Shelley Fisher Fishkin: podcast appearances and interviews

Shelley Fisher Fishkin is the Joseph S. Atha Professor of the Humanities and a professor of English at Stanford University, also holding a courtesy appointment in African and African American Studies. She earned her B.A. and M.Phil. in English and her Ph.D. in American studies from Yale University. Prior to her tenure at Stanford, Fishkin served as the director of the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale and was a professor of American studies at the University of Texas, Austin. She has held leadership roles such as president of the American Studies Association and the Mark Twain Circle of America. Fishkin co-founded the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society and was a founding editor of the Journal of Transnational American Studies. She is a noted expert on Mark Twain and received the John S. Tuckey award for lifetime achievements in Mark Twain Studies in 2017. In recognition of her contributions to transnational American studies, the American Studies Association named its annual prize after her. Her scholarly work includes authoring, editing, or co-editing 50 books and publishing over 150 articles, essays, columns, and reviews. Among her notable achievements is the rediscovery of Mark Twain's 1898 play Is He Dead? at the Bancroft Library, which she edited and for which she was a producer on Broadway in 2007. Fishkin served as director of Stanford's American Studies Program from 2003 to 2024 and co-directed the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project. In 2019, she co-edited The Chinese and the Iron Road, marking the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad.