Scrap Bag: Enigmas with Alice Rutkowski

An Alcott protagonist even more trans than Jo March? It's more likely than you think. Lou's 1876 sensation story "Enigmas" features a young man who's hired to spy on another young man - a man who is short and delicate and rather young-looking, all things considered. (See where this is going?) Our spy is swiftly overtaken by sexual attraction to the man he's been hired to report on. Before the story's over and the spy is unmasked, Alcott will take the gender binary and fold it into a Mobius strip.

Here to dive deep into this delightful bit of Alcottiana is Alice Rutkowski, chair and associate professor of English at SUNY Geneseo. She often teaches the courses Literature and the Civil War, the Queer Nineteenth Century, Safe Zone Train-the-Trainer, Feminism and Pornography, and Major Authors: Melville, among others. Her research centers on the Civil War and Reconstruction as well as queer theory and trans politics. In 2013, she founded the LGBTQ Issues Working Group at SUNY Geneseo, and she's the coordinator of the college's Safe Zone Network.

Our cover art is by Mattie Lubchansky. It interpolates the cover art for Bethany C. Morrow's book "So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix," with permission from Macmillan Children's Publishing Group. It also interpolates the cover art for Hena Khan’s book “More to the Story,” with permission from Simon & Schuster. Our theme music is Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 16 in C Major. This episode was edited by Antoinette Smith.