Stay ConnectedThe C19 Podcast is a production by scholars from across the world exploring the past, present, and future through an examination of the United States in the long nineteenth century.
The official podcast of C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists.
In this episode, Fiona Maxwell (University of Chicago) highlights the presence and power of youth voices in the collaborative print culture of Progressive Era Club Newspapers. Through a close look at Northwestern University Settlement House, Fiona illustrates the varied, and often fun, ways in which children and youth from marginalized communities utilized the power of collective imagination to reimagine their public sphere. The episode highlights entertaining archival materials that feature youth voices to demonstrate how collaborative creative projects such as club news inspired working-class young people to use their enhanced facility with print and spoken discourse to become community advocates. Finally, the episode returns to the present and Fiona's work at the Piven Theatre Workshop to discuss the enduring appeal and relevancy of club newspapers to the current generation of young people, who have transformed the genre into a means of fostering resilience and finding belonging in a time of crisis and isolation. Post-production support provided by Jess Van Gilder (Bluegrass Community and Technical College). Full transcript available at https://bit.ly/S08E03Transcript.
“The Time and Place of Performance” looks at the vast circuits of nineteenth-century performance. Amy Huang (Bates College) and Kellen Hoxworth (University at Buffalo, SUNY) consider how nineteenth-century performances move backward and forward, citing past moments, and themselves undergoing processes of recycling and re-presentation to move into the future and challenge the framework of the nation-state. This conversation explores the transoceanic circuits of plays and artists (such as Ira Aldridge and Rose Quong) and the unexpected connections between blackface and yellowface performance to consider how and whether it might be important to teach nineteenth-century theatre and performance. Although Huang and Hoxworth both find some of this theatre “bad,” they discuss how we might teach these plays and performances in ways that do not depend on shoring up these works’ exemplariness or exceptionality. How might we stay with the “bad,” the partial, and the minor moments of theatre and performance history? Full transcript available at https://bit.ly/S08E02Transcript.
Generally associated with postbellum regionalism, mutinous heroines feigning New England propriety, and consumable literature for the urban elites, recent re-readings of Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman’s fiction have uncovered its nuanced, surreptitious, and explosive quality. Much of this disquiet is concentrated in the bodies of barely domesticated animals. Contributors to this episode – Elena Furlanetto (host, University of Duisburg-Essen), Cécile Roudeau (Université Paris Cité), Emma Thiébaut (Université Paris Cité), and Emily Coccia (Carleton College) – propose to take a deeper look at parrots, cats, dogs, squirrels, and monkeys in Understudies (1901), a collection of short stories about New England’s nonhuman nature, and other works by the same author. In Wilkins Freeman’s animals, anthropomorphic and sentimentalist guidelines for animal representation which inform much 19th-century animal fiction burst at the seams to reveal creatures of ambiguity who disturb the quiet of New England living rooms, demonstrate the potential of cages not quite shut, and tread the unstable borders between garden and wilderness. The voices in this podcast follow Stephanie Palmer’s encouragement to “listen to the ambivalences” of Wilkins Freeman’s fiction and treat animals as a productive site of confluence for different foci: from animal studies to queer and feminist ecologies, Indigenous studies, and ambiguity studies among others. Shownotes: https://bit.ly/S08E01_Shownotes Transcript Available at https://bit.ly/S08E01Transcript
Since May 2021, G19: The Graduate Student Collective of C19 has produced and published The New Book Forum, an online interview series that facilitates conversations between graduate students and the author of a recent book in the field of 19th-century American literature. This episode is hosted by the forum’s founders, Rachael DeWitt (Columbia University), Max Chapnick (Northeastern University), and Allison (Ally) Fulton (University of California Davis) who discuss the project’s beginnings and the insights they’ve gleaned since. They share a short selection from an April 2023 interview with Autumn Womack on her book The Matter of Black Living (2022), and then reflect on three years of conversations on new directions in the field, scholarly publication, and bringing the nineteenth century into the classroom. They wrap up by discussing some favorite interview moments and anticipate where the forum is headed in the future. Post-production support by Julia Bernier (Washington & Jefferson College). Full transcript available at https://bit.ly/S07E05Transcript
In this episode, Kassie Jo Baron (University of Tennessee at Martin) and Karah M. Mitchell (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) investigate the popularity and representation of “sagacious” Newfoundland dogs in nineteenth-century American literature. The episode begins with an overview of animal studies as a theoretical framework for analyzing the relationship between animals, history, and literature. Keeping this framework in mind, Kassie and Karah investigate how and why Newfoundlands, or “Newfies,” became so ubiquitous across the nineteenth-century United States. The Newfoundland’s association with loyalty, water rescue, and maritime industry means it’s no surprise that they appeared in the public and private writings of Lewis and Clark, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, and Emily Dickinson. This episode ultimately theorizes the conditions that led to the rise and fall of Newfoundlands’ popularity in the nineteenth century–what they represented and how they were viewed–and their impact on literary production. Post-production support by Ryan Charlton (Georgia State University). Transcript available at bit.ly/S07E04Transcript.
In this episode, Paul Fess (LaGuardia Community College) explores the connections between Martin Delany and the songwriters Joshua McCarter Simpson and Stephen Foster. Embedded in the mix of Delany’s novel Blake; or, The Huts of America are several songs that invoke some of Foster’s most familiar melodies, such as those associated with the songs “Oh! Susanna” and “Uncle Ned.” Digging through the archive, scholars have discovered these parodies to be the work of the relatively obscure Joshua McCarter Simpson, an activist in Ohio’s Colored Conventions movement, a conductor on the underground railroad, and, with the publication of his Original Anti-Slavery Songs, the first African American to produce a songbook of original compositions. This episode examines how Delany and Simpson strategically repurpose Foster's sentimentalism-infused melodies, navigating the racial complexities of antebellum culture. While Foster aimed to soften the degrading aspects of minstrelsy, Delany and Simpson use these melodies to create a Black abolitionist discourse, challenging sentimental aesthetics. The novel's characters, like Simpson's lyrics, redefine the nostalgic longing in Foster's songs, emphasizing the harsh realities of enslaved life. Delany and Simpson employ music as a tool for political activism, crafting a counterhegemonic discourse and fostering a sense of collective resistance against enslavement. Post-production support provided by DeLisa D. Hawkes (University of Tennessee, Knoxville). Transcript available at https://bit.ly/S07E03Transcript. Additional resources available at https://bit.ly/S07E03Resources.
In this episode, we look forward to the upcoming C19 Conference, to be held March 14-16 in Pasadena, California. Jessica Van Gilder (University of Kentucky) interviews Chair of the C19 Program Committee Lara Langer Cohen (Swarthmore College) and G19 leader and editor Courtney Murray (Pennsylvania State University) to discuss the theme and location of the conference and offer practical advice for first-time participants. Along the way, we’ll check in with some of our past podcast contributors—Spencer Tricker (Clark University), Carie Schneider (Cameron University), Sean Gordon (California State University, Fresno), and Vanessa Ovalle Perez (California State University, San Bernardino)—all of whom will be attending this year’s conference. For additional information, the conference program is available online at c19theend.com/program. This episode was produced by Julia Bernier (Washington and Jefferson College), Crystal Donkor (SUNY New Paltz), Genevieve Johnson-Smith (Newcastle University), Lizzy LeRud (Minot State University), Stefan Schöberlein (Texas A&M University-Central Texas), Jessica Van Gilder (University of Kentucky), Ashley Rattner (Jacksonville State University), and Ryan Charlton (Georgia State University). Full episode transcript available: bit.ly/C19Podcast-S07E02-transcript UPDATE: Unfortunately, Vanessa Ovalle Perez will no longer be able to attend the conference.
In this episode, Eagan Dean (Rutgers University, New Brunswick) makes the case that trans studies is an important new area for nineteenth century cultural history and that the stakes of this scholarship are higher than ever. Featuring author Peyton Thomas and scholars Rebekkah Mulholland (California State University, Sacramento) and Jen Manion (Amherst College), Eagan Dean gives an overview of current scholarship in the field and opportunities for intervention from C19 scholars, as well as tips for adding trans studies insights to your teaching. This episode also includes a sampling of cutting-edge scholarship in nineteenth century trans studies from the April 2023 Rutgers symposium on The Trans Nineteenth Century. Additional resources are available at https://bit.ly/StudyingTransnessResources and you can find the episode transcript at https://bit.ly/C19Podcast-S07E01-transcript.
How does an enslaved woman's song from 1830s in Georgia end up on a 1950s radio program in South Africa and in a modern singing class? This is the surprising story of an African-born woman named Tena, whose music has echoed for generations across continents, airwaves, and even college classrooms. Mary Caton Lingold (Virginia Commonwealth University) first encountered Tena’s song in a book of sheet music by Carl Sandburg but a series of events led her to uncover details about Tena’s life in living memories of her enslavers’ descendants and in archival recordings and documents. This episode is about Tena's life and legacy, the challenges of researching enslaved women’s lives, and how sound and performance can open up new ways of engaging with the past. This episode was created and produced by Mary Caton Lingold (Virginia Commonwealth University) with post-production help from Kristie Schlauraff. Episode transcript available here: https://bit.ly/BestofLingold
Over the last few years, academia has seen a wave of labor action, especially by graduate workers. In this episode, Max Chapnick (Boston University) and Lawrence Lorraine Mullen (University at Buffalo), expand on their MLA 2023 panel on graduate worker labor organizing, exploring the relationship between labor unions, graduate student research, and pedagogy. Chapnick and Mullen start by revisiting brief audio clips from the MLA panel–including the contributions of graduate worker organizers Francesca Colonese (University of Washington), Johannah King-Slutzky (Columbia University) and Mushira Habib (University of Oregon)–and offered with their framing commentary. The hosts then conduct a follow-up conversation with King-Slutzky and Colonese, covering a wide range of topics including the relevance of close-reading Victorian poetry to union contract interpretation; the problem of Shaftesbury’s concept of the disinterestedness of art as disincentivizing investment in the humanities; and the ways organizing helps us see the nineteenth-century anew. Most importantly: when you’re done listening, go out and do some organizing! Post-production support was provided by Lizzy LeRud (Minot State University). Transcript available at https://bit.ly/S06E04Transcript
In the last two decades of the 19th century, newspaper readers across the U.S. were familiar with the work of California writer Yda H. Addis (c. 1857-1941). Her original, adapted, and translated short fiction appeared in newspapers from coast to coast, and her bilingual journalism appeared in U.S. and Mexican periodicals. But by 1900 her career was in tatters after a nasty divorce, a stint in jail, and an attempted murder charge. After that, she “disappeared.” Today, Addis is almost completely forgotten. In this episode, Rene H. Treviño (California State University, Long Beach) and Ashley C. Short introduce you to Addis and discuss her contributions to U.S. literary history, particularly in the areas of feminist fiction, Western and transnational writing, Mexican and Spanish folklore, and supernatural fiction. They explore how her tumultuous personal life intersected with her work and how the mystery of Addis’ alleged disappearance in 1900 was solved. Production support provided by Ryan Charlton (Auburn University). Transcript available at https://bit.ly/S06E03Transcript. Further reading at https://bit.ly/S06E03FurtherReading
In this episode, Susannah Sharpless (Cornell University) and Charline Jao (Cornell University) propose gossip as a scholarly approach and indulge their desire to talk about other people. Our hosts connect juicy tidbits from the lives of nineteenth-century women writers to questions about the role of biography, identification, and inference in scholarship more broadly. Jao explores the life of Rose Terry Cooke, whose short stories about tyrannical husbands and spinster life seem – at first glance – inconsistent with her own belief systems and later marriage. Sharpless takes us through the story of how interpersonal dislikes emerging from deep-seated political disagreements tore apart the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society at one fateful meeting in 1840. Engaging with the delightfully comedic aspects of these stories, the two also insist on deep historicist commitments as they present full pictures of the dynamic, messy nineteenth-century literary sphere, populated by narcissists, social climbers, and debauchées, and as well as dreamers and thinkers with a genuine faith in the power of language to create real change. Post-production support was provided by Julia W. Bernier (Washington & Jefferson College). Transcript available at https://bit.ly/S06S02Transcript
Certain texts and writers have been allotted attention and resources in the study of American literature, while others remain understudied and sometimes even unknown. The efforts of literary recovery seek to make available lesser-known texts by exploring the archives and doing different kinds of editorial work. How might such recovery efforts materialize in the form of book editions, anthologies, or digital archives? What kinds of editorial decisions do scholars make in the process of curating recovered texts? In this episode of the C19 Podcast, Stephanie Peebles Tavera (Texas A&M University) guides listeners through her first experience of archival and recovery work from encountering manuscripts at the American Jewish Archives during dissertation research to curating a book edition of Annie Nathan Meyer’s Helen Brent, M.D. (1892) to involving her graduate students in contributing to digital archives. Along the way, Tavera interviews colleagues whose ongoing efforts continue to shape the field of American women’s literature, including Dana Herman (Jacob Rader Marcus Center), Lori Harrison-Kahan (Boston College), Brigitte Fielder (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Mary Chapman (University of British Columbia). These conversations cover a wide range of subjects such as discovering the unexpected; doing archival work in pandemic times; understanding the “hidden archive”; and using physical archival materials, print book editions, and digital anthologies in the classroom. Production assistance by DeLisa Hawkes (University of Tennessee-Knoxville). Post production support provided by Rachel Boccio (LaGuardia Community College/CUNY) and Ashley Rattner (Jacksonville State University). Transcript is available at http://bit.ly/3Yayxg4
The N-word is here to stay, and so are debates about it. However, scholars and teachers don’t need the word to disappear so much as they need to be more deliberate and intellectually rigorous in handling it. In this episode, Koritha Mitchell (Ohio State University) suggests that students and faculty members should not be subjected to hate speech in the classroom just because it appears in the texts we study. She shares her deep disappointment with how little white instructors as well as those in other dominant identity categories have thought about their use of slurs in their classes and proposes solutions to improve pedagogical practices. She details her own classroom policies and offers examples of how the policies function in texts by Mark Twain and James Baldwin. We also hear Mitchell's former students discuss how her policy transformed their learning experiences and critical thinking during and beyond her courses. Throughout, Mitchell identifies how intellectually lazy ways of handing racial slurs result from, and fuel, that which makes our institutions unjust. This episode originally appeared on March 4, 2019. It was produced by Xine Yao, Paul Kotheimer, and Koritha Mitchell. Post-production by Xine Yao. View Koritha Mitchell's classroom covenant: www.korithamitchell.com/teaching-and-the-n-word/ [gate.sc]
Every week, back in 2018, Ivy Schweitzer and her team of students at Dartmouth College selected several poems and letters written by Emily Dickinson in 1862, a year of creativity “at the White Heat.” They framed these poems with a summary of the news of the time, literary culture, biographical events in the Dickinson circle, a brief survey of more recent critical responses, and personal reflection. This episode explores that cumulative creation, called the “White Heat” blog. The project, which had the goal of creating original and immersive contexts in which to read Dickinson remains an exemplar of digital humanities pedagogy. Members of the team, including Schweitzer, Victoria Corwin, a (then) senior undergraduate, and Joe Waring, a Dartmouth graduate, talk with Michael Amico (Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development) about their experiences blogging Dickinson in what the team regards as an experiment in public humanities and a model for doing scholarship and experiential learning in the digital age. This episode originally appeared on September 28, 2018. It was produced by Michael Amico and Conrad Winslow. Post-production help from Doug Guerra. You can visit the White Heat blog at https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/whiteheat/.
In anticipation of the launch of Season Six – in just a few weeks! – we are sharing favorites from our expanding archive. With this episode we return to an oft-cited conversation from our first year about Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932), a figure who remains central to nineteenth-century African American literary studies. Scholars have drawn attention to the subtlety, wit, and complexity of Chesnutt’s stories, novels, and essays, which were – at one time – regarded as pandering and old-fashioned. Yet, despite the ongoing boom in Chesnutt scholarship, we still know relatively little about his life, and the general reading public rarely encounters his work. Tess Chakkalakal (Bowdoin College) hopes to change that with her biography of Chesnutt aimed toward a general readership (forthcoming from St. Martin's-McMillian, 2024). In this episode, she sits down with Mark Sussman to talk about discoveries in Chesnutt's life, the challenges of writing for a general audience, and why Chesnutt matters now. This episode originally appeared on January 15, 2018.
Everybody knows Walt Whitman (1819-1892) as the poet of Leaves of Grass (1855), but only a few think of him as a newspaperman. Still, Whitman’s journalistic writings are not only more numerous than his poetic output, but they also attracted more readers for much of his career. This podcast episode looks at one of Walt Whitman’s jobs in journalism: his editorial post at the Brooklyn Daily Times in the late 1850s, after he had already published two unsuccessful editions of Leaves of Grass. The extent of Whitman’s writings for the Times is hotly debated, with scholarly assessments ranging from “no association” to “wrote most editorials for multiple years.” In this episode, Dr. Matt Cohen (University of Nebraska—Lincoln), one of the co-directors of the Walt Whitman Archive, interviews Whitman researchers Drs. Stephanie M. Blalock (University of Iowa Libraries), Kevin McMullen (University of Nebraska—Lincoln), Stefan Schöberlein (Texas A&M University—Central Texas), and Jason Stacy (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) who have been trying to identify and track Whitman’s anonymous writings in that paper for a collaborative grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Their conversation not only engages with scholarly issues relating to authorship attribution, antebellum newspaper culture, and Whitman biography but also features excerpts of newly discovered writings by Whitman—on topics as disparate as prostitution, policing, and public works. Additional production support provided by Lizzy LeRud (Georgia Institute of Technology). Transcript available at https://bit.ly/S05E05-Transcript.
It is likely that you walk past a road or building sign every day without the slightest thought about how the names listed on these spaces have rich ties to an activity that is popular in your town or city, important to the history of a particular group of people in your community, or to a historical event that a particular narrative has overlooked. This episode centers on Los Angeles’ Latinx communities as integral sites of C19 cultural production through its retelling of the historical significance of the Pico and Sepulveda intersection in West Los Angeles and the famous horse race that occurred there between Pío Pico and José Antonio Andrés Sepúlveda, two prominent figures in Mexican California, on March 20, 1852. Scholars Efren Lopez (SDSU-Imperial Valley), Marissa López (UCLA), and Gabriela Valenzuela (CSU-LA), as well as young poets from 826LA, a non-profit writing center serving K-12 youth, and the British-Guyanese writer Fred D’Aguiar, invite listeners to consider how digital tools can be used to spark conversations about our surroundings, literature, and public memory. Lopez, López, and Valenzuela produced this episode and DeLisa D. Hawkes (UT-Knoxville) provided additional production support. Check out this complete list of URLs related to these scholars’ work on public memory and Los Angeles’ Latinx C19 studies at https://bit.ly/LatinxC19Links. Full transcript at bit.ly/3Hod90e.
This past February, the C19 Ad Hoc Committee on Events brought together eleven scholars to discuss the contributions their first books make to our understanding of nineteenth-century history, literature, and culture. Hosted by Crystal Donker (SUNY New Paltz), this live virtual event included individual presentations and a lively Q&A, where authors shared hard-won practical advice about the publishing process. On this episode of the C19 podcast, we share the excitement and intellectual curiosity of The First Book Celebration, introducing our listening audience to a new generation of scholars. This episode was produced by Rachel Boccio (LaGuardia Community College, CUNY) and Ashley Rattner (Tusculum University). The authors appearing on this episode include Ashley Barnes, Juliana Chow, Gordon Fraser, Melissa Gniadek, Reed Gochberg, Thomas Koenigs, Hannah Murray, Julie Pfeiffer, Crystal Webster, Xine Yao, and Elissa Zellinger. Full episode transcript is available at https://bit.ly/39L6SPq.
In 1842, nine years before the first adoption law was passed in the United States, two sisters from Boston, Anstrice and Eunice C. Fellows, began what would be the first adoption agency—in the form of a reform periodical, The Orphans’ Advocate and Social Monitor. With only the aid of their pens, in a small office near the Boston Common, these women created a cultural shift regarding orphaned and displaced children. In this episode, Sophia Hadley (Boston University) tells the story of the Fellows’ revolutionary work and their intervention into a surprisingly contentious discourse on orphan care in the nineteenth century. Amidst the rise of institutional care for orphans, the sisters promote the practice of adoption, specifically adoption within the local community. In the editorial and fictional works within the publication, the Fellows imagine varied members of the community—single, married, male, female, poor, and rich—as capable of having beneficial and empowering relationships with children among them, regardless of biological relation to them. Eschewing an individualistic or institutional approach to child-rearing, these authors imagine a collective responsibility in the care of children. This vision proves liberating for both the children and the guardians alike, shaping families in nontraditional ways. During our contemporary time in which the family unit is being productively reimagined, the forgotten story of the Fellows sisters and their incredible periodical can provide a priceless resource. This episode was produced by Sophia Hadley. Additional production support was provided by Lizzy LeRud (Georgia Institute of Technology). Full episode transcript available at https://bit.ly/FoundingMothersTranscript
“Reconstructions” is the theme and inspiration for the upcoming, in-person C19 conference, to be held in Florida’s Coral Gables/Miami region this March 31st - April 2nd. In this episode members of the podcast team interview the conference organizers as they prepare for the event and highlight what attendees can expect. Sarah Chinn (Hunter College, CUNY), Anna Mae Duane (University of Connecticut), Edlie Wong (University of Maryland), Martha Schoolman (Florida International University), and John Funchion (University of Miami) share behind-the-scenes insights as well as suggestions for potential conference attendees. For additional information, the conference program is available online at https://c19reconstructions.com/program/. This episode was written by Ryan Charlton (Auburn University) and produced by Ryan Charlton, Rachel Boccio (LaGuardia Community College, CUNY), Ashley Rattner (Tusculum University), Julia Bernier (Washington and Jefferson College), DeLisa Hawkes (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), and Lizzy LeRud (Georgia Tech). Background music is "Helges Friend Woke Up" by Lobo Loco, used under a Creative Commons license. Full episode transcript available: https://bit.ly/C19PodcastS05E01
This episode highlights the ways that librarians and faculty can partner in designing assignments that draw on archival records to emphasize the cultural, political, and social significance of nineteenth-century literary texts. Specifically, we explore the affordances of using archival records, particularly bills of sale for enslaved people, to teach Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Wake Forest University English faculty and Special Collections and Archives librarians talk about the discoveries students make through assignments that allow them to incorporate nineteenth-century historical documents from slavery into their reading and analysis of Jacobs’s narrative. We also consider the significant emotional challenges that this kind of direct material engagement poses, discussing the ways we have presented and revised our assignments to account for potentially traumatic triggering. Episode produced by Carrie Johnston (Digital Humanities Research Designer), Rian Bowie (Associate Teaching Professor of English), Megan Mulder (Special Collections Librarian), Tanya Zanish-Belcher (Director of Special Collections and Archives) and Brianna Derr (Wake Forest University Information Systems). Additional production support from Doug Guerra (SUNY Oswego). Full episode transcript with additional links available here: https://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E08
The coronavirus pandemic in 2020 resulted in not only a devastating loss of life, but a loss of jobs too. As the virus swept the United States, so too did unemployment. What Americans experienced last year during the pandemic was unprecedented in some ways, but the link between crises in health and employment is nothing new. To gain some historical perspective on our most recent epidemic of unemployment, this episode travels back to the depressions of the late nineteenth century to uncover how American economists and thinkers used metaphors of contagious disease to first conceptualize what it meant to be unemployed. Produced by Hillary Roegelein (University of Maryland, College Park), a specialist in nineteenth-century American literature and unemployment history, this episode raises historical and philosophical questions about the advantages of and limitations to thinking about unemployment as a disease. Roegelein is joined by two other scholars of nineteenth-century American culture. Sari Altschuler (Northeastern University) turns to the Cholera outbreak of the 1840s to offer insight into the way pandemics repeatedly give rise to major shifts in cultural, economic, and intellectual thought. And Historian Richard White (Stanford University) explains the history of unemployment and its conceptual development in the United States before 1930. Additional production support was provided by Paul Fess (La Guardia Community College, CUNY). Full episode transcript available here: https://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E07
Have we really witnessed, in the words of a 2016 J19 forum, “the end of the end of the canon?” This episode builds on the #VirtualC19 roundtable “Irreverence toward the Canon” held in October 2020. Envisioning the episode as the kind of conversation that ensues in the hallways after a conference panel, Carie Schneider (Cameron University) and Sean Gordon (University of Massachusetts Amherst) ask four basic questions: What is the canon? What is irreverence toward the canon? How do we do irreverence toward the canon? And why? After discussing canonicity in terms of their respective fields and methodologies, Schneider and Gordon go on to discuss what it means to assume an irreverent disposition in our teaching and research. Connecting irreverence to abolition, institutional power, and contemporary conversations about monuments, they gather ideas about how to inspire a politics of irreverence in our students and what cultivating such a disposition may mean for the future of the field — and beyond. The episode was produced by Carie Schneider and Sean Gordon and features the contributions of Julia W. Bernier (Washington & Jefferson College), Crystal S. Donkor (SUNY New Paltz), and Emily Gowen (Boston University). Music by Asura, Audiobinger, Broke for Free, and Loyalty Freak Music, and is used under Creative Commons licenses. Additional production support was provided by Ashley Rattner (Tusculum University). Full episode transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E06
In this episode, Elizabeth Duquette (Gettysburg College) and Stacey Margolis (University of Utah) discuss their experiences as co-editors of J19, the flagship journal of C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. In a recording of the live Q&A event from April 29, 2021, Crystal Donkor (SUNY New Paltz) asks the outgoing editors questions about the intellectual challenges and pragmatics of shaping research in the field of nineteenth-century American studies. For more information on the current call for new J19 editors please visit https://www.c19society.org/call-for-editors. Proposals are due by June 15, 2021. This episode was produced by Christine "Xine" Yao (University College London) and Doug Guerra (SUNY Oswego). Full transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E05. You can contact Betsy Duquette and Stacey Margolis to learn more about co-editing J19 or submitting to the journal: eduquett@gettysburg.edu / s.margolis@utah.edu
A nineteenth-century tunnel book inspires us to adopt different perspectives on settler colonial regimes and power structures. This second part in the diptych series on comparative settler colonialisms begins with an object lesson based in London about imperial gazes on different colonial landscapes. This episode features Dr. Xine Yao in conversation with Dr. T.J. Tallie, an Assistant Professor at the University of San Diego and author of Queering Colonial Natal: Indigeneity and the Violence of Belonging in Southern Africa (University of Minnesota Press, 2019). Tallie’s focus on nineteenth-century settler colonial histories in a region of what is now South Africa provides insight into structures of settler colonialism and ways to consider relationships between queerness, Indigeneity, and Blackness. This episode was produced by Melissa Gniadek (University of Toronto) and Xine Yao (University College London). Additional production support was provided by Rachel Boccio (LaGuardia Community College/CUNY), Chelsea Latremouille (University of Toronto), and Stephanie Redekop (University of Toronto). Full episode transcript here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E04 Episode links: The tunnel book at the Victoria and Albert Museum: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1362044/view-from-langostura-de-paine-paper-peepshow-callcott-maria/ T.J. Tallie’s book: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/queering-colonial-natal
This episode tracks the literary history of pirates in the long nineteenth-century United States and examines how literary pirates helped singers, readers, and writers contemplate the excesses of capitalism. In four acts, Lydia G. Fash highlights varying tropes for literary pirates. The first act considers the pirate anti-heroes in a ballad about Captain Kidd favored by sailors who had to endure the brutal maritime punishments of greedy captains. The second act moves to the depression that followed the Panic of 1837, when Edgar Allan Poe positioned pirate treasure as an alluring windfall to those struggling folk savvy enough to decipher its secret location. In the third act, Fash tells the story of “The Great Western Land Pirate,” John Murrell, the leader of an armed gang who attacked the rich in the Southeast. And in the final act, Fash highlights how abolitionists labeled enslavers as pirates--a tactic meant both to remind listeners of the legal status of the international slave trade after 1808 and to conjure the anger colonists came to feel about historic pirates. Yet this rhetorical strategy was ultimately weakened by the growing cachet of literary pirates at the mid-century. Throughout the nineteenth-century and beyond, pirate antiheroes, Fash argues, have allowed readers to navigate negative feelings about the inequities of capitalism without creating any corresponding desire for structural change. This episode was produced by Lydia G. Fash (Simmons University). Additional production support from Ittai Orr (University of Michigan). Full episode transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E03
This episode considers Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies and artistic practice across the borders of nation states, and across oceans. Beginning with a nineteenth-century archival object, the episode turns to a conversation with artist Maria Hupfield (University of Toronto), who reflects on her work as an Indigenous artist and performer who has brought her art to different spaces and geographies. The episode concludes with a conversation with David Stirrup, the Director of the first Centre for Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies in the U.K., at the University of Kent. As nineteenth-century American literary studies increasingly recognizes the transnational dimensions of Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies, this episode looks beyond national borders for models of global and comparative studies that nevertheless account for particular national and local histories. This episode was produced by Melissa Gniadek (University of Toronto) and Xine Yao (University College London). Additional production support was provided by Rachel Boccio (LaGuardia Community College/CUNY), Chelsea Latremouille (University of Toronto), and Stephanie Redekop (University of Toronto). Full episode transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E02. Further Reading: David Stirrup https://research.kent.ac.uk/centreforindigenousandsettlercolonialstudies/ https://www.kent.ac.uk/english/people/115/www.kent.ac.uk/english/people/115/stirrup-david Maria Hupfield https://mariahupfield.wordpress.com A show in Montreal based on the work Hupfield did in Venice, mentioned in the episode https://huguescharbonneau.com/en/maria-hupfield-stay-golden/ Some other exhibits mentioned in the conversation https://heard.org/exhibit/maria-hupfield/ https://thepowerplant.org/Exhibitions/2017/Winter-2017/Maria-Hupfield--Solo-exhibition.aspx A recent artist talk with Hupfield https://veralistcenter.org/events/on-protocol-fellow-maria-hupfield-in-conversation-with-leanne-betasamosake-simpson/
This episode explores how letters or "cartas" expounded universalist notions of political self-determination by cultivating intimate states of brotherhood or friendship across the Americas during the nineteenth century. In the recently published Letters from Filadelfia: Early Latino Literature and the Trans-American Elite, Rodrigo Lazo examines this archive to retrace the migrant steps of revolutionaries and writers between roughly 1790 to 1830: a group he calls the “trans-American elite.” Such epistolary writings sometimes reproduce and sometimes dislocate the racial, economic, and gender hierarchies of places where the Latin and Anglo Americas meet. Guest commentators John Morán González (University of Texas, Austin), Sandra Gustafson (University of Notre Dame), and Sharada Balachandran Orihuela (University of Maryland, College Park) reflect on the ways that integrating Spanish-language archives can change how we think about the early U.S. republic, as well as the cultural production of Latinx populations past and present. The episode is bookended by dramatic readings of excerpts of the letters mentioned in Letters from Filadelfia. It was produced by Carmen E. Lamas (University of Virginia) and Kirsten Silva Gruesz (University of California, Santa Cruz), with additional production support and original music from Paul Fess (La Guardia Community College, CUNY) and Douglas Guerra (SUNY Oswego). Full transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E01
This episode uses a monument to unravel the story of John W. Jones, a self-emancipated Black activist, civic leader, and entrepreneur living in nineteenth-century Elmira, New York. Jones is most often remembered for the “caring” way he buried nearly 3,000 bodies of Confederate soldiers who died in a Civil War prison camp in Elmira. Jillian Spivey Caddell describes how her scholarly interest in Elmira and the life of John W. Jones (along with his connections to another famous visitor to the city, Mark Twain) led her to discover that her own ancestor was among the Confederates buried by Jones. To get a full sense of Jones’s character, Caddell interviews Talima Aaron, president of the Board of Trustees of the John W. Jones Museum; Rachel Dworkin, archivist for the Chemung County Historical Society; and Mary Wheeling, who also shares a personal connection with Jones and Elmira. The episode meditates on questions of how personal histories and scholarly interests collide and suggests ways that knowing the story of Jones can influence our teaching of C19 American literature and culture. Finally, it resituates Jones as central to conversations about Civil War memory and forms of nineteenth-century Black citizenship. This episode was produced by Jillian Spivey Caddell (University of Kent). Additional production support from Rachel Boccio (LaGuardia Community College/CUNY). Full episode transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS03E06
This episode focuses broadly on digital humanities research and pedagogy in the field of nineteenth-century American Studies, with special consideration given to the varied affordances of infrastructure at different institutions. DH beginner Spencer Tricker interviews Brad Rittenhouse about his project “TMI” (“Too Much Information”), which uses quantitative speech analysis to explore trends in the way that nineteenth-century writers--both professional and otherwise--represented information overload in an era of intense urbanization and technological change. They discuss how collaborative digital methods can help to resituate work by women and people of color who were writing in formats historically excluded from literary study, reflecting on how this might shift perspectives on how an author like Sui Sin Far used intertextuality in her short fiction. They conclude with a practical discussion of digital resources that instructors can use to teach C19 literature and culture in the classroom. This episode was produced by Spencer Tricker (Longwood University) and Brad Rittenhouse (Georgia Institute of Technology). Additional production support from Ashley Rattner (Tusculum University). Full episode transcript including linked resources available here: https://bit.ly/C19PodcastS03E05.
Did nineteenth-century abolitionists actually succeed in their aims or did they fail in ways that continue to animate American society? Might their legacy of radical activism be more complicated than the stories we often tell? In her new book, American Radicals: How Nineteenth-Century Protest Shaped the Nation (Crown 2019), Holly Jackson reveals that "when the abolition of slavery seemed a dangerous and utopian dream to the vast majority of Americans, the Garrisonians did not attempt to make it safer or more practical but stretched instead toward its most disruptive and far-reaching implications.” In a conversation with Kyla Schuller, Jackson explains that the horizons of abolitionism have yet to be realized. Jackson illuminates social movements as sites of ongoing struggle--rather than unified platforms--that succeed in part through their very shortcomings. The dialogue includes discussion of writing craft, as Jackson relates how she brought nineteenth-century radicals to life for general audiences while resisting Great Man and Great Woman narratives. Ultimately, Jackson suggests, the racial justice movement reigniting on international scales today is a continuation of more than two hundred years of collective struggle. Episode produced by Kyla Schuller (Rutgers U-New Brunswick), Holly Jackson (UMass-Boston), and Ittai Orr (UMich). Full episode transcript available here: https://bit.ly/C19PodcastS03E04.
Mark Twain is an author strongly associated with place, whether it be Hannibal, Missouri, the sleepy hamlet of his childhood; Hartford, Connecticut, the city where he built his lavish mansion; or San Francisco, California, the platform from which he launched his literary career. Yet you might be surprised to learn that Twain wrote *Huckleberry Finn* and many of his most well-known works in Elmira, New York, the peculiar community where his wife, Olivia Langdon, was born. This episode showcases the impact of Elmira’s abolitionist, feminist, socialist, and philanthrocapitalist legacies on Twain’s work, highlighting his interactions with political radicals like Thomas K. Beecher, John W. Jones, and Annis Ford Eastman. This episode was produced by Matt Seybold, resident scholar at the Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies. He is joined by the voice of Hal Holbrook—star and subject of the 2019 documentary "Holbrook/Twain: An American Odyssey"—as well as Will Holbrook, and past Quarry Farm Fellows. For more information on Quarry Farm Fellowships, Trouble Begins lectures, or the Center for Mark Twain Studies, please visit http://MarkTwainStudies.org. Music by the Chicago-based Compass Rose Sextet (http://CompassRose6.com) and Steve Webb (http://StivanderAndTheBalance.BandCamp.com). Additional production support by Ashley Rattner (Tusculum University). Full episode transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodS03E03
This episode explores the extraordinary efforts that Elizabeth Melville undertook, after her husband Herman's death, to republish his books and to preserve his records. Examining the way that Elizabeth's efforts were written out of the "Melville Studies" that her labors helped to found, we consider larger philosophical questions about how many lives stand behind the career that One Great Man gets to have. This episode was produced by Adam Fales (UChicago) and Jordan Alexander Stein (Fordham), and it features Rachel Sagner Buurma (Swarthmore), Meredith Farmer (Wake Forest), Laura Heffernan (North Florida), Natasha Hurley (UAlberta), Wyn Kelley (MIT), Laurie Robertson-Lorant (UMass Dartmouth), and Elizabeth Renker (Ohio State). Additional production support by Rachel Boccio (CUNY LaGuardia). Full episode transcript available here: bit.ly/C19PodS03E02.
“Dissent” is the theme and keyword inspiring the Sixth Biennial C19 Conference to be held in Florida’s Coral Gables/Miami region, April 2-5, 2020. In this episode, members of the podcast team interview the conference organizers as they prepare for the event. Meredith McGill (Rutgers University), Martha Schoolman (Florida International University), and Jennifer James (George Washington University) share behind-the-scenes insights as well as suggestions for potential attendees. This episode was written and produced by Doug Guerra (SUNY Oswego), Rachel Boccio (CUNY LaGuardia), Paul Fess (CUNY LaGuardia), Ittai Orr (Yale University), and Ashley Rattner (Tusculum University). Full episode transcript available at: http://bit.ly/C19PodS03E01.
During the rapid rise of psychiatric institutions in the nineteenth century a doctor’s testimony and the signature of a husband, friend, or community leader was enough to institutionalize a woman. This episode explores the intake narratives of two patients-turned-advocates, Elizabeth Packard and Lydia Smith, along with intake paperwork from the Dixmont Hospital for the Insane in Pittsburgh in order to probe issues around patient agency, class-based medical treatment, and women’s rights in marriage. These little-known narratives and archival materials reveal important histories of medicine in the United States. Created by Liana Kathleen Glew. Post-production help from Melissa Gniadek. Episode transcript available here: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/ca9039_4efd19e3d22b4e2a9384e29e65955195.pdf
This podcast explores the Spanish-language dedication poems of nineteenth-century Latinas who exchanged verses in and across the borders of the United States. These verses stage conversations that tease out definitions of femininity and creative expression between women in the public space of the Spanish-language press, and thus before an audience of silent, male interlocutors. Sarah Skillen discusses the Cuban poet Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda and her 1846 poem “Contestando a otro de una señorita” [“Ballad Answering Another by a Young Lady”]. She and Vanessa Ovalle Perez then turn to an exchange of dedicatorias between the Panamanian poet Amelia Denis and San Francisco poet Carlota Gutierrez, which was printed from 1875 through 1876 in San Salvador and Los Angeles. Of particular interest is how these women participated in a growing, transnational network of poetisas writing to and for one other. This podcast also includes readings of these nineteenth-century dedicatorias in Spanish and in translation, performed respectively by the contemporary poets Liana Bravo, Lucy Cristina Chau, and Vanessa Angélica Villarreal. These readings are mobilized as a collaboration and performative dialogue between Latinas of past and present and between languages, Spanish and English. Episode produced by Vanessa Ovalle Perez, Sarah Skillen, Christine “Xine” Yao, and Matthew Teutsch. These poems in the original Spanish and translations by Perez and Skillen will be made available on the C19 website
The N-word is here to stay, and so are debates about it. However, scholars and teachers don’t need the word to disappear so much as they need to be more deliberate and intellectually rigorous in handling it. In this episode, Koritha Mitchell (Ohio State University) suggests that students and faculty members should not be subjected to hate speech in the classroom just because it appears in the texts we study. She shares her deep disappointment with how little white instructors as well as those in other dominant identity categories have thought about their use of slurs in their classes and proposes solutions to improve pedagogical practices. She details her own classroom policies and offers examples of how the policies function in texts by Mark Twain and James Baldwin. We also hear Mitchell's former students discuss how her policy transformed their learning experiences and critical thinking during and beyond her courses. Throughout, Mitchell identifies how intellectually lazy ways of handing racial slurs in the classroom result from, and fuel, that which makes our institutions unjust. Episode produced by Xine Yao, Paul Kotheimer, and Koritha Mitchell. Post-production by Xine Yao. View Koritha Mitchell's classroom covenant: http://www.korithamitchell.com/teaching-and-the-n-word/
How does looking back to a time before institutionalization and medicalization affect how we think about disability today? What would it mean to "crip" the classics? These are some of the questions answered by Professors Benjamin Reiss (Emory University), Ellen Samuels (UW Madison) and Sari Altschuler (Northeastern University) as they speak with Ittai Orr (Yale University) about the study of what Reiss calls the "disability cultures" of the 19th century. Making the case that such cultures deeply influenced what we now think of as mainstream American history and literature, they share their exciting research on Emerson, Thoreau and Fuller's ethics of care, the afterlives of nineteenth-century freakshows on the internet, and the impact of raised type and blind education on The Scarlet Letter, and they identify exciting new areas of study yet to be fully explored. This episode was produced by Ittai Orr with major support from Christine "Xine" Yao, Kristie Schlauraff, and Dan Kubis of the University of Pittsburgh Humanities Center. Episode transcript: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/ca9039_4354c64b8ed0444fb5e7716b76434633.pdf
In February 2018, Mark H., then a Columbia MFA Directing Candidate, presented his production of William Wells Brown’s 1858 play, The Escape; or a Leap for Freedom to a full house at the Lenfest Center for the Arts in Harlem. In this episode of the podcast Brigitte Fielder and Jonathan Senchyne (University of Wisconsin-Madison) talk to Mark H. about being only the second director to stage this 150-year old play. Their conversation includes discussion of attitudes toward melodrama and, significantly, of some of the decisions involved when presenting nineteenth-century depictions of anti-black violence to a contemporary audience. Post-production help from Melissa Gniadek.
May Alcott Nieriker is mostly remembered as a footnote in a famous family: the daughter of Bronson Alcott and the inspiration for Amy March in her sister Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. But Alcott Nieriker was a writer and an accomplished painter who studied in Paris and was described by John Ruskin as “the only artist worthy to copy Turner.” This episode emerges from the the conference “Recovering May Alcott Nieriker’s Life and Works,” which was held at the Université Paris Diderot on June 28, 2018. What work can be done through research, teaching, and even historical fiction to bring her to the fore? Here Azelina Flint (University of East Anglia) and her students Poppy Henson and Emelia Platt introduce listeners to May Alcott Nieriker and interview novelist Elise Hooper, author of The Other Alcott (2017), Marlowe Daly-Galeano (Lewis Clark State College), Lauren Hehmeyer (Texarkana College), and John Matteson (John Jay College, CUNY). This episode was created by Flint and produced by Chris Timms (Essex University) with post-production help from Mark Sussman.
The new issue of J19 is hot off the presses! Starting with the cover image of the 1833 Leonid meteor shower, J19 editors Elizabeth Duquette and Stacey Margolis share their process, advice, and what makes them excited about the ideas and conversations in this issue. Hear teasers about the articles that critically engage crows, notebooks, juvenile delinquents, comets, sin, and Indigenous newspapers. Features include the forum on theatre via keywords, a Pleasure Reading piece on teaching in a maximum security prison, and letters that help to build a sense of scholarly community. Submit not only your research but also your letters about anything in previous J19 issues and your personal Pleasure Reading essays! Essays by Jamie Bolker, Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Zach Marshall, Laura Soderberg, Kathryn Walkiewicz, David Zimmerman Pleasure Reading by Gale Temple Letters by Holly Jackson, Sarah E. Chinn Forum edited by Matthew Rebhorn featuring Heather Nathans, Douglas A. Jones Jr, Amy E. Hughes, Joseph Roach
Every week in 2018, Ivy Schweitzer and her team of students at Dartmouth College select several poems and letters written by Emily Dickinson in 1862, a year of creativity “at the White Heat,” and then frame them with a summary of the news of the time, literary culture, biographical events in the Dickinson circle, a brief survey of more recent critical responses and a personal reflection. This episode explores the “White Heat” blog, where the goal is to create immersive contexts in which to read this notoriously difficult writer and to counter the mythology that Dickinson was isolated and sui generis. In fact, this was the year Dickinson “came out as a poet” to the famous literary figure, Thomas Higginson. Members of the team, including Schweitzer, Victoria Corwin, a senior undergraduate, and Joe Waring, a recent graduate, talk with Michael Amico (Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development) about their experiences blogging Dickinson in what the team regards as an experiment in public humanities and a model for doing scholarship and experiential learning in the digital age. This episode was produced by Michael Amico and Conrad Winslow. Post-production help from Doug Guerra.
In our current moment there is an unmistakable need for people who are invested in the knowledge, methods, dispositions, and perspectives cultivated by the humanities. Our trade is nuance: sensitivity to the variability of meaning, a willingness to consider alternative social plots and coexisting answers to complex questions. Yet, in our own professional lives, it can become all too easy to treat the question of what to do with a humanities PhD as though it had only one acceptable answer. In this episode, born out of the recent C19 Conference in Albuquerque, Patricia Crain (NYU) assembles a group of scholars who have found fulfilling careers beyond the tenure track to discuss strategies for translating graduate training to other professional frameworks. Featuring: Jane Greenway Carr (CNN), Sarah Anne Carter (The Chipstone Foundation), Paul Erickson (The American Academy of Arts & Sciences), and David Weimer (The Harvard Map Collection). Episode produced by Douglas Guerra (SUNY Oswego).
How does an enslaved woman's song from 1830s in Georgia end up on a 1950s radio program in South Africa and in a modern singing class? This is the surprising story of an African-born woman named Tena, whose music has echoed for generations across continents, airwaves, and even college classrooms. Mary Caton Lingold (Virginia Commonwealth University) first encountered Tena’s song in a book of sheet music by Carl Sandburg but a series of events led her to uncover details about Tena’s life in living memories of her enslavers’ descendants and in archival recordings and documents. This episode is about Tena's life and legacy, the challenges of researching enslaved women’s lives, and how sound and performance can open up new ways of engaging with the past. This episode was created and produced by Mary Caton Lingold (Virginia Commonwealth University) with post-production help from Kristie Schlauraff. Episode transcript available here: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/ca9039_a108805b1f8442d0817c58ca47b7c1ed.pdf
Why discuss poor whites when thinking about race and class in nineteenth-century America and beyond? In this dialogue between literary studies and history Matthew Teutsch (Auburn University) and Keri Leigh Merritt (Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South (Cambridge UP, 2017)) talk about how wealthy white landowners manipulated the antiblackness of poor whites in the antebellum period, the image of poor whites in the cultural imagination, and the legacies of this racially divisive class warfare today. They discuss interdisciplinarity in the field, the effective use of archives in pedagogy, and academics on social media. Episode produced by Matthew Teutsch.
Today, we associate the theory of evolution with Charles Darwin. But in America in the nineteenth-century, and well into the twentieth, the evolutionary theory of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck were far more influential than Darwin's. In this episode, Kyla Schuller (Rutgers) and Britt Rusert (UMass Amherst) discuss the ways that Lamarckian thought influenced attitudes toward sentimentalism, child development, physiology, and race. Schuller takes up these topics in her book The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century (Duke 2017), and here she expands on them and asks how we adapt our thinking about biopower to the Age of Trump. Episode produced by Britt Rusert (UMass Amherst). Post-production help from Mark Sussman.
How is studying and teaching nineteenth-century U.S. literature different outside of the U.S.? Do British scholars have different horizons than their American counterparts? This episode of the C19 podcast provides scholars in the U.S. and the rest of the world with insight into scholarship, disciplinary practices, and current issues in British Higher Education. Join hosts Dr. Katie McGettigan (Royal Holloway, University of London), Dr. Hannah Lauren Murray (King’s College London), and Dr. Benjamin Pickford (University of Lausanne) to find out about the British Association of Nineteenth-Century Americanists (BrANCA), their third biennial symposium: “The Not Yet of the Nineteenth-Century U.S.” held at University of Exeter in November 2017, and to hear reflections on teaching and researching outside of the U.S. This episode was edited by Benjamin Pickford. Music was provided by Lee Rosevere. Post-production help from Melissa Gniadek.
Why should we care about a once famous, then forgotten woman writer? While conducting research in the Washington State archives, Laura Laffrado (Western Washington University) stumbled upon the twelve linear feet of the papers of forgotten Pacific Northwest author Ella Rhoads Higginson (1862?-1940) and set out to recover Higginson and her storied literary career. Celebrated prize-winning author and first Poet Laureate of Washington State, Higginson was said to have put the Pacific Northwest on the literary map. Weaving together her journey of discovery, her students’ reactions to Higginson, and a local film company’s account of adapting Higginson’s screenplay, Laffrado introduces listeners to a woman who not only penned an impressive range of work but even rewrote The Scarlet Letter for her Pacific Northwest audience. Laffrado’s collection, Selected Writings of Ella Higginson: Inventing Pacific Northwest Literature (2015), brings Higginson’s work back into print and testifies to the enduring value of literary recovery, feminism, and recognizing the women who came before us. This episode was produced by Jeremy Cushman, Associate Professor of English at Western Washington University. The Western Washington University students interviewed in the podcast are Hana Shishkarev, a graduate student in English, and undergraduate Marielle Stockton. The co-owners of the independent film company Talking to Crows who are interviewed are Cassidy Young and Stacy Reynolds. Post-production help from Kristie Schlauraff.
How do the recovered lives and work of Black writers find an audience? Over the last three decades, Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932) has become central to nineteenth-century African American literary studies. Scholars have drawn attention to the subtlety, wit, and complexity of his stories, novels, and essays, which were once regarded as pandering and old-fashioned. Yet, despite the ongoing boom in Chesnutt scholarship, we still know relatively little about his life, and the general reading public rarely encounters his work. Tess Chakkalakal (Bowdoin College) hopes to change that with a new biography of Chesnutt aimed toward a general readership. In this episode, she sits down with C19 Podcast producer Mark Sussman (Hunter College, CUNY) to talk about some new discoveries about Chesnutt's life, the challenges of writing for a general audience, and why Chesnutt matters now.
What do you do when you don't go looking for a book-- it comes and finds you instead? That's what happened to Jean Lee Cole (Loyola University Maryland) when she ran into the words of H.M.T. in the pages of the Christian Recorder. It took nearly ten years, but H.M.T. eventually got his way. The story behind Freedom's Witness: The Civil War Correspondence of Henry McNeal Turner (West Virginia UP, 2013) is a story about periodical research, African American print culture, and history's refusal to keep silent. The episode was written and produced by Jean Lee Cole. Post-production help from Christine "Xine" Yao. Background music from www.bensound.com used under a Creative Commons License
Can 19th-century approaches to slavery provide a map for thinking about 21st century trafficking? In this episode, Anna Mae Duane (UConn)leads a dialogue about how we can--and can’t--bring the nineteenth century to bear on the current phenomenon largely referred to as “Modern Slavery”--a term that is itself deeply controversial. The conversation centers around the edited collection, Child Slavery Before and After Emancipation: An Argument for Child-Centered Slavery Studies (Cambridge UP, 2017). Editor Anna Mae Duane interviews three contributors to that project, Karen Sánchez-Eppler (Amherst), Micki McElya (UConn) and Sarah Winter (UConn). Together they think about what constitutes a usable past when thinking about modern forms of oppression, and about how focusing on children can help us to rethink questions of property, memory, and freedom. The episode was produced by Ali Oshinskie with the support of WHUS studios. Post-production assistance by Doug Guerra.
J19: The Journal of Nineteenth Century Americanists was launched in 2013. Published twice annually, the official publication of the C19 organization is dedicated to innovative research on, and analysis of, the long nineteenth century. In this episode members of the C19 Podcast team bring you an exclusive interview with the new co-editors of the journal, Elizabeth “Betsy” Duquette (Gettysburg College) and Stacey Margolis (University of Utah). We are excited to bring you this sneak peek into the workings of a leading academic journal and Betsy and Stacey’s vision for the next 5 years of J19. Written and produced by Christine “Xine” Yao (UBC), Mark Sussman (Hunter College), and Matthew Teutsch (Auburn).
“Climate” is the theme and keyword for the Fifth Biennial C19 Conference located at Albuquerque, New Mexico on March 22-25 2018. For our inaugural episode, members of the C19 Podcast team interviewed the organizers of the upcoming conference. Hester Blum (Penn State), Jesse Aleman (UNM), and Carrie Bramen (SUNY Buffalo) share insights about the ideas behind the conference, as well as suggestions for potential conference attendees. The CFP deadline is September 15. Written and produced by Doug Guerra (SUNY Oswego), Melissa Gniadek (UToronto), and Kristie Schlauraff (Villanova).
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