Conference: 1968, The Year of Living Dangerously

This Sunday, I'll be presenting a paper at the American Studies Network conference at the University of East Anglia: ""Bring Our Country Back": Reaction, Revolution and Country Music, 1968." Above, the Byrds playing at the Grand Ole Opry in 1968.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

My entry on Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is now up at the Literary Encyclopedia. An extract:

Mark Twain’s most famous novel, perhaps the most famous American novel ever published, begins with a series of warnings: “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot” (xxv). In all the long years since its publication in 1884, Twain’s disingenuous threat has availed little: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been dissected and discussed in extraordinary detail, and praised and blamed accordingly. Thus far at least, this disarmingly – or deceptively – simple tale of an outcast young boy attempting to help a runaway slave escape to freedom seems capable of bearing the weight of criticism heaped upon it. The book, its characters, and its themes and symbols retain a mythic (albeit controversial) place in the American canon – even in the American psyche.

Mississippi Quarterly

My article on the John A. Murrell conspiracy and the Lynching of the Vicksburg gamblers on Independence Day, 1835, has now been officially published in the Mississippi Quarterly (59:1-2 (Winter-Spring 2006), 129-160).

UPDATE: Interestingly enough, this article is now available for download via Amazon.com.