Let’s spice up history class. 🔥
Join the Stowe Center for Literary Activism for Hot for Beecher, a lively interview-style program where scholarship meets serious heat. In this special installment, Dr. Allison Speicher sits down with guest scholars Susan Campbell and Beth Burgess for a conversation that turns up the temperature—complete with increasingly spicy hot wings (cauliflower available for vegans!).
Together, they’ll dive into the lives of John and Isabella Beecher Hooker—an abolitionist and suffragist power couple whose influence helped shape American history.
Come for the history, stay for the heat, and discover the personalities behind one of America’s most compelling literary families.
Please note: this event is 21+.
Susan Campbell
Beth Burgess
Allison Speicher
About the Facilitators
Susan Campbell is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, widely read columnist, and author of Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker. Campbell has worked across the media landscape as an award-winning print journalist, a regular commentator on WNPR, and a guest on CBS’ Sunday Morning, the BBC, WTNH-TV, and Face the State.
Former Director of Collections at the Stowe Center for Literary Activism for nearly 20 years, Beth Burgess now serves as Museum Curator for the Museum of Connecticut History.
Dr. Allison Speicher has taught at Eastern since 2014, specializing in 19th-century American literature. She teaches American and children’s literature and works closely with Women’s and Gender Studies students. Her first book, Schooling Readers, examines the role fiction played in the evolution of public schooling. She is co-editor of the Country School Journal, secretary of the Stowe Society, and faculty advisor to Eastern’s Sigma Tau Delta chapter.
