Shelley Fisher Fishkin

Fishkin rediscovered Mark Twain's 1898 play Is He Dead? in the archives of the Mark Twain Papers at the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley and published an edition of it in 2003.

Shelley Fisher Fishkin (born May 9, 1950) is the Joseph S. Atha Professor of the Humanities and a professor of English at Stanford University.

Fishkin received her B.A. and M.Phil.

in English, and her Ph.D. in American studies, all from Yale University.

Before teaching at Stanford University, she served as director of the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale University and professor of American studies at the University of Texas, Austin.

Fishkin served as the president of the American Studies Association (2004–2005), and the president of Mark Twain Circle of America (1998–2000).

She was also the cofounder of the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society and a founding editor of the Journal of Transnational American Studies.

She was a producer of the play on Broadway, where it debuted in 2007, adapted by David Ives and directed by Michael Blakemore.

She is the director of Stanford's American studies program and codirector (with Gordon Chang) of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford University.

A specialist in Mark Twain, Fishkin was awarded the John S. Tuckey award "for lifetime achievements and contributions to Mark Twain Studies" at the International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies in 2017.

In honor of her work in transnational American studies, the American Studies Association named its annual prize for best publication in transnational American studies the Shelley Fisher Fishkin Prize.

Fishkin is the author, editor or co-editor of 48 books and has published more than 150 articles, essays, columns, and reviews.

In 2019, on the 150th anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad, Fishkin and Chang published the co-edited volume The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad.