Teresa Prados-Torreira, "The Comic Lecturer in the Gilded Age"

Presented on October 12, 2024 in the Quarry Farm Barn as part of The Eleventh Quarry Farm Symposium "Gilded Ages: Humor, Literature, and Society."

In the decades after the Civil War, rural communities were happy to be entertained and amused by outsiders of varying degrees of notoriety. Touring lecturers, minstrel shows actors and traveling troupes, connected farming areas to the outside world. Humorists, trying to expand their popularity and supplement their income, were among those who visited small towns, their arrival eagerly anticipated by young and old. During this period, characterized by marketplace upheaval, the visiting humorist existed in a boundless social space, as his persona easily shifted from that of an advertiser, whose wit helped quack doctors sell their patent medicines, to that of a circus-like performer, to that of a respectable lecturer. My paper attempts to understand the interaction between the humorous lecturer and his audience at a time of great social fluidity.

Teresa Prados-Torreira is Professor of America History at Columbia College Chicago. She was President of the American Humor Studies Association through most of the pandemic (June 2020-June 2022). She is the author of multiple articles on U.S., and Spanish history and culture, as well as of two books on Cuban history.