Athens, Ga. – Jeanne Campbell Reesman, professor of English at the University of Texas, San Antonio, will speak Wednesday, Nov. 17, 4 p.m. in room 265 of Park Hall. Reesman’s lecture will focus on the extensive yet little known photographic career of the writer Jack London (1876-1916), who is the subject of her most recent book, Jack London, Photographer. Sponsored by James Nagel, the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of American Literature and the J. O. Eidson Lecture Series, this event is free and open to the public.
Jack London, Photographer, written by Reesman with curator Sara S. Hodson and photographer Philip Adam and published by the University of Georgia Press, displays more than 200 photographs from key projects in London’s extensive photojournalistic career: his coverage of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 and the Mexican Revolution in 1914, along with photos he took for his books The People of the Abyss (in London’s East End) and The Cruise of the Snark (in Hawai’i, the Marquesas, Tahiti and Samoa).
In a starred review, Library Journal noted, “This book is an unanticipated landmark, for London’s groundbreaking work as a photojournalist has remained hidden until now…. London was a prescient, timely genius; his work helped define the photojournalistic form, a new idea, now seen as the window into contemporary life. The book’s visual bounty seems endless.”
Extensive general and chapter introductions by the authors place London’s photographs in the context of his writings and his times.
Reesman has written extensively on the work of Jack London, including a critical biography, Jack London’s Racial Lives (University of Georgia Press) and Jack London: A Study of the Short Fiction. With more than 30 books published, her additional studies include American Designs: The Late Novels of James and Faulkner, Trickster Lives: Culture and Myth in American Fiction and Speaking the Other Self: American Women Writers. With Noël Mauberret, she has edited a series of works by Jack London in French translation for Éditions Phébus. She also has served as a volume editor for The Norton Anthology of American Literature (Volume C, Literature 1865-1914).
A reception and book signing will follow the lecture. For more information, see www.english.uga.edu