Let Genius Burn

In 1843, the Alcott family spent about nine months on a farm in central Massachusetts, a utopian experiment they called Fruitlands. The failure of this project marked a turning point in their lives as a family. Louisa May Alcott memorialized this experience in a short story called "Transcendental Wild Oats," which was originally published in the New York newspaper The Independent in 1873...

Join us as we explore Louisa May Alcott in the broader context of Concord’s abolitionist movement, including her family’s activism, her interaction with fellow abolitionists, and the importance of Black abolitionist women in shaping the cause that she so passionately devoted herself to. History 160: Abolitionist Women and Their Worlds is a seminar course made up of Harvard University undergraduate...

For over twenty years, the Louisa May Alcott Society has brought together Alcott scholars from around the world to discuss the work and relevance of Louisa May Alcott’s writing. The Society hosts panels and events at literature conferences and has been the center of Alcott study and scholarship, where ideas about her life and work are nurtured and grown. In this episode, we are joined by former an...

In today’s episode, we welcome Jen Turner, the Executive Director of the Robbins House Museum in Concord, Massachusetts. This historical house museum, situated today at the Minuteman National Park, is the hub of Concord’s African-American history. Through our conversation with Jen, we expand our understanding of Concord’s past and the experience of slavery survivors and free Black people who were...

Through Alcott’s upbringing amidst the Transcendentalists, ideas about the healing power of nature found their way into her life and her written work. Much of what humans have long known about the connection to nature is now being grounded in scientific research. In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Heidi Lawrence, a scholar who studies the intersections of children’s literature with ecopsycholog...

Lydia Olsson (1874-1958) was the daughter of Swedish immigrants, born in Kansas in the late nineteenth century. She moved to Illinois and attended Augustana College, where she kept diaries the documented her experience as a young woman coming of age in an exciting time, one where education and access was opening to women. During this time, Olsson turned to one book in particular for comfort and di...

In this conversation with authors Linda Epstein, Ally Malinenko, and Liz Parker, we discuss the authors' individual relationships to Little Women and how it influenced their writing of The Other March Sisters. We also discuss: How the authors made editorial choices and conducted research to include relevant information both about the March sisters and their historical Alcott counterparts The...

In this episode, where the title nods to a seminal Alcott text, Alcott in Her Own Time , edited by Daniel Shealy, Jamie and Jill reconnect about what has changed since they first began making Let Genius Burn in the winter of 2019-2020. We discuss what we are currently reading and thinking about in regards to Alcott. For Jamie, that's thinking about the paths for women, including connections t...

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without Little Women, so we are reading aloud from the iconic first chapter, "Playing Pilgrims" and offering our commentary, citing from various annotated editions of Little Women and the film versions to bring you a well-rounded discussion of your holiday favorite. Put on your cozy Christmas pajamas and make your cup of tea; it's time to settle...

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 e...

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...

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...

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 g...

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 educatio...

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 thro...

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 Gat...

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 experienc...

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 t...

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 yo...

John Matteson's biography, Eden's Outcasts: the Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father , has become a foundational work in Alcott scholarship. It brings together the best of Alcott studies to show us an empathetic portrait of the Alcotts who feel as real and alive as ever in its pages. In our conversation with John Matteson, we cover Louisa's time in Washington as a nurse during...

If you’re anything like us, you’ve watched the Little Women film adaptations looking for the props and pieces that really bring the book to life–the vivid renderings of your own thoughtfully-imagined ephemera.  Barbara Heller worked on movie set designs for feature films for many years, bringing all kinds of stories to life through location scouting and other roles. Then, she was rereading Pride a...

Most Alcott scholars cannot imagine what it would be like to do research without the Selected Letters and Selected Journals of Louisa May Alcott, these two seminal works that make Alcott's work so accessible. Dr. Daniel Shealy, however, knows exactly what it's like--because he was part of the team that edited these two publications, bringing together hundreds of letters from around the c...

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 Nieri...

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 abo...

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....