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/.

“Best of” the C19 Podcast | Networked Connections: Exploring Emily Dickinson

In anticipation of the launch of Season Six – in just a few weeks! – we are sharing favorites from our expanding archive. With this episode we return to an oft-cited conversation from our first year about Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932), a figure who remains central to nineteenth-century African American literary studies. Scholars have drawn attention to the subtlety, wit, and complexity of Chesnutt’s stories, novels, and essays, which were – at one time – regarded as pandering and old-fashioned. Yet, despite the ongoing boom in Chesnutt scholarship, we still know relatively little about his life, and the general reading public rarely encounters his work. Tess Chakkalakal (Bowdoin College) hopes to change that with her biography of Chesnutt aimed toward a general readership (forthcoming from St. Martin's-McMillian, 2024). In this episode, she sits down with Mark Sussman to talk about discoveries in Chesnutt's life, the challenges of writing for a general audience, and why Chesnutt matters now. This episode originally appeared on January 15, 2018.

"Best of" the C19 Podcast | Who Was Charles Chesnutt?

Everybody knows Walt Whitman (1819-1892) as the poet of Leaves of Grass (1855), but only a few think of him as a newspaperman. Still, Whitman’s journalistic writings are not only more numerous than his poetic output, but they also attracted more readers for much of his career. This podcast episode looks at one of Walt Whitman’s jobs in journalism: his editorial post at the Brooklyn Daily Times in the late 1850s, after he had already published two unsuccessful editions of Leaves of Grass. 

The extent of Whitman’s writings for the Times is hotly debated, with scholarly assessments ranging from “no association” to “wrote most editorials for multiple years.” In this episode, Dr. Matt Cohen (University of Nebraska—Lincoln), one of the co-directors of the Walt Whitman Archive, interviews Whitman researchers Drs. Stephanie M. Blalock (University of Iowa Libraries), Kevin McMullen (University of Nebraska—Lincoln), Stefan Schöberlein (Texas A&M University—Central Texas), and Jason Stacy (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) who have been trying to identify and track Whitman’s anonymous writings in that paper for a collaborative grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Their conversation not only engages with scholarly issues relating to authorship attribution, antebellum newspaper culture, and Whitman biography but also features excerpts of newly discovered writings by Whitman—on topics as disparate as prostitution, policing, and public works. Additional production support provided by Lizzy LeRud (Georgia Institute of Technology). Transcript available at https://bit.ly/S05E05-Transcript.

S05E05 | Finding Whitman Between the Columns: A Trip Into Nineteenth-Century Newsprint

It is likely that you walk past a road or building sign every day without the slightest thought about how the names listed on these spaces have rich ties to an activity that is popular in your town or city, important to the history of a particular group of people in your community, or to a historical event that a particular narrative has overlooked. This episode centers on Los Angeles’ Latinx communities as integral sites of C19 cultural production through its retelling of the historical significance of the Pico and Sepulveda intersection in West Los Angeles and the famous horse race that occurred there between Pío Pico and José Antonio Andrés Sepúlveda, two prominent figures in Mexican California, on March 20, 1852. Scholars Efren Lopez (SDSU-Imperial Valley), Marissa López (UCLA), and Gabriela Valenzuela (CSU-LA), as well as young poets from 826LA, a non-profit writing center serving K-12 youth, and the British-Guyanese writer Fred D’Aguiar, invite listeners to consider how digital tools can be used to spark conversations about our surroundings, literature, and public memory. Lopez, López, and Valenzuela produced this episode and DeLisa D. Hawkes (UT-Knoxville) provided additional production support. Check out this complete list of URLs related to these scholars’ work on public memory and Los Angeles’ Latinx C19 studies at https://bit.ly/LatinxC19Links. Full transcript at bit.ly/3Hod90e.

S05E04 | Public Memory and Los Angeles’ Latinx C19

This past February, the C19 Ad Hoc Committee on Events brought together eleven scholars to discuss the contributions their first books make to our understanding of nineteenth-century history, literature, and culture. Hosted by Crystal Donker (SUNY New Paltz), this live virtual event included individual presentations and a lively Q&A, where authors shared hard-won practical advice about the publishing process. On this episode of the C19 podcast, we share the excitement and intellectual curiosity of The First Book Celebration, introducing our listening audience to a new generation of scholars. This episode was produced by Rachel Boccio (LaGuardia Community College, CUNY) and Ashley Rattner (Tusculum University). The authors appearing on this episode include Ashley Barnes, Juliana Chow, Gordon Fraser, Melissa Gniadek, Reed Gochberg, Thomas Koenigs, Hannah Murray, Julie Pfeiffer, Crystal Webster, Xine Yao, and Elissa Zellinger.  Full episode transcript is available at https://bit.ly/39L6SPq.

S05E03 | The First Book Celebration

In 1842, nine years before the first adoption law was passed in the United States, two sisters from Boston, Anstrice and Eunice C. Fellows, began what would be the first adoption agency—in the form of a reform periodical, The Orphans’ Advocate and Social Monitor. With only the aid of their pens, in a small office near the Boston Common, these women created a cultural shift regarding orphaned and displaced children.  

In this episode, Sophia Hadley (Boston University) tells the story of the Fellows’ revolutionary work and their intervention into a surprisingly contentious discourse on orphan care in the nineteenth century. Amidst the rise of institutional care for orphans, the sisters promote the practice of adoption, specifically adoption within the local community. In the editorial and fictional works within the publication, the Fellows imagine varied members of the community—single, married, male, female, poor, and rich—as capable of having beneficial and empowering relationships with children among them, regardless of biological relation to them. Eschewing an individualistic or institutional approach to child-rearing, these authors imagine a collective responsibility in the care of children. This vision proves liberating for both the children and the guardians alike, shaping families in nontraditional ways. During our contemporary time in which the family unit is being productively reimagined, the forgotten story of the Fellows sisters and their incredible periodical can provide a priceless resource. This episode was produced by Sophia Hadley. Additional production support was provided by Lizzy LeRud (Georgia Institute of Technology). Full episode transcript available at https://bit.ly/FoundingMothersTranscript

S05E02 | The Founding Mothers of American Adoption

“Reconstructions” is the theme and inspiration for the upcoming, in-person C19 conference, to be held in Florida’s Coral Gables/Miami region this March 31st - April 2nd. In this episode members of the podcast team interview the conference organizers as they prepare for the event and highlight what attendees can expect. Sarah Chinn (Hunter College, CUNY), Anna Mae Duane (University of Connecticut), Edlie Wong (University of Maryland), Martha Schoolman (Florida International University), and John Funchion (University of Miami) share behind-the-scenes insights as well as suggestions for potential conference attendees. For additional information, the conference program is available online at https://c19reconstructions.com/program/. This episode was written by Ryan Charlton (Auburn University) and produced by Ryan Charlton, Rachel Boccio (LaGuardia Community College, CUNY), Ashley Rattner (Tusculum University), Julia Bernier (Washington and Jefferson College), DeLisa Hawkes (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), and Lizzy LeRud (Georgia Tech). Background music is "Helges Friend Woke Up" by Lobo Loco, used under a Creative Commons license. Full episode transcript available: https://bit.ly/C19PodcastS05E01

S05E01 | Reconstructions: Looking Forward to the Seventh Biennial C19 Conference

This episode highlights the ways that librarians and faculty can partner in designing assignments that draw on archival records to emphasize the cultural, political, and social significance of nineteenth-century literary texts. Specifically, we explore the affordances of using archival records, particularly bills of sale for enslaved people, to teach Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Wake Forest University English faculty and Special Collections and Archives librarians talk about the discoveries students make through assignments that allow them to incorporate nineteenth-century historical documents from slavery into their reading and analysis of Jacobs’s narrative. We also consider the significant emotional challenges that this kind of direct material engagement poses, discussing the ways we have presented and revised our assignments to account for potentially traumatic triggering. Episode produced by Carrie Johnston (Digital Humanities Research Designer), Rian Bowie (Associate Teaching Professor of English), Megan Mulder (Special Collections Librarian), Tanya Zanish-Belcher (Director of Special Collections and Archives) and Brianna Derr (Wake Forest University Information Systems). Additional production support from Doug Guerra (SUNY Oswego). Full episode transcript with additional links available here: https://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E08

S04E08 | Teaching Harriet Jacobs in the Archives

The coronavirus pandemic in 2020 resulted in not only a devastating loss of life, but a loss of jobs too. As the virus swept the United States, so too did unemployment. What Americans experienced last year during the pandemic was unprecedented in some ways, but the link between crises in health and employment is nothing new. To gain some historical perspective on our most recent epidemic of unemployment, this episode travels back to the depressions of the late nineteenth century to uncover how American economists and thinkers used metaphors of contagious disease to first conceptualize what it meant to be unemployed. Produced by Hillary Roegelein (University of Maryland, College Park), a specialist in nineteenth-century American literature and unemployment history, this episode raises historical and philosophical questions about the advantages of and limitations to thinking about unemployment as a disease. Roegelein is joined by two other scholars of nineteenth-century American culture. Sari Altschuler (Northeastern University) turns to the Cholera outbreak of the 1840s to offer insight into the way pandemics repeatedly give rise to major shifts in cultural, economic, and intellectual thought. And Historian Richard White (Stanford University) explains the history of unemployment and its conceptual development in the United States before 1930. Additional production support was provided by Paul Fess (La Guardia Community College, CUNY). Full episode transcript available here: https://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E07

S04E07 | The Disease of Unemployment: Nineteenth-Century Perspectives on Today’s Ailing Economy

Have we really witnessed, in the words of a 2016 J19 forum, “the end of the end of the canon?” This episode builds on the #VirtualC19 roundtable “Irreverence toward the Canon” held in October 2020. Envisioning the episode as the kind of conversation that ensues in the hallways after a conference panel, Carie Schneider (Cameron University) and Sean Gordon (University of Massachusetts Amherst) ask four basic questions: What is the canon? What is irreverence toward the canon? How do we do irreverence toward the canon? And why? After discussing canonicity in terms of their respective fields and methodologies, Schneider and Gordon go on to discuss what it means to assume an irreverent disposition in our teaching and research. Connecting irreverence to abolition, institutional power, and contemporary conversations about monuments, they gather ideas about how to inspire a politics of irreverence in our students and what cultivating such a disposition may mean for the future of the field — and beyond. 

The episode was produced by Carie Schneider and Sean Gordon and features the contributions of Julia W. Bernier (Washington & Jefferson College), Crystal S. Donkor (SUNY New Paltz), and Emily Gowen (Boston University). Music by Asura, Audiobinger, Broke for Free, and Loyalty Freak Music, and is used under Creative Commons licenses. Additional production support was provided by Ashley Rattner (Tusculum University). Full episode transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E06

S04E06 | Irreverence toward the Canon

In this episode, Elizabeth Duquette (Gettysburg College) and Stacey Margolis (University of Utah) discuss their experiences as co-editors of J19, the flagship journal of C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. In a recording of the live Q&A event from April 29, 2021, Crystal Donkor (SUNY New Paltz) asks the outgoing editors questions about the intellectual challenges and pragmatics of shaping research in the field of nineteenth-century American studies. For more information on the current call for new J19 editors please visit https://www.c19society.org/call-for-editors. Proposals are due by June 15, 2021. This episode was produced by Christine "Xine" Yao (University College London) and Doug Guerra (SUNY Oswego). Full transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E05.

You can contact Betsy Duquette and Stacey Margolis to learn more about co-editing J19 or submitting to the journal: eduquett@gettysburg.edu / s.margolis@utah.edu

S04E05 | Insights into Editing J19

A nineteenth-century tunnel book inspires us to adopt different perspectives on settler colonial regimes and power structures.  This second part in the diptych series on comparative settler colonialisms begins with an object lesson based in London about imperial gazes on different colonial landscapes. This episode features Dr. Xine Yao in conversation with Dr. T.J. Tallie, an Assistant Professor at the University of San Diego and author of Queering Colonial Natal: Indigeneity and the Violence of Belonging in Southern Africa (University of Minnesota Press, 2019).  Tallie’s focus on nineteenth-century settler colonial histories in a region of what is now South Africa provides insight into structures of settler colonialism and ways to consider relationships between queerness, Indigeneity, and Blackness.  This episode was produced by Melissa Gniadek (University of Toronto) and Xine Yao (University College London). Additional production support was provided by Rachel Boccio (LaGuardia Community College/CUNY), Chelsea Latremouille (University of Toronto), and Stephanie Redekop (University of Toronto). Full episode transcript here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E04

Episode links:

The tunnel book at the Victoria and Albert Museum:
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1362044/view-from-langostura-de-paine-paper-peepshow-callcott-maria/

T.J. Tallie’s book:
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/queering-colonial-natal

S04E04 | Comparative Settler Colonialisms (II): African Indigeneity and Southern Africa as Colony

This episode tracks the literary history of pirates in the long nineteenth-century United States and examines how literary pirates helped singers, readers, and writers contemplate the excesses of capitalism. In four acts, Lydia G. Fash highlights varying tropes for literary pirates. The first act considers the pirate anti-heroes in a ballad about Captain Kidd favored by sailors who had to endure the brutal maritime punishments of greedy captains. The second act moves to the depression that followed the Panic of 1837, when Edgar Allan Poe positioned pirate treasure as an alluring windfall to those struggling folk savvy enough to decipher its secret location. In the third act, Fash tells the story of “The Great Western Land Pirate,” John Murrell, the leader of an armed gang who attacked the rich in the Southeast. And in the final act, Fash highlights how abolitionists labeled enslavers as pirates--a tactic meant both to remind listeners of the legal status of the international slave trade after 1808 and to conjure the anger colonists came to feel about historic pirates. Yet this rhetorical strategy was ultimately weakened by the growing cachet of literary pirates at the mid-century. Throughout the nineteenth-century and beyond, pirate antiheroes, Fash argues, have allowed readers to navigate negative feelings about the inequities of capitalism without creating any corresponding desire for structural change. This episode was produced by Lydia G. Fash (Simmons University). Additional production support from Ittai Orr (University of Michigan). Full episode transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E03

S04E03 | The Literary Capital of Pirates

This episode considers Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies and artistic practice across the borders of nation states, and across oceans.  Beginning with a nineteenth-century archival object, the episode turns to a conversation with artist Maria Hupfield (University of Toronto), who reflects on her work as an Indigenous artist and performer who has brought her art to different spaces and geographies.  The episode concludes with a conversation with David Stirrup, the Director of the first Centre for Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies in the U.K., at the University of Kent.  As nineteenth-century American literary studies increasingly recognizes the transnational dimensions of Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies, this episode looks beyond national borders for models of global and comparative studies that nevertheless account for particular national and local histories.  This episode was produced by Melissa Gniadek (University of Toronto) and Xine Yao (University College London).  Additional production support was provided by Rachel Boccio (LaGuardia Community College/CUNY), Chelsea Latremouille (University of Toronto), and Stephanie Redekop (University of Toronto). Full episode transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E02.

Further Reading:

David Stirrup
https://research.kent.ac.uk/centreforindigenousandsettlercolonialstudies/
https://www.kent.ac.uk/english/people/115/www.kent.ac.uk/english/people/115/stirrup-david

Maria Hupfield
https://mariahupfield.wordpress.com

A show in Montreal based on the work Hupfield did in Venice, mentioned in the episode
https://huguescharbonneau.com/en/maria-hupfield-stay-golden/

Some other exhibits mentioned in the conversation
https://heard.org/exhibit/maria-hupfield/
https://thepowerplant.org/Exhibitions/2017/Winter-2017/Maria-Hupfield--Solo-exhibition.aspx

A recent artist talk with Hupfield
https://veralistcenter.org/events/on-protocol-fellow-maria-hupfield-in-conversation-with-leanne-betasamosake-simpson/

S04E02 | Comparative Settler Colonialisms (I): Transatlantic Movements

This episode explores how letters or "cartas" expounded universalist notions of political self-determination by cultivating intimate states of brotherhood or friendship across the Americas during the nineteenth century. In the recently published Letters from Filadelfia: Early Latino Literature and the Trans-American Elite, Rodrigo Lazo examines this archive to retrace the migrant steps of revolutionaries and writers between roughly 1790 to 1830: a group he calls the “trans-American elite.” Such epistolary writings sometimes reproduce and sometimes dislocate the racial, economic, and gender hierarchies of places where the Latin and Anglo Americas meet. Guest commentators John Morán González (University of Texas, Austin), Sandra Gustafson (University of Notre Dame), and Sharada Balachandran Orihuela (University of Maryland, College Park) reflect on the ways that integrating Spanish-language archives can change how we think about the early U.S. republic, as well as the cultural production of Latinx populations past and present. The episode is bookended by dramatic readings of excerpts of the letters mentioned in Letters from Filadelfia. It was produced by Carmen E. Lamas (University of Virginia) and Kirsten Silva Gruesz (University of California, Santa Cruz), with additional production support and original music from Paul Fess (La Guardia Community College, CUNY) and Douglas Guerra (SUNY Oswego). Full transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E01

S04E01 | From Letters to Cartas: Latinx Writing in Early America

This episode uses a monument to unravel the story of John W. Jones, a self-emancipated Black activist, civic leader, and entrepreneur living in nineteenth-century Elmira, New York. Jones is most often remembered for the “caring” way he buried nearly 3,000 bodies of Confederate soldiers who died in a Civil War prison camp in Elmira. Jillian Spivey Caddell describes how her scholarly interest in Elmira and the life of John W. Jones (along with his connections to another famous visitor to the city, Mark Twain) led her to discover that her own ancestor was among the Confederates buried by Jones. To get a full sense of Jones’s character, Caddell interviews Talima Aaron, president of the Board of Trustees of the John W. Jones Museum; Rachel Dworkin, archivist for the Chemung County Historical Society; and Mary Wheeling, who also shares a personal connection with Jones and Elmira. The episode meditates on questions of how personal histories and scholarly interests collide and suggests ways that knowing the story of Jones can influence our teaching of C19 American literature and culture. Finally, it resituates Jones as central to conversations about Civil War memory and forms of nineteenth-century Black citizenship. This episode was produced by Jillian Spivey Caddell (University of Kent). Additional production support from Rachel Boccio (LaGuardia Community College/CUNY). Full episode transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS03E06

S03E06 | Monumentalizing John W. Jones

This episode focuses broadly on digital humanities research and pedagogy in the field of nineteenth-century American Studies, with special consideration given to the varied affordances of infrastructure at different institutions. DH beginner Spencer Tricker interviews Brad Rittenhouse about his project “TMI” (“Too Much Information”), which uses quantitative speech analysis to explore trends in the way that nineteenth-century writers--both professional and otherwise--represented information overload in an era of intense urbanization and technological change. They discuss how collaborative digital methods can help to resituate work by women and people of color who were writing in formats historically excluded from literary study, reflecting on how this might shift perspectives on how an author like Sui Sin Far used intertextuality in her short fiction. They conclude with a practical discussion of digital resources that instructors can use to teach C19 literature and culture in the classroom. This episode was produced by Spencer Tricker (Longwood University) and Brad Rittenhouse (Georgia Institute of Technology). Additional production support from Ashley Rattner (Tusculum University). Full episode transcript including linked resources available here: https://bit.ly/C19PodcastS03E05.

S03E05 | Staying with the Hypothesis: Getting Started with Digital Humanities Research and Pedagogy

Did nineteenth-century abolitionists actually succeed in their aims or did they fail in ways that continue to animate American society? Might their legacy of radical activism be more complicated than the stories we often tell? In her new book, American Radicals: How Nineteenth-Century Protest Shaped the Nation (Crown 2019), Holly Jackson reveals that "when the abolition of slavery seemed a dangerous and utopian dream to the vast majority of Americans, the Garrisonians did not attempt to make it safer or more practical but stretched instead toward its most disruptive and far-reaching implications.” In a conversation with Kyla Schuller, Jackson explains that the horizons of abolitionism have yet to be realized. Jackson illuminates social movements as sites of ongoing struggle--rather than unified platforms--that succeed in part through their very shortcomings. The dialogue includes discussion of writing craft, as Jackson relates how she brought nineteenth-century radicals to life for general audiences while resisting Great Man and Great Woman narratives. Ultimately, Jackson suggests, the racial justice movement reigniting on international scales today is a continuation of more than two hundred years of collective struggle. Episode produced by Kyla Schuller (Rutgers U-New Brunswick), Holly Jackson (UMass-Boston), and Ittai Orr (UMich). Full episode transcript available here: https://bit.ly/C19PodcastS03E04.

S03E04 | The Unfinished Project of Nineteenth-Century Abolition: A Conversation with Holly Jackson

Mark Twain is an author strongly associated with place, whether it be Hannibal, Missouri, the sleepy hamlet of his childhood; Hartford, Connecticut, the city where he built his lavish mansion; or San Francisco, California, the platform from which he launched his literary career. Yet you might be surprised to learn that Twain wrote *Huckleberry Finn* and many of his most well-known works in Elmira, New York, the peculiar community where his wife, Olivia Langdon, was born. This episode showcases the impact of Elmira’s abolitionist, feminist, socialist, and philanthrocapitalist legacies on Twain’s work, highlighting his interactions with political radicals like Thomas K. Beecher, John W. Jones, and Annis Ford Eastman. This episode was produced by Matt Seybold, resident scholar at the Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies. He is joined by the voice of Hal Holbrook—star and subject of the 2019 documentary "Holbrook/Twain: An American Odyssey"—as well as Will Holbrook, and past Quarry Farm Fellows. For more information on Quarry Farm Fellowships, Trouble Begins lectures, or the Center for Mark Twain Studies, please visit http://MarkTwainStudies.org. Music by the Chicago-based Compass Rose Sextet (http://CompassRose6.com) and Steve Webb (http://StivanderAndTheBalance.BandCamp.com). Additional production support by Ashley Rattner (Tusculum University). Full episode transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodS03E03

S03E03 | The Gospel of Revolt: Mark Twain in Elmira

This episode explores the extraordinary efforts that Elizabeth Melville undertook, after her husband Herman's death, to republish his books and to preserve his records. Examining the way that Elizabeth's efforts were written out of the "Melville Studies" that her labors helped to found, we consider larger philosophical questions about how many lives stand behind the career that One Great Man gets to have. This episode was produced by Adam Fales (UChicago) and Jordan Alexander Stein (Fordham), and it features Rachel Sagner Buurma (Swarthmore), Meredith Farmer (Wake Forest), Laura Heffernan (North Florida), Natasha Hurley (UAlberta), Wyn Kelley (MIT), Laurie Robertson-Lorant (UMass Dartmouth), and Elizabeth Renker (Ohio State). Additional production support by Rachel Boccio (CUNY LaGuardia). Full episode transcript available here: bit.ly/C19PodS03E02.

C19: America in the 19th Century

C19: America in the 19th Century

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