Mark Twain's Autobiography, released a century after his death, but the Hale archive, opened last year, is an obvious rival. Emily Hale saved over a thousand letters from the poet and critic, T. S. Eliot, with whom she had a decades-long love affair. In this episode, we talk to three scholars who spent portions of 2020 reading the letters and processing their many surprising revelations.
For more about this episode, including a bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/EmilyHale
The hit Disney+ & Lucasfilm TV series, The Mandalorian, was produced under the working title of "Project Huckleberry." This allusion the Mark Twain's under-appreciated legacy as an innovator in Science Fiction provides the grounds for a ranging conversation about Star Wars, The Mandalorian, and genre fiction with Emmet Asher-Perrin of Tor.com & Nathaniel Williams of UC-Davis.
For more information about this episode, including a bibilography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/ProjectHuckleberry
Three scholars of finance and literature join to talk about the ongoing story of the "Reddit Revolution," members of the r/WallStreetBets forum who organized a run on several stocks, notably GameStop, using the retail trading app, Robinhood. How is this speculative mania interconnected with the 2008 financial crisis, the current economic recession, and the new U.S. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen?
For more about this episode, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Robinhood
Following the storming of the Capitol Building on January 6th, there has been a resurgent interest in the era of Reconstruction following the American Civil War. Senators, journalists, and even scholars have perpetuated long-standing myths about Reconstruction. Brook Thomas explains and debunks some of these myths, while also arguing that an informed reckoning with the unfinished business of Reconstruction can help us understand and address the political volatility of the present day.
For links to some of the works discussed in this episode, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/MythsOfReconstruction
The staff of the Center for Mark Twain Studies gathers in the library at Quarry Farm to discuss the recently-announced Quarry Farm Fellowships for the coming year, the peculiarities of living and working on the property, and the past and future of CMTS. For more information about applying for Quarry Farm Fellowships, please visit MarkTwainStudies.org.
Did you know that Mark Twain’s father-in-law lobbied for the release of a young woman arrested under the Fugitive Slave Law in 1853? That Twain’s grave lies in a cemetery with numerous conductors and stationmasters on the Underground Railroad? That Twain’s eulogy was given by the first woman ordained in the state of New York? With the help of Oscar-nominated actor, Hal Holbrook, and his grandson, Will Holbrook, Matt Seybold explores the largely forgotten and often surprising political history of the small town where the Center for Mark Twain Studies is located.
This episode was originally produced for the official podcast of C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. They are currently soliciting proposals for new episodes. For more information, visit C19Society.org/podcast
This episode focuses on a letter Mark Twain composed for his three-year-old daughter on Christmas 1875. After actor Mark Dawidziak reads the letter, Matt Seybold hosts a book club style discussion with Penne Restad and Jana Tigchelaar, two scholars who have done extensive research on the development of Christmas traditions in Nineteenth-Century America.
SPOILER WARNING: The discussion (begins around 11:00) includes frank discussions of Santa and therefore may not be appropriate for young children.
James McBride's retelling of John Brown's epochal raid on Harpers Ferry through the eyes of a young black man won the National Book Award in 2013 and was recently adapted into a Showtime miniseries by Ethan Hawke. Two scholars of antebellum abolitionism discuss Good Lord Bird and, more generally, rising popular interest in the events leading up to the American Civil War.
American Humor Studies scholars Jalylah Burrell, Bambi Haggins, and Maggie Hennefeld join host Matt Seybold to discuss the recent work of stand-up comic Dave Chappelle, especially his free half-hour routine, "8:46," released directly to YouTube the month after the murder of George Floyd.
Concluding the 2020 Trouble Begins Lecture Series, Matt Seybold interposes the early careers of Mark Twain and James Redpath, both of whom, in the years surrounding the American Civil War, denounced police forces in Charleston and San Francisco for violently oppressing people of color. What does it mean to be a witness?
The Gothic has been, since Mark Twain's time, a popular way for artists to reckon with the life and afterlife of American slavery. But only recently has a Gothic tradition emerged which places black protagonists and black perspectives at its center. The recent HBO series, Lovecraft Country, is exemplary of what Sheri-Marie Harrison has dubbed New Black Gothic. In this episode she talks about the show and the artistic movement it is a part of.
Show Bibliography:
"The New Black Gothic" (LA Review of Books, 2018) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/new-black-gothic/
"Global Horror: An Introduction" (Post45, 2019) https://post45.org/2019/04/global-horror-an-introduction/
"I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: An Ode To An Audiobook" (Post45, 2020) http://post45.org/2020/08/ill-sleep-when-im-dead-an-ode-to-the-audiobook/
"Marlon James & The Metafiction of the New Black Gothic" (Journal of West Indian Literature, 2018) https://www.jwilonline.org/downloads/vol-26-no-2-november-2018/
Coming off the 2020 Quarry Farm Symposium which she organized, Judith Yaross Lee talks with Matt Seybold about her ongoing project, the disciplinary history of American Humor Studies, romantic comedies, Amy Kaplan, and much more.
To view the program for the 2020 Quarry Farm Symposium, which includes Dr. Lee's essay on "American Humor & Matters of Empire," as well as watch all the presentations, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/2020-Quarry-Farm-Symposium/
With the backdrop of a large COVID-19 outbreak within its walls, Andrea Morrell talks to Matt Seybold about Elmira Correctional Facility, one of the oldest continuously-operational prisons in the United States. What does it mean to be a "prison town"? How has the prison system changed during the long history of ECF? What does the current outbreak reveal about its future?
For more about Andrea Morrell's research, visit AndreaMorrellOrg.wordpress.com or check out the associate post at MarkTwainStudies.org
Susan K. Harris, author of "Mark Twain, The World, & Me: Following the Equator, Then & Now," sits down with Matt Seybold to discuss the project that took her to Australia, India, New Zealand, and South Africa, among other places, and found her examining her own life and career, as well as the author whose footsteps she was following in.
This episode begins with Todd Nathan Thompson's paper for "The Viral Twain" panel at Virtual C19. Dr. Thompson tracks how Twain's jokes based on his visit to Hawaii were reprinted and often misprinted in the 1870s and 1880s, as Twain was increasingly approached as a pundit on annexation.
The second half of the episode (24:00) contained Mark Dawidziak's Trouble Begins Lecture about the influence of Twain on Bram Stoker.
For more information on joining "The Viral Twain" conversation, including the presentations by Avery Blankenship and Matt Seybold: https://marktwainstudies.com/the-viral-twain-at-virtual-c19-dissent/
Mark Twain's publicist and booking agent, proprietor of the Boston Lyceum Bureau, started his career as a hardscrabble freelance journalist. He discovered he had a knack for star-making long before he met Mark Twain. Matt Seybold tells the largely forgotten tale of James Redpath becoming John Brown's "right hand man" on the cusp of the Civil War.
This episode is part of "The Viral Twain" panel at Virtual C19. For more information visit MarkTwainStudies.org or C19society.org.