Let Genius Burn

Travel with us to a Cuban coffee plantation, where Alcott's short story Pauline's Passion and Punishment begins. Written in 1862, this short story predates Alcott's later, more successful fiction, but it contains all the traces of her plot devices and characterization that we love.

This is a new episode format where we discuss a single short story in detail. We hope you enjoy this episode!

Max Chapnick read a line in Louisa May Alcott's journal that pointed to one of her stories, but it turned out to be a dead end. Then, he had an idea. He went back to the archives and searched for the title of the story. He turned up an unexpected result: a story written by E.A. Gould, with characteristics that linked it easily to Louisa May Alcott.

He investigated further and discovered more works by E.A. Gould, and has since used computers to analyze the style and see if it matches Alcott's other works--with mixed results. What he comes to understand, through this process of discovery, is about much more than how to attribute a given story to a particular author. It's about learning to live with uncertainty as scholars, how to make archival research more accessible, and the worthwhile pursuit of research for its own sake.

When readers find out that Louisa May Alcott really lived in a family with four sisters, the next question is almost immediately: "Who was Laurie?"

Lis Adams, Director of Education at Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House, spent years researching in the Alcotts' extensive papers at the Houghton Library at Harvard University, and she has edited a collection that introduces us to one of the real-life inspirations for Laurie: Alf Whitman.

Although Alf lived in Concord less than a year, his impact on the Alcott sisters, and Anna Alcott's husband, John, was profound. They kept up correspondence with him for over thirty years, chronicling their lives and losses through their letters to him.

This collection is also a valiant feat of transcribing and editing! As Lis describes in the episode, 19th century letters are not always easy to decipher. You'll learn about her process to bring these letters out of the archives and into the light.

Lis Adams is Director of Education at Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and a graduate of both Brandeis University and the museum studies program at Tufts University. She is a member and former co-chair of the Concord Historical Collaborative, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Museum Education Roundtable, the Greater Boston Museum Educators Roundtable, the Arlington Historical Society, and the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. 

Lis has presented for the New England Museum Association and the New England Library Association, and has published articles on the Alcotts for the Concord Journal and the Journal of Museum Education. Lis is also an actress and voiceover artist in the greater Boston area, an actor in residence for Playwrights' Platform, and a consultant for the Distinguished Achievements and Special Honors program for the Eastern Massachusetts Association of Community Theaters.

Author Peyton Thomas joins Let Genius Burn to speak about queerness and transness in Little Women and other Alcott writings. Peyton Thomas made a significant impact on the Alcott community when he wrote a Twitter thread, and a New York Times op-ed, about understanding Louisa May Alcott as a trans man. His comments sparked a discussion that has opened readers' minds to how Alcott constructed gender both in fiction and in life. We discuss gender dynamics in Little Women, Alcott's fascination with cross-dressing, and a summary and analysis of the short story Enigmas, one of Alcott's thrillers, where gender and identity play a significant role. There is also some childhood nostalgia for American Girl doll books! Peyton Thomas is an author and the creator of the Jo's Boys podcast. His debut novel Both Sides Now won the 2022 International Literacy Association Award for Young Adult Fiction. He's currently at work on a contemporary interpretation of Little Women for adults. His non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Billboard, Pitchfork, and many other publications. 

Louisa May Alcott and her family were social activists who advocated for all types of reforms in their lifetimes: they were concerned with fair labor, women's suffrage, abolitionism, and diet reform. Yet another social concern for Louisa May Alcott was the access to health and wellness education for young women.

In this episode, we explore the ways that Alcott included health and sex education in her novels, a subversive act in the face of legislation such as Comstock Law that sought to ban materials related to women's health.

We are joined by a scholar who knows a great deal about Alcott's contributions to this field, and many other authors and works. Get ready to take notes for a reading list--we certainly did!

Dr. Stephanie Peebles Tavera is the Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. She is the author of (P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship (Edinburgh University Press, 2022), which releases in paperback this May.

She is also the author of the critical introduction for Helen Brent, M.D., an 1892 novel by Annie Nathan Meyer that she recovered with Hastings College Press and for which she won Honorable Mention for the 2021 Society for the Study of American Women Writers Book Edition Award. Dr. Tavera is an expert in the fields of long nineteenth-century American women’s literature, medical humanities, and feminist disability studies.

Her articles have appeared in the top journals in her field, including Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers and Science Fiction Studies, and she currently serves as the Assistant Editor of Utopian Studies academic journal. She was recently on the podcast Lost Ladies of Lit, talking about Zelda Fitzgerald’s Save Me the Waltz (1932), which is how she became introduced to the Let Genius Burn podcast.

We hope this episode inspires you to think critically about access to health and sex education and the issues of censorship we are still managing today.

Although Louisa May Alcott is most often associated with Concord, Massachusetts, where her family lived in several different homes over the course of her lifetime, Alcott made much of her life in Boston. She was a city person who loved the hustle and movement of the city compared to sleepy, dull Concord.

In this episode, we are joined by Michele Steinberg of Boston by Foot tours, who takes us through Beacon Hill and to the Boston Athenaeum to hear many stories about Alcott's different experiences in Boston and her travels there.

Let Genius Burn is the podcast about the life and legacy of Louisa May Alcott, co-hosted by Jill Fuller and Jamie Burgess. Visit letgeniusburn.com for more information.

Sit down with Jill and Jamie as they reflect and dissect the week they spent together in Concord. They talk about visits to Orchard House, Fruitlands, Walden Pond, and more. Jill discusses her visit to the Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library, where she saw Louisa's handwritten manuscript pages from Little Women. Jamie talks about her presentation for the Thoreau Society Gathering- the ecofeminist gothic setting of "Pauline's Passion and Punishment." It's an all-about-Alcott final bonus episode of Season 2! 

On July 13, 2022, Let Genius Burn was invited to speak at Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts, the site where the Alcott family lived--and nearly died--for 9 months in 1843.

This episode is the recording of our talk.

The Fruitlands Effect: How the Utopian Experiment Influenced Louisa May Alcott’s Life and Work

The Alcott family spent less than a year living at Fruitlands, but the experience significantly altered their values and family dynamic. Louisa May Alcott would not have been the same woman without the lessons she learned and hardship she faced during her family’s utopian experiment when she was on the brink of adolescence. We’ll look at the influence of Fruitlands on Louisa May Alcott’s life and writings, and the ways the ideas of the Fruitlands experiment to continued to permeate her work and ultimately changed her forever.

This episode features Jill's travelogue from her week in Concord, Massachusetts. Listen as we travel to see Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House for the first time and take a tour of Fruitlands with Trustees Engagement Manager Catherine Shortliffe. We also spend time with other Louisa May Alcott scholars and enthusiasts, sharing stories. In particular, we taste pickled limes, a treat from the 19th century, which is featured in Little Women. Learn about the process to making them and our reactions in this bonus episode of Let Genius Burn.

In our final full episode of Season 8, Jill and Jamie recap the highlights of season two and reflect on what the conversations with Alcott scholars have taught them. Then they both share what they've been reading and researching lately. Jamie, who has been teaching second grade this year, dives into the differences between teaching Little Women and teaching about the Alcotts' lives to young children. She explores picture books and young reader chapter books that feature Louisa.

Jill visited a reenactment of a Civil War hospital at the Milton House museum and discusses how it affected her reading of Hospital Sketches with her son. She also talks about her deep research into queer interpretations of Little Women and of Louisa's characters, as well as Louisa's exploration of gender in scholarly writings.

We'll be back in the fall after Jill's visit to Massachusetts!