Carolyn Leutzinger Richey, Lecturer

Office: AH 4148
Phone: 594-4092
email: CarolynLRichey@aol.com

A native of Missouri and a graduate of the University of Missouri, I came to California carrying an unseen, but strong, connection with my home state. During graduate school at SDSU, I rediscovered the writing of my fellow Missourian, Mark Twain, and found that this was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. As I read the books assigned during a graduate seminar on Twain, I would find myself chuckling over Twain's descriptions of characters and "life on the Mississippi" and I realized those were my family members and friends! They had followed me out here from "Missourah" via Twain's words. I wrote my Master's thesis on Twain and had the privilege of presenting a paper while still a graduate student at the International State of Mark Twain Studies Conference in Elmira, New York (one of Twain's "other" homes). Upon graduation in 1994, I found the segue from Twain scholar to Children's Literature scholar and teacher a natural one. I had, after all, found myself defending Twain's part in Children's Literature among the "adult" literary scholars and vice versa at every conference in which I participated and attended.

Publications:

• "Mark Twain"; "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Adventures of Tom Sawyer"; "Star Wars"; "The Addams Family" contributed to Cambridge Guide to Children's Books in English, Cambridge University Press, August 2002.
  


• Book Reviews:
  -- A Tom Sawyer Companion by John D. Evans. Published September 1997 on the Mark Twain Forum on the Internet.
  -- Mark Twain and Me, Mikey T. by Thomas Gilding. Published February 1997 on the Mark Twain Forum on the Internet.
  -- Mark Twain, Culture and Gender" by J.D. Stahl. Published in Children's Literature, Volume 24, Yale University Press, Spring 1996.
  


• Extraordinary Twins: Toms, Twins, and Mark Twain. Master's Thesis: San Diego State University, 1994.
  


• "Mark Twain's Paradigmatic Twins: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." The State of Mark Twain Studies Conference, Elmira College, Elmira, New York, August 1997.
  


• "Doubles, Duality, and the Dilemma of Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson." The State of Mark Twain Studies Conference, Elmira College, Elmira, New York, August 1993.

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