Eighth International Conference on The State of Mark Twain Studies (Video)

Alan Gribben, Editor of the Mark Twain Journal, and Irene Wong, managing editor, traveled to Elmira, New York for this quadrennial conference (the 8th) on the State of Mark Twain Studies. Gribben and the late Darryl Baskin of Elmira College were instrumental in starting this conference in 1989. Click here for video of  “Eighth International…

“Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Expelled: Censorship and the Classroom” (2017 essay)

“Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Expelled: Censorship and the Classroom,” Critical Insights: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,  ed. R. Kent Rasmussen (Ipswich, MA: Salem Press, 2017), pp. 65-80.   Link to Critical Insights book “Professor Gribben himself recounts, for the first time at length in print, the full story of the NewSouth editions. He also discusses the impact…

The Big Read in 2010 (Video)

The idea of removing the n-word from Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn–by translating this detested racial slur as “slave” instead–occurred to me after I completed a tour of libraries in Alabama and Georgia to promote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for the NEA Big Read program. Teachers approached me in every town and said that they could not (or would not) teach…