Adventure and Anguish: Jack London, the Hobo Who Learned Socialism in Erie County, NY, Penitentiary

On December 7 (10.15 am), Prof. Jeanne C. Reesman (University of Texas at San Antonio) will examine the “hobo” selves Jack London creates in his narratives about his hoboing as a teen and in 1894 with “Kelly’s Army” when thousands of unemployed men marched on Washington to protest against unemployment. This lecture is part of the seminar “Dissent – An American Tradition” led by Prof. Dr. Holger Kersten.

Jeanne Campbell Reesman is Professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and has also taught there, at Baylor University, and at the University of Hawai’i.
Her research and teaching focus is upon the realist and naturalist writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She has published over 30 monographs, collections, textbooks, and editions on writers from Henry James to Jack London, Edith Wharton to William Faulkner. Among them are her critical biography, Jack London’s Racial Lives (2009) and Jack London, Photographer (2010),  a collection of London’s photojournalism which she coedited with Sarah H. Hodson and and Philip Adam.. Her reference book The Critical Companion to Jack London, and a paperback version of Jack London’s Racial Lives were published in 2011. The list of books Reesman published and edited also includes  The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. C 1865-1914, Jack London: One Hundred Years a Writer, Trickster Lives: Myth in American Culture and Literature, No Mentor But Myself: Jack London on Writers and Writing (with Dale Walker), Jack London: A Study of the Short Fiction, Speaking the Other Self: American Women Writers, Rereading Jack London (with Leonard Cassuto), and Jack London, Revised Edition (with Earle Labor).

You can download the event’s poster from the left-hand side bar.