Comments & Queries

Comments & Queries are welcome via email. Our address is victstu@indiana.edu.

On the Cover is a detail from the illustration “Labyrinthodon Pachygnathus” from Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot by Philip Henry Gosse (London: Van Voorst, 1857): 57. On the back cover is a detail from “Silk Cotton Tree” in the same volume: 175. Images courtesy of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

Changes at VS

With this volume, we must bid a reluctant farewell to two excellent VS editors. Mallory Cohn has finished her tenure as head Managing Editor and is currently writing a dissertation chapter on religious precocity that features boy preachers, deathbed prodigies, and Helen Burns. Her incisive editing and her attempts to perfect a chocolate chip cookie recipe are much missed. Lindsay Munnelly, former head Book Review Editor, is working on the second chapter of her dissertation, which examines nineteenth-century conceptions of property and ownership. Using posthumanist theories of agency, her project focuses on the objects of ownership and the power they exert on those characters who attempt to claim them. Her updates on contemporary politics and love for dark chocolate are greatly missed in the office.

Mary Bowden has become head Managing Editor, a position that involves far more tangling with image permissions and cross-references than she would prefer. She is working on a dissertation chapter on Darwin’s botanical works and enjoys making frequent reference to how Darwin chloroformed his plants. Molly Hamer has taken over the position of Assistant Managing Editor. A lapsed Victorianist, Molly enjoys living a double life as a Victorian Studies editor by day and a late nineteenth/early twentieth-century Americanist by night. Her dissertation explores the publication of women writers of color in the mainstream American periodical press at the turn of the century. She envies Trollope’s productivity but reminds herself that he had servants.

Daniel O’Keefe has taken over as head Book Review Editor. His policy of amnesty for late reviewers has already come under fire from the journal’s far right. He is beginning a dissertation about form and historicity in Romantic and Victorian aesthetics. Ruth L. Almy has taken on the position of Assistant Book Review Editor. She is dedicated to bringing an historian’s flare to an otherwise literary office, and is a proud supporter of the Oxford Comma. Ruth is working on a dissertation exploring intra-imperial immigration restrictions between Canada and India at the turn of the twentieth century, with a focus on the imperial context of the Komagata Maru incident of 1914.

This fall, we have had the privilege of working with two excellent undergraduate interns.

Jenna Fagan will graduate in May 2016 with a degree in Journalism, because she once wanted to travel the world as a foreign war correspondent, and a degree in English, because she discovered that she is much better suited to reading about adventures than actually reporting on them. She was thrilled to intern at a place where she got to correct people’s grammar all day and where it was socially acceptable to have read Jane Eyre at least 25 times. (She is currently on number 26.) She wants to thank the VS staff for answering her endless questions and listening to her attempts to cross-read without rolling their eyes. After graduation, Jenna hopes to attend graduate school and later work in publishing.

Jordan Shea will graduate in May with a degree in English, a concentration in public and professional writing, and a journalism certificate focusing on public relations. She has taken many courses on writing persuasively, but she is still baffled as to how to apply for jobs. As soon as this hurdle is overcome, she hopes to secure a job in public relations so she can bring correct grammar to the public—in persuasive form, of course. Her time at VS has given her much insight into the world of academic publishing that she hopes to take with her.

As always, Victorian Studies thanks the Indiana University Honors College, without whose generous support our internship program would not be possible.