Classics Corner

Lecture

Classics Corner Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Literary Masterpieces, Part Three

Tara Hayes, lecturer

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) is both his masterpiece and the greatest of American novels. Twain first designed Huck to romp with the likes of Tom Sawyer in the eponymous 1876 novel, and by completion of his own titular Adventures, Huck was a character and narrator, literary tool and social commentator. As Twain sends Huck and Jim down the Mississippi River, Huck’s inimitable voice tells the stories that resonate in every era.

This presentation is part of Tara Hayes' Classics Corner series.

Tara Hayes

Tara Hayes

Tara Hayes, Ph.D., has advanced degrees in English literature with additional focus on theory, science fiction and film. Known as “Dr. T” to her students while a professor at Wayne State and then Oakland University, Hayes is known beyond the academy as the Book & Film Club professor, facilitating groups both private and public engaged in elevating textual analysis and discussion.

A recipient of such distinctions as Trustee Scholar and Edward Wise Fellow, en route to her Ph.D., Hayes wrote her honor thesis on the transmutation of 19th-century American literary texts (The Scarlet Letter, The Last of the Mohicans, etc.) into 20th-century American films; completed a master’s degree in science fiction, feminist and psychoanalytic theory with an emphasis on dystopic texts — both novels and films — such as 1984, The Dispossessed, Blade Runner and The Matrix; and trained at Cornell’s School of Criticism and Theory.

Hayes also served domestically as a member of Teach for America and AmeriCorps, teaching high school in inner-city Houston, Los Angeles and the Mississippi Delta. In Detroit, she trained her African American literature and Shakespeare service-learning seminars to team with public and charter schools downtown and to mentor students and future teachers, modeled the integration of theory and practice and fostered opportunities for future teachers to help all students attain an excellent education.

In addition to her research, scholarship and teaching, Hayes worked at DreamWorks in the years of Steven Spielberg’s Amistad, The Lost World and Saving Private Ryan and curated his Shoah Foundation at USC, and she was part of the team that campaigned television pilot Dear Diary to an Oscar for Best Short Film.