Nathaniel Williams (University of California - Davis)
ntlw@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

Percival Everett’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James (2024) is part of a long tradition of writers creatively adapting and critiquing the work of Mark Twain. For this session, we welcome papers considering the larger theme of Mark Twain and adaptation, including but not limited to Everett’s recent landmark work. How has Twain’s writing inspired subsequent literature that creatively transforms and appropriates his characters, settings, and/or themes? How and why did Twain often conceptualize his writings as palimpsests, repurposing earlier writers' ideas? As writers borrow elements from Twain’s writings, whether as explicitly as Everett or more subtly, what parts of his career, his aesthetics, and the social concerns of his era (and ours) come into greater focus? The Mark Twain Circle particularly welcomes graduate students and early career scholars for this panel, although proposals from all levels of scholars are welcome.

Topics could include:

· Everett's James and Twain

· Twain’s characters (be it Jim, Huck, or any other) repurposed in other writers’ fiction or media

· Twain himself repurposed in other fiction or media

· Authors alluding to Twain’s work in their own fiction, overtly or covertly

· Authors adapting Twain’s travel writing, journalism, jeremiads, or other non-fiction writing

· Musical adaptations, including the play Big River, Rush’s “Tom Sawyer”, or 2011’s Tom Sawyer: A Ballet in Three Acts

· Twain’s creative use/misuse of other works (Mallory’s Morte D’Arthur, Mary Baker Eddy’s spiritual writings, various genres and burlesques, et al.)