CMTS Awards:

CMTS Awards:

Elise Johnson-Schmidt

Jervis Langdon Jr Award, Elise Johnson-Schmidt

During Elmira 2022: The Ninth International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies, CMTS presented a series of awards, including two for service to CMTS including the inaugural Jervis Langdon Jr. Award for members of the local or regional community who “further Langdon Jr.’s vision,” first articulated in 1982, to preserve Quarry Farm as a retreat for scholars studying Twain’s life, work, legacy, circle, and world.

The inaugural Jervis Langdon Jr. Award was given to Elise Johnson-Schmidt of Johnson-Schmidt & Associates, Preservation Architects. JohnsonSchmidt and her team have been essential to the ongoing preservation of Quarry Farm and the Mark Twain Study. As Director Joseph Lemak put it during the awards presentation,“There is no one who knows Quarry Farm better than Elise. She is the principal author of the Quarry Farm Historic Structures Report…She is responsible for organizing and prioritizing almost all of our preservation projects, most importantly fire suppression and water drainage surrounding the main house. She and her team have designed gutter systems, drainage systems, and the new bookshelves on the second floor She has helped us pick out new and older pieces of furniture for everyday use. She used her interior decoration skills to help us redesign the second floor She has consulted with us on specific colors, wallpapers, plants, rugs, and curtains. Our newest project completion is the acquisition of the 1920’s old hickory furniture on the porch, which has transformed the space, not only to improve its historical accuracy but to increase its function as a workspace, both important strategic goals. This is just a small sample of her work at Quarry Farm.”

The Henry Nash Smith Award, is named for the original director of the Mark Twain Project and given to a member of the broader Twain Studies scholarly community who has made special contributions to CMTS’s goals during the years immediately preceding the conference.

Lawrence Howe

Henry Nash Smith Award, Lawrence Howe

The Henry Nash Smith Award for Service was presented to Lawrence (Larry) Howe, Emeritus Professor from Roosevelt University. Foremost, during his term as President of the Mark Twain Circle of America, Howe prioritized and formalized collaboration between CMTS and MTC, an effort which has helped the two organizations create new initiatives and co-sponsor new programs, marshaling the collective resources to serve Twain Studies more effectively. Some of the near-term fruit of such collaboration include “From Seminar Paper to Publishable Article: A Workshop for Graduate Students and Recent PhDs”, two special issues of Mark Twain Annual based on Quarry Farm Symposia, and the Mark Twain Circle Series here at MarkTwainStudies.org.

Moreover, Howe co-organized the 2018 Quarry Fam Symposium “American Literary History and Economic in the Gilded Age,” contributed to three more symposia, consulted on strategic planning documents, and wrote several online essays, including the very popular “Black Lives Matter at Quarry Farm.” And even beyond these formal service contributions, as Dr. Lemak put it, Howe consistently delivers “simply good fellowship” and is “a positive force,” even “pitching in” unprovoked to set up for events. “This means something,” Lemak said, “to Steve [Webb] and myself.”

John S. Tuckey Awards for Lifetime Achievement, Susan K Harris & Bruce Mickleson

Susan K. Harris

“Both recipients of this year’s Tuckey Award began publishing their first peer-reviewed work in Twain Studies during the 1980s. In each case, their first publication appeared in a now defunct academic journal. It’s hard to believe that the Dutch Quarterly Review of Anglo-American Letters couldn’t make a go of it in the digital era.

Both scholars made major book-length contributions to Twain Studies within a few months of one another during what I think is now quite recognizable as a paradigm shift in Twain Studies, which took place between 1993 and 1998. During this period, much of the conventional wisdom of midcentury started being questioned, notably the artificial severance of Twain’s humor from his politics and the misogynist yada-yadaing of his domestic life. This is also when Elmira resurfaces in Twain Studies, both as a site of production, but also a recognized influence on his life and writing. Between them, tonight’s awardees have given ten Trouble Begins lectures, dating back to the Fall 1988 series, all but one of which you can listen to in our digital archive.

Bruce Mickleson

But this does not adequately capture their lifetime achievement, as each has also held numerous service roles, as officers, editors, board members, and organizers for The Mark Twain Circle, Mark Twain Annual, The American Humor Studies Association, The Center For Mark Twain Studies, our sister Twain sites, and others. And in these roles, I can personally testify, I have seen them do the yeoman work of scholarship: recruiting, mentoring, refereeing, corresponding. In this respect, their mark is left on nearly every member of this audience. Regardless of how much of their scholarship you have read, they have probably read yours.

During the mid-’90s, Twain Studies was, for the first time, casting back upon its own critical canon and finding it be narrow, conservative, and sometimes flatly inaccurate. Each of tonight’s recipients contributed to the revisions of this period, and seem to have been incited to go even further, in opposite temporal directions, towards applying the methods of new historicism and postcolonialism to portions of Twain’s life and writing which were ignored through the entirety of the 20th century. Each wrote a book in the first decade of the 21st Century without which the current field becomes hard to imagine. During the morning flash sessions on Thursday, two words kept coming up to describe how Twain is interpolated into the contemporary: imperialism and technology. These scholars are largely responsible for making us think that.

And so, it is my great pleasure, to present the sixth and seventh John S. Tuckey Awards for Lifetime Achievements in Mark Twain Studies to Susan K. Harris and Bruce Michelson.”

From Matt Seybold’s presentation of the awards at the 9th International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies.