For the local NPR radio for the Cape, Coast & Islands (CAI), Carla Kaplan, professor of English, African-American and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature at Northeastern University, discussed her biography Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford. Mitford, a British aristocrat turned American communist, led a life centered around social justice, penning the exposé The American Way of Death. Rather than retaining the wealth and comforts of her elite social status in Britain, Mitford’s self-transformation was astonishing, at times humorous, and deeply radical. Find the recorded interview here.
Carla Kaplan, a professor of English, African-American and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, holds the Davis Distinguished Professorship in American Literature and writes on modern, African-American, and women’s history and culture. She has published seven books, including the award-winning Miss Anne in Harlem: the White Women of the Black Renaissance (HarperCollins) and Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters (Doubleday/Anchor), both New York Times Notable Books, and writes occasionally for such publications as The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Slate, and The Nation. Kaplan founded the Northeastern Humanities Center and has been a resident fellow at numerous humanities centers and institutes, including the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York City Public Library, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, and the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities.
