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Call for Papers: Mark Twain Circle @ the 2025 American Literature Association Conference (Westin Copley Place, Boston, MA, May 21-24, 2025)

The Mark Twain Circle of America will host two panels at the 36th Annual ALA conference in Boston, May 21-24, 2025 <details at https://americanliteratureassociation.org/ala-conferences/ala-annual-conference/general-call-for-papers/>.

Proposals are welcome from all scholars, graduate students to emeriti. Membership in the Circle by the time of ALA is required for panelists, but under a new initiative, unfunded panelists may apply to the Circle for grants covering flight expenses up to $400.

1. “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at 150”
We invite proposals for individual presentations (20 minutes) on any topic related to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

In 2026, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer turns 150. Its reputation as a “hymn to boyhood” was established in both the popular American consciousness and American literary history soon after the novel’s publication and prevailed throughout much of the twentieth century. In the early 1970s, however, a new scholarly trend emerged as critics began to recognize the novel’s darker undercurrents. Hamlin Hill, Judith Fetterley, Tom H. Towers, and Forrest Robinson, for example, all concluded that The Adventures of Tom Sawyer possesses dimensions that do not accord with the work’s reputation for idyll and nostalgia.

While scholarship of the last forty years indicates that The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is generally regarded as a more serious book than was once assumed and as one whose themes are more aligned with its better-praised companion, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), its identity both in Twain’s canon and American literary history remains largely nebulous.

Please submit a 250-word abstract of the paper and a short author bio to Joseph Csicsila <[log in to unmask]>  or Nathaniel Williams <[log in to unmask]> by January 15, 2025. All topics on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer will be considered.

2. Open topic.
We invite 20-minute papers addressing any aspect of Samuel Clemens’s life and/or work as Mark Twain. Studies of relations to other (or larger) literary, historical, or cultural concerns are particularly welcome, but all Clemens/Twain topics will receive consideration.

Please submit an abstract (250-500 words) of the proposed paper and a short author bio to Judith Yaross Lee <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> by January 15, 2025.


Judith Yaross Lee, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor Emerita
President, Mark Twain Circle of America

School of Communication Studies • Ohio University  • Schoonover Center 400  • Athens, OH 45701
T:740-593-4828 • F:740-593-4810  • [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>  • https://www.ohio.edu/scripps-college/comm-studies/about/faculty-student/leej
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My newest book: Seeing Mad: Essays on Mad Magazine’s Humor and Legacy (University of Missouri Press, October 2020) <https://upress.missouri.edu/9780826222398/seeing-mad/>