2019 Park Church Series Begins August 7

Elmira, NY (07/19/2019) — The Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College is pleased to announce the 2019 Park Church Summer Lecture Series. The lecture series features three lectures in August at the historic and cultural landmark, The Park Church, 208 W. Gray Street, Elmira.

The first lecture, "'Views of Mark Twain': Antics and Annexation in Twain's New York Tribune Letters on Hawai'i," by Todd Nathan Thompson, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, is Wednesday, August 7. The December 1872 death of Hawaiian monarch Kamehameha V spurred renewed interest among US citizens and politicians alike in the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands. To satisfy the public's increased curiosity about Hawai'i, in January 1873 the New York Daily Tribune sought testimony in the form of two letters from a well-known expert on the islands: Mark Twain.

The series continues on Wednesday, August 14, with "The Dread of Filth in Twain: Cultures of Mysophobia in Post-Pasteurian Medicine and 3,000 Years among the Microbes," presented by Don James McLaughlin, assistant professor of nineteenth-century American literature at the University of Tulsa. McLaughlin examines Mark Twain's unfinished manuscript, 3,000 Years among the Microbes, written in Dublin, New Hampshire in 1905. He provides a historical backdrop for the manuscript by putting it in dialogue with two major shifts in medical thought at the end of the nineteenth century: (1) the rise of microbiology, introducing a new discourse for articulating the relationship of bacteria and viruses to infectious disease, established largely by Louis Pasteur's successes in vaccination; and (2) the emergence of an international psychiatric discourse revolving around mysophobia, meaning a dread of filth and contamination.

The Park Church Series concludes on Wednesday, August 21 with "Where the 'Wild West' Ends and China Begins: Rethinking the Geography of Mark Twain and Bret Harte's Ah Sin," presented by Sunny Yang, assistant professor of English at the University of Houston. In the fall of 1876, Mark Twain and Bret Harte embarked on a disastrous collaboration that would culminate in the frontier melodrama known as Ah Sin. Named after its Chinese laundryman character, who was taken from Harte's 1870 poem "Plain Language from Truthful James," the play is widely acknowledged as a literary and financial failure that contributed to the demise of Twain and Harte's friendship. This presentation analyzes Ah Sin through the lens of nineteenth-century commentary on Sino-American relations, focusing in particular on the U.S. foreign policy of extraterritoriality in China.

The Park Church Lecture Series is free and open to the public. Lectures begin at 7:00 p.m.

About The Park Church

Founded in 1846 by a group of abolitionists, The Park Church has been a strong presence in Elmira's history and some members of its congregation were close friends and family members to Mark Twain. Known for its striking architectural features, The Park Church contained Elmira's first public library and has a long history of charitable service to the Elmira community. Currently, it is an "Open and Affirming Congregation," welcoming all people to worship and participate in its communal life, regardless of ethnic origin, race, class, age, ability, gender, or sexual orientation.

About the Center for Mark Twain Studies

The Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies was founded in January 1983 with the gift of Quarry Farm to Elmira College by Jervis Langdon, the great-grand-nephew of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. The Center offers distinctive programs to foster and support Mark Twain scholarship and to strengthen the teaching of Mark Twain at all academic levels. The Center serves the Elmira College community and regional, national, and international students and scholars of Mark Twain.

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