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© 2023 The American Vandal, from The Center for Mark Twain Studies Center for Mark Twain Studies
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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.
50 Episodes
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On the eve of the largest annual gathering of literary scholars, the MLA convention in San Francisco, a discussion of this year's presidential theme, Working Conditions, with the MLA President.
For more about this episode, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/WorkingConditions
Two scholars embedded in publishing discuss the impact of chaos at Twitter and in social media more generally upon journalism and academic presses. Also, some brief discussion of "The Twitter Files" and Mastodon migration.
For more about this episode, including a bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TheTwitterElegies
As the Elon Musk era at Twitter descends ever further into chaos, we discuss the canaries in the coal mine of surveillance, shadowbanning, algorithmic censorship, data firesales, and deplatforming: sex workers.
For more about this episode, including a bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Bollocks
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
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