In Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn's Comrade, eminent Mark Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin shows us one of the most iconic Black characters in American fiction as we have never seen him before.
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ACADEMIA SINICA, TAIWAN
美國史丹福大學美國研究教授Shelley Fisher Fishkin將於6月25日（週三）假中央研究院歐美研究所演講，講題為「Can Literature Come to the Rescue when History is Under Siege?」。
詳細資訊與報名連結：https://farmforchange.ea.sinica.edu.tw/Academic-Events
Can Literature Come to the Rescue when History is Under Siege? How One Novel Can Be a Trojan Horse to Engage Questions Some Politicians Don’t Want Us to Ask?
講者：Shelley Fisher Fishkin｜美國史丹福大學美國研究教授｜Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade (2025) 作者
與談：王安琪｜臺灣大學外國語文學系退休教授
李翠玉｜高雄師範大學英語系教授暨英美文學學會會長
主持：周序樺｜中央研究院歐美研究所副研究員
時間：2025年6月25日（三）10:00~12:00
地點：中央研究院歐美研究所一樓會議室｜視訊與實體並行
與本講題相關的書籍：
《Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade》
由耶魯大學出版社於4月出版。
ORDERING DETAILS
https://www.eslite.com/product/10012060072682848430003
圖書簡介：
The origins and influence of Jim, Mark Twain’s beloved yet polarizing literary figure Mark Twain’s Jim, introduced in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), is a shrewd, self-aware, and enormously admirable enslaved man, one of the first fully drawn Black fathers in American fiction. Haunted by the family he has left behind, Jim acts as father figure to Huck, the white boy who is his companion as they raft the Mississippi toward freedom. Jim is also a highly polarizing figure: he is viewed as an emblem both of Twain’s alleged racism and of his opposition to racism; a diminished character inflected by minstrelsy and a powerful challenge to minstrel stereotypes; a reason for banning Huckleberry Finn and a reason for teaching it; an embarrassment and a source of pride for Black readers.controversies, exploring who Jim was, how Twain portrayed him, and how the world has responded to him. Fishkin also follows Jim’s many afterlives: in film, from Hollywood to the Soviet Union; in translation around the world; and in American high school classrooms today. The result is Jim as we have never seen him before—a fresh and compelling portrait of one of the most memorable Black characters in American fiction.“Fishkin—the intellectual colossus of Mark Twain’s work—has written an extraordinary and necessary explication of Twain’s iconic and transcendent character Jim—the moral arbiter of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”—Min Jin Lee, author of Free Food for Millionaires
作者簡介：
Shelley Fisher Fishkin is the Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities, professor of English, and professor (by courtesy) of African and African American Studies at Stanford University. She is the author or editor of many books, including Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee and Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and African American Voices, and editor of the twenty-nine-volume Oxford Mark Twain.
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Very grateful to my hosts, Professor Serena Chou of Academia Sinica and Professor Jade Li, President of EALA. I want to thank Jade Li and An-chi Wang, Professor Emeritus at NTU for their stimulating and rich responses to my talk. And I want to thank my dear friend, the indefatigable Hsinya Huang, Distinguished Professor of American and Comparative Literature at National Sun Yat-sen University for all she did to set all this in motion. It was a special treat to have An-chi Wang, who is responsible for the best (and most recent) Chinese translation of Huck Finn as a respondent (she is the hero of chapter 6 of my book), and I’m gratified that Professor Rose Juan is arranging to publish portions of my talk, along with the great responses of Jade Li and An-chi Wang, in forthcoming publications from the English Language and LIterature Association of Taiwan. Lovely, as well, to see old friends Professors Pin-chia Feng and Wen-ching Ho. I’m grateful for all the good questions and lively discussion! A few of the colleagues who attended are pictured here: clockwise: Li-Hsin Hsu, Tsui-Fen Jiang, Jade Li, Pin-chia Feng, Hsinya Huang, Serena Chou, Shelley Fishkin, An-chi Wang, Wen-ching Ho, and Rose Juan.
Shelley Fisher Fishkin, in conversation with Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh, discusses & signs Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn's Comrade, July 10, 2025 at BOOK SOUP, 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, Los Angeles
The origins and influence of Jim, Mark Twain's beloved yet polarizing literary figure
Mark Twain's Jim, introduced in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), is a shrewd, self-aware, and enormously admirable enslaved man, one of the first fully drawn Black fathers in American fiction. Haunted by the family he has left behind, Jim acts as father figure to Huck, the white boy who is his companion as they raft the Mississippi toward freedom. Jim is also a highly polarizing figure: he is viewed as an emblem both of Twain's alleged racism and of his opposition to racism; a diminished character inflected by minstrelsy and a powerful challenge to minstrel stereotypes; a reason for banning Huckleberry Finn and a reason for teaching it; an embarrassment and a source of pride for Black readers.
Eminent Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin probes these controversies, exploring who Jim was, how Twain portrayed him, and how the world has responded to him. Fishkin also follows Jim's many afterlives: in film, from Hollywood to the Soviet Union; in translation around the world; and in American high school classrooms today. The result is Jim as we have never seen him before--a fresh and compelling portrait of one of the most memorable Black characters in American fiction.
I want to thank my wonderful Stanford colleague, Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh for leading such a stimulating conversation about my new book (Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn's Comrade) at BOOK SOUP in Los Angeles. She deftly brought into the conversation her own experience as the author of a great book that also explores the lives of the enslaved in the South (The Souls of Womenfolk: The Religious Culture of Enslaved Women in the Lower South), and was the perfect interlocutor. Thank you, as well, to BOOK SOUP for organizing the event. Great to see so many LA friends and colleagues there. We had fun!
September 11, 2025 | Symposium on Huckleberry Finn at Seton Hall Preparatory School
When I began writing Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade, I had no idea that the heroes of my final chapter would be a group of high school students at Seton Hall Preparatory School and their gifted teacher, John Pascal. I’d had zoom conversations once a year with John’s classes over the last ten years. But when he was good enough to share with me (with the students’ permission) papers and exams his students wrote about Huck Finn in 2023 and 2024, I realized that much of what they had written deserved a special place in my book. I found many of their comments more insightful than those of many of the critics who’ve written about the book over the last 140 years—and I quoted 27 of them my book! It was an enormous pleasure to visit their school this week and present a program at which a number of them joined me. The students I quote in the book had graduated and were now in college—at NYU, Harvard, Seton Hall University, Lehigh University, Essex County College, Loyola Marymount University, and elsewhere-- but 5 of them came back for this event and 7 more participated via zoom. (In person: Devin Campaña, Julian Gray, Wiliam Kahney, Aryan Kapoor, and Isaiah Shoyombo; on zoom: Alex Andia, Logan Brzozowski, Matthew Corr, Alex Gitto, Jaysen Lim, Taylor Mason, and Connor Schmit). They were as articulate and thoughtful in person as they had been on the page. It was a pleasure to meet them in person—and to meet some of their parents and grandparents, as well. Kudos to John Pascal for all he does to help his students grapple so constructively with a book as challenging and crucial as Huckleberry Finn!
(Left to right: Isaiah Shoyombo, Aryan Kapoor, Wiliam Kahney, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Julian Gray, Devin Campana, John Pascal)
On Thursday, October 16th, the Stanford English Department will sponsor a conversation between me and my wonderful colleague, Professor Ato Quayson (Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Professor of English and Chair of Stanford's new Department of African and African American Studies) about what went into writing my new book, Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade. "Methods Cafe" is a Stanford series in which English professors talk about the grounding of their recent publications. I'm looking forward to this!