Culture
Twain, Dickens Book Tours Examined In Muskingum Author Talk Series
< < Back to twain-dickens-book-tours-examined-muskingum-author-talk-seriesThe Muskingum University Library Author Talk Series will host a lecture and reading by Assistant Professor of English Amanda Adams on Thursday, Nov. 20 at 3:30 p.m. in room 336 of Boyd Science Center.
Dr. Adams’ newest book is Performing Authorship in the Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Lecture Tour. The book expands an understanding of what it meant to be a 19th-century author by examining the concept of performative, embodied authorship in relationship to the transatlantic lecture tour.
Dr. Adams argues that these lecture tours were a central aspect of 19th-century authorship at a time when authors were becoming international celebrities.
Spanning the years 1834 to 1904, her book examines the British lecture tours of American authors including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain, as well as the American lecture tours of British writers including Harriet Martineau, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde and Matthew Arnold.
In highlighting this wide range of authors, Dr. Adams makes a case for the lecture tour as a microcosm for 19th-century authorship in all its contradictions and complexity.
Dr. Adams joined the faculty at Muskingum in 2010. She earned her master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. from the University of Oregon.
Her academic specialty is 19th-century literature, with a focus on transatlantic culture and gender.
For more information, call the library at 740-826-8152.