Shalyn Claggett


Shalyn Claggett is a professor of English at Mississippi State University where she teaches courses on nineteenth-century British literature and literary theory. Her book Equal Natures: Popular Brain Science and Victorian Women’s Writing (SUNY Press, 2023) argues that notable women authors, including Harriet Martineau, Anne Brontë, and George Eliot, used scientific understandings of the brain … Continue reading Shalyn Claggett

Kathryn Hughes


Kathryn Hughes is Professor Emerita of Life Writing at the University of East Anglia.  An historian by training, since leaving Oxford she has written five books on Victorian England.  These include The Victorian Governess, biographies of George Eliot and Mrs Beeton and a study of the relationship between biography and body parts, Victorians Undone.  Her … Continue reading Kathryn Hughes

Heidi L. Pennington


Heidi L. Pennington is an assistant professor of English at James Madison University in Virginia. Her primary fields of teaching and research include nineteenth-century British fiction, narrative theory, theories of authorship and identity, and genre studies (mainly the novel and autobiography). Her love of mystery and detective fiction (especially cozies), as well as mid-twentieth century magic … Continue reading Heidi L. Pennington

Rebecca Whiteley


Dr. Rebecca Whiteley is a British Academy Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. An art historian by training, her research works on the intersections between visual and material culture, medical history and social history. She recently published her first book, Birth Figures: Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body, a history of early modern … Continue reading Rebecca Whiteley

Alice Villaseñor


Alice Villaseñor oversees community-engaged learning at SUNY Buffalo State in her role as the Associate Director of Civic and Community Engagement. Previously, she was an Associate Professor of English at Medaille College in Buffalo, NY, where she was awarded the Brian R. Shero Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership Award. She is happy to connect with fellow … Continue reading Alice Villaseñor

Deborah Lutz


Deborah Lutz, the Thruston B. Morton Endowed Chair at the University of Louisville, is the author of five books, including Victorian Paper Art and Craft: Writers and their Materials (Oxford UP, 2023); The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects (Norton, 2015); and Relics of Death in Victorian Literature and Culture (Cambridge UP, 2015). She … Continue reading Deborah Lutz