“We are perched on a hill top that overlooks a little world of green valleys, shining rivers, sumptuous forests and billowy uplands veiled in the haze of distance. We have no neighbors. It is the quietest of all quiet places, and we are hermits that eschew caves and live in the sun.”
~ Mark Twain
ABOUT THE CENTER FOR MARK TWAIN STUDIES
Mark Twain wrote his most famous works in an octagonal study overlooking Elmira, NY, the hometown of his wife, Olivia. For more than two decades the Clemens family summered with Olivia’s siblings at Quarry Farm. All are buried at the nearby Woodlawn Cemetery. In 1983, both Quarry Farm and the study, since relocated to the Elmira College campus, became part of the Center for Mark Twain Studies. CMTS is dedicated to serving an international community of scholars interested in a approaching Mark Twain Studies from a variety of different approaches and disciplines.
RECENT ARTICLES
“The Texan Steer”: A Rediscovered Sketch by Mark Twain?
Originally posted by: Matt Seybold on February 12, 2019On August 27, 1870, a sketch appeared in the Leavenworth Daily Commercial with Mark Twain’s byline. So far as I can tell, this sketch, “The Texan Steer,” has never appeared in any collection of Twain’s work or...
The Park Church Culture Into Which Mark Twain Married: An Introduction to “Mark Twain’s Music Box”
Originally posted by: Matt Seybold on February 11, 2019EDITOR”S NOTE: The following was offered as an introduction to the performance of “Mark Twain’s Music Box” at the Park Church in Elmira on February 8th, 2019.117 years ago this week, in February of 1902, Mark...
The Nastiest Things Mark Twain Said About Teddy Roosevelt
Originally posted by: Matt Seybold on August 31st, 2017Yesterday, Los Angeles Review of Books published a piece I’ve been working on intermittently since the Amazon-Whole Foods merger was announced in mid-June. Please check it out.One of the implicit theses of the...
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Upcoming Events & Call for Papers
Mark Twain Circle at 2025 MLA
January 9-12, 2025 – New Orleans, Louisiana
Mark Twain Circle at 2025 ALA (2 Panels)
“The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at 150” and “Open Topic”
May 21-24, 2025 – Boston, Massachusetts
CFP Deadline – January 15, 2025
American Humor Studies Association at 2025 ALA
“New Directions”” and “Open Topic”
May 21-24, 2025 – Boston, Massachusetts
CFP Deadline – January 15, 2025
2025 Center for American Literature First Book Institute
July 1-7, 2025 – Pennsylvania State University
Application Deadline – February 19, 2025
Heidelberg Center for American Studies Spring Academy Conference
March 24-28, 2025 – Heidelberg, Germany
AHSA Panel at 2025 Critical Humor Studies Association Conference
“What’s So Funny About America?”
April 25-26, 2025 – Claremont, California
American Humor Studies Association at 2025 ALA
“Humor and/in Periodicals in the Long 19th Century”
May 21-24, 2025 – Boston, Massachusetts
W.D. Howells Society at 2025 ALA
May 21-24, 2025 – Boston, Massachusetts
“Generations and Generational Time in the United States During the Long Nineteenth Century” Conference
June 12-13, 2025 – Université de Lille, France
18th International “Connotations” Symposium: Humor and Its Borders
July 29-31, 2025 – Bochum, Germany