C19: America in the 19th Century Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists

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/.