This presentation will introduce the HuMetricsHSS (Humane Metrics in the Humanities and Social Sciences) initiative, which aims to develop and support a values-based framework of indicators for excellence for the humanities and social science in academia and, by extension, academic libraries. This value-based evaluation paradigm uses metrics only…[Read more]

Because nineteenth-century paper was made from rags, the materiality of paper money became a likely ground from which to debate the nature of value in modern capitalism. On one hand, if paper money was backed by nothing but itself, then it was worth little more than itself: a gathering of lowly rags. On the other hand, the process of turning…[Read more]

The preliminary materials in Shakespeare’s First Folio survive in a variety of sequences, and until Peter Blayney proposed bibliographical reasons for a correct order in the 1990s, scholars weren’t sure what order was intended by the publishers. These slides diagram Blayney’s order, the reasoning behind it, and some of the variant orders that can…[Read more]

Drawing on Henry Boyd’s 1785 translation of the “Inferno,” this note documents the nature and extent of Coleridge’s knowledge of the “Inferno” and demonstrates that Dante’s work probably did influence Coleridge during the composition of “Kubla Khan.”

The Grimms’ tale of “Brier Rose” (KHM 50) has self-reflexive characteristics of the Romantic literary fairy tale. In thematizing memory and alluding to the imagery used in the preface to the Grimm brothers’ collection of fairy tales, Wilhelm Grimm’s version of the story self-consciously reflects on its own origins and exhibits a self-awareness…[Read more]

The historical novel Waking the Dead is now available at ResearchGate. This data file (there are 20) introduces Jane Addams

Easily the least-mentioned (and read) of Ernest Hemingway’s works (proven by its lack of critical attention), The Torrents of Spring merits rereading for its intertextual play. Hemingway’s use of embedded author’s notes throughout the text guides readers to a more fully aware young writer who offers critiques of composition, authorship, pri…[Read more]

Over the course of his career Ernest Hemingway wrote introductions for a number of writers. These pieces have been largely forgotten, but study and analysis of Hemingway’s introductions offers additional insight into the well-known author. The process of creating and marketing these pieces allowed Hemingway to manipulate and refine his public p…[Read more]

Though already famous, wealthy, and squarely established as a popular chronicler of the early
twentieth century, humorist Ring Lardner’s foray into a serious literary career with Charles Scribner’s
Sons Publishing Company is best characterized as an act of authorial resistance. Rather than evolve into
the “serious” author the firm had hoped f…[Read more]

Thoreau’s relation to print culture was complicated and at times contradictory, but from his writing life to his family business, he was shaped by it. Scholars note that he was both successful and a failure as a professional author. He published books and articles made possible by technological changes in papermaking and printing to his west on t…[Read more]

This paper explores the extent to which whiteness is represented in the Fall 2016 issue of Brevity. I suggest that the authors’ representation of whiteness manifests in the forms of both white privilege and white supremacy, and thus serves as the predominant theme of this issue of the magazine. I also consider the ways in which distant reading t…[Read more]

This paper revises book history’s historiography to account for feminist inquiry.

PDF of slides for a panel presentation on Jane-Austen and Regency-themed video games.

Although we have long discussed the rise of consumer culture and the increase of print in Restoration England (see Birth of a Consumer Society, 1982), comparatively little information exists on specific methods publishers used to advertise to audiences and what role they played in creating new markets. My project fills this gap by examining…[Read more]

A review of Richard Kegler’s, The Aries Press of Eden, New York.

How to Revise a True War Story is the first book-length study of O’Brien’s archival papers at the University of Texas’s Harry Ransom Center. Drawing on extensive study of drafts and other prepublication materials, as well as the multiple published versions of O’Brien’s works, John K. Young tells the untold stories behind the production of such k…[Read more]