Alan Gribben, a nationally recognized Mark Twain scholar, will talk about “Mark Twain’s Racial Relevance” on Mon., Apr. 9th, at 7pm in the Irvin L. Young Auditorium. It’s the last Contemporary Issues Lecture of 2011/2012, and is co-sponsored by the Big Read program.
Gribben, Professor in the English and Philosophy Dept. at Auburn University at Montgomery, has, of course, published a great deal about Mark Twain, including the controversial Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in which he replaced some pejorative racial labels with different language in an effort to stop school districts from removing the books from their reading lists. For example, each of the 223 instances of “nigger” was replaced with “slave.” You can read about the controversy this sparked in a UPI release “New ‘Huck Finn’ edition removes the ‘n’ word.” Of course, the original text of both stories can be read online: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Search Andersen Library’s articles databases to find articles written by Dr. Gribben, such as “The importance of Mark Twain” (American Quarterly, Spring 1985, vol.37, pp.30-49). You also can search HALCat (Harold Andersen Library’s catalog) and article databases for a mountain of books and articles both by and about Mark Twain, including an entry about Mark Twain in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism (via the Literature Criticism Online database). Also see a blog post on “Huckleberry Finn” from earlier this year for additional information.
Please ask a librarian for assistance with finding materials if needed.
