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December 4 • 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Part of our Trouble Begins Series – “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.” -Mark Twain
Join Twain scholars Ann M. Ryan and Kerry Driscoll for an evening that makes Mark Twain feel urgent and alive. They’ll discuss Ryan’s new book The Ghosts of Mark Twain, which lifts the curtain on Twain’s “gothic imagination” to show how memories of white manhood, Black resistance, and racial violence quietly shape his stories and why those tensions still matter today. Expect a fascinating conversation (and plenty of unexpected passages) that may change how you think about Twain.
The Trouble Begins Series features distinguished scholars who discuss elements of the life, work, and era of Mark Twain and use them to explore wider themes in the humanities and both historical and current issues.
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About the Author:
Ann Ryan is Professor of American Literature at Le Moyne College, past president of the Mark Twain Circle, the former editor of The Mark Twain Annual, and co-editor of the volume Cosmopolitan Twain, published by the University of Missouri Press.
About the Moderator:
Kerry Driscoll is an Associate Editor at the Mark Twain Papers and Project at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples (University of California Press, 2018). She is the past president of the Mark Twain Circle of America and serves as a contributing editor of its journal, the Mark Twain Annual.