Meet Lauren Stern: a researcher interested in social and material history. She has been a staff member at Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House since 2006, where she has worked to bring New England history alive through summer camps, museum tours, and living history programs.

In this episode, Lauren discusses her experiences at Orchard House as well as her research on the life of May Alcott Nieriker. As an expert in historical fashion, Lauren also discusses the fashion trends during the decades of Louisa May Alcott's adulthood, from Victorian sleeve trends and bustles, to corsets and the Alcott's involvement in dress reform.

Lauren is also a dance historian and performer with the Commonwealth Vintage Dancers, where she gets to wear all those ball dresses she makes. She blogs about her research and experiments at plaidpetticoats.blogspot.com, and makes short-form dance history videos on tiktok (@plaidpetticoats). She has also made her own pickled limes.

In addition to Lauren's personal website, she recommends the following resources: 

• https://twistedpreservation.com/ 
• https://tessa.lapl.org/cdm/search/collection/fashion
• https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/24/archival_objects/284321

Maud: Books, Babes, and Barbiturates is a podcast about the life of Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables. The co-creators, Stef Drummon and Jen MacLennan, tell Maud's story with empathy, intelligence, and depth. This week, they join us on Let Genius Burn to talk about our two favorite literary women.

Gender and sexuality, fame, and family influence and history- we talk about it all. We discuss the respective scholarly approaches to each author, and how their legacies have changed over time.  We noticed so many similarities between Louisa and Maud: both women valued their art but struggled with the fame it brought them. They had complex family relationships that influenced their writing. They were artists and geniuses, but sometimes were relegated to "children's lit."

But we also noticed great divergences that made us want to dive deeper. Louisa's nuclear family shaped her entire existence, but Maud was an orphan. Maud became a mother; Louisa never really did. How did this influence their writings? Their characters?

Learn more about Maud the Pod on Instagram: instagram.com/maudthepod and at maudthepod.com.

For more information about L.M. Montgomery:
The L.M.Montgomery Literary Society & their annual periodical The Shining Scroll https://lmmontgomeryliterarysociety.weebly.com

L.M.Montgomery Online: https://lmmonline.org

In this episode, we are talking with Leslie Schomp, who served as an artist-in-residence at Fruitlands in 2021. Leslie drew inspiration from Louisa’s diaries to create textile pieces that embodied and expressed Louisa May Alcott’s time there. Her samplers capture the dichotomy of this place: the distance between the restrictive ideals of the community and the vibrant, free spirit of young Louisa.

Leslie Schomp’s open heart captured another layer of Louisa May Alcott that has not yet been fully explored on Let Genius Burn: the tender pre-adolescent she was at Fruitlands, the fear she felt at becoming herself, and how she tried to tame it. These works express the full range of Louisa’s emotional self.

We discuss what it means to be a young girl growing up with ambitions, how we relate to Louisa's particular struggles, and how to capture visual elements while remaining in the ideals of an extreme utopian community.

Leslie received her MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and her BFA from Florida State University.  She is a senior lecturer who primarily teaches drawing in the Visual Arts department at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester (Wooster), Massachusetts, where she has taught since 2000.  Her work consists of drawings and sculptures created with textiles. Each piece is an investigation into how she sees herself as ”part of” instead of “apart from” nature. 

To support Fruitlands Museum, visit thetrustees.org

You can view images of Leslie's artwork on her website: leslieschomp.com

Jan Turnquist, Executive Director of Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House, has made her life about Louisa's legacy. Whether she is portraying Louisa May Alcott around the world, consulting on Little Women adaptations with A-list actors, or simply showing someone around the house museum, she brings the same level of commitment and enthusiasm for sharing Louisa May Alcott with others.

In this episode, Jan shares the story of how she started portraying Louisa May Alcott for the public and how it transformed her life. She also discusses working with Greta Gerwig, Maya Hawke, and Annie Leibovitz through her role at Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House. She discusses how connection is at the heart of her preservation work, and how individual stories about Louisa's influence have shaped her life.

Learn more about Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House at louisamayalcott.org

In the first bonus episode of Let Genius Burn, Jill and Jamie dive into the details of three passages from Louisa's work beyond Little Women. Listeners will learn about the different ways Louisa's life experiences shape her writings. Plus, after twenty months of working together on Let Genius Burn, Jill and Jamie finally meet in person!

At the time of Louisa May Alcott's death, she was known to most as the "children's friend," an author of children's books and particularly books for girls. As time passed and scholars made the connection between Louisa May Alcott and the lurid thrillers she wrote under pen names, Louisa's legacy took on new dimensions. Today, we can appreciate Louisa May Alcott as the feminist and forward-thinking woman who is also the author of a famous novel called Little Women. This episode discusses Louisa's legacy and how it has changed over time.

Support Elsewhere Studios: https://www.elsewherestudios.org

Learn more: www.letgeniusburn.com

In Louisa May Alcott's time, strict definitions and expectations of white womanhood permeated Louisa’s society and culture. Marriage and motherhood were the accepted roles for women; voting was inaccessible and illegal, education restricted, and earning a living through a career was limited. Louisa May Alcott defied gender expectations, sometimes through her acting as a way to embody a male character and through her dress, language, and active lifestyle. From a topsey-turvey girl to a self-made woman, she wore her own version of womanhood like a badge of honor.

Learn more at www.letgeniusburn.com

Donate to Sojourner Family Peace Center: https://www.familypeacecenter.org/

When Little Women became a sensation, Louisa May Alcott became the ultimate literary celebrity. Fans were waiting out on her lawn and knocking on her door, and her life was suddenly not her own. Although she had always yearned for fame, she was surprised to find it costly and unpleasant. Still, her celebrity opened new doors for her. It gave voice to her causes, and it may have even spurred her creativity. In this episode, we unpack how Louisa's celebrity status defined the last twenty years of her life, whether it's possible to separate the artist from their art, and how Louisa's celebrity has continued into the 21st century.

Learn more at letgeniusburn.com

Support Mass Audubon this week: https://www.massaudubon.org/.

Louisa devoted her life to the causes she believed in, primarily abolition and women's suffrage. Her political beliefs were handed down from her parents, who were constantly striving for a better world. The Alcotts made their home available to freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad, and Louisa eventually became a nurse during the Civil War, as she was otherwise not allowed to go and fight. She was also the first woman registered to vote in Concord. Learn about food reform, dress reform, and more in Louisa as Activist.

Learn more at letgeniusburn.com

Support the Robbins House this week: https://robbinshouse.org/.

In this episode, we pull back the curtain to take a peek at Louisa at her writing desk. We will trace the development of her writing style, the desires that pushed her to write, and the arc of her professional career.

From crafting jolly tales to journaling her worries and struggles, Louisa spent her life meeting herself on the page. Writing, she said, “is my salvation when disappointment or weariness burden and darken my soul…” Through introspection and observation, she explored herself and the world she struggled to fit into, while her vivid imagination allowed her to express what was unvoiced inside of her. Through her writing, Louisa strove to prove her existence to herself, to claim a right to her thoughts and desires in a world that expected women to stay silent. Fortunately, her words still exist for us today, as luminous as ever.

Learn more at letgeniusburn.com

Support the UW Odyssey Project: https://odyssey.wisc.edu/