Bucknell University Press

Edimus quod nobis libet.

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University Press Week Day 1: Guest blogger Manu Chander

To kick off the 10th annual University Press Week (UP Week) celebration, we invited author Manu Samriti Chander to share his thoughts on publishing with university presses and why they matter. Professor Chander’s first book, Brown Romantics: Poetry and Nationalism in the Global Nineteenth Century, published by Bucknell UP in 2017, calls for the academy in general and scholars of European Romanticism to acknowledge the extensive international impact of Romantic poetry. Reviewers agree, proclaiming it “the kind of book that Romantic literary studies has needed for a very long time”[1] and declaring, “[t]here’s no doubt that it will be looked back upon as a landmark work in Romantic studies.”[2]

“‘Leo’s’ poems have not even the thinnest guise of poetry. They illustrate a strain of trite, and often silly reflection, and a sentiment of ‘goodiness’ that is nauseating.” That was one London reviewer’s assessment of a poetry collection called Leo’s Poetical Works, which was published in 1883. The author in question, “Leo,” was an Afro-Guianese poet and essayist whose birth name was Egbert Martin. The review, which appeared in the Saturday Review on May 3, 1884, made its way across the Atlantic and back to Martin, who, understandably, took offense, writing in the preface to his second collection, Leo’s Local Lyrics, “Some…held that my book of poems published in 1883 contained too much ‘goody-goodiness,’ and I must confess that I have deliberately searched through at least two dictionaries without being able to discover such a word.” In a world in which an English reviewer’s opinion would always trump that of a Black colonial subject, Martin nevertheless found a way to express his frustration with the imperial order of things.

I learned of Martin’s poetry while conducting research for my first book, Brown Romantics, which looked at the way that colonial writers in the nineteenth century struggled to be considered as what Emerson (whom Martin had read and admired) called a “representative man”: “a monarch who gives a constitution to his people; a pontiff who preaches the equality of souls and releases his servants from their barbarous homages; an emperor who can spare his empire.” Or, in the case of the Brown Romantics, a poet capable of unifying diverse readers into a coherent whole. Martin, along with such figures as Henry Derozio in India and Henry Lawson in Australia, saw poetry as a means of community-building, a way of forging connections among peoples through the shared experience of reading. My book sought to recognize these figures in a way that reviewers from centers of literary power rarely did. 

Shortly after the publication of Brown Romantics, as I was preparing an edition of Martin’s collected works, I visited Le Repentir Cemetery in Georgetown, Guyana, where, I knew from my research, Martin was buried. When I arrived at the cemetery office I was met by a woman who had never heard of the poet. She asked me to write down his information, name and date of death: “Egbert Martin,” I wrote, “June 24, 1890.” Just wait, she told me, and she headed to a back room, returning after several minutes with a large log book. When she found the page for June 1890, my heart sped up, and it continued to race as she ran her finger down the yellowed page. It landed on Martin’s name, penciled in neat cursive. Age: 29. Nation: Demerara. The log indicated where he was buried by division (New General), space number (30), and grave number (108). I asked if I could visit the spot, and I was told it’s a “mud grave,” no marker, nothing to see.

“Pecuniary success,” wrote Martin in the preface to Leo’s Poetical Works, “is…outside the Author’s anticipations; and fame, the idol of so many, for him has so little attraction that he cares not so much as to couple his name with his works.” And yet, we know from his response to his London critic, he was not without pride. I wonder what it might have meant to him to know that, over a one-hundred twenty years later, someone would see in his poetry something more than “trite” and “silly” “goodiness.” I wonder what it might have meant to him, as he labored daily over his verse, a “confirmed invalid,” as one British Guianese newspaper described him, largely confined to his home at 317 East Street in Georgetown (this, at least, is the address listed in an issue of the London periodical Truth on January 6, 1887)–I wonder what it might have meant for him to know that someone would one day see in the poems he wrote a serious contribution to that literary movement we call “Romanticism,” worthy of collecting and making available to readers across the globe.

Poetry is not as popular as it was in Martin’s time (although it is making a bit of a comeback). It is not regularly published in daily newspapers for readers to peruse casually as they get caught up on the events of the day. Nor is the study of poetry the stuff of popular books, not usually at least. It is largely sustained by scholars and, importantly, publishers who see value in poetic labor, both the labor of producing poetry and that of thinking through poetry in prose. Beyond–to recall Martin’s phrase–“pecuniary success,” we believe that something is gained, that the world is somehow better when we reserve a space for the analysis of line breaks and metrical substitutions, textual variations and publication histories. Perhaps that belief makes us Romantics, as well. If so–if we who publish with and work for university presses are inheritors of certain Romantic commitments–we have figures such as Martin to thank for sustaining these commitments, and for reminding us to sustain them as well.

Manu Samriti Chander is an associate professor of English at Rutgers University-Newark and the author of Brown Romantics: Poetry and Nationalism in the Global Nineteenth Century (Bucknell UP, 2017). He is currently editing The Collected Works of Egbert Martin (Oxford UP) and The Cambridge Companion to Romanticism and Race (Cambridge UP) and writing a second monograph, Browntology, under contract with SUNY Press.

[1] “Manu Samriti Chander’s Brown Romantics: Poetry and Nationalism in the Global Nineteenth Century is the kind of book that Romantic literary studies has needed for a very long time. Brown Romantics examines how and why poets from India, Guyana, and Australia placed themselves into conversation with authors now commonly associated with British Romanticism. The book significantly expands our understanding of canonical Romanticism’s transnational reach and revises critical commonplaces that have defined Romantic aesthetics since the nineteenth century.”
— Papers on Language and Literature

[2] “This book has already provided a focal point for a new direction in Romantic studies, as emerging research clusters around its central claims. There’s no doubt that it will be looked back upon as a landmark work in Romantic studies.”
— Romantic Circles

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Celebrating International Translation Day

Did you know?

The UN’s recently established International Translation Day celebrates the work of language professionals who translate academic and technical works, highlighting their contributions to a global effort to foster inclusivity and togetherness. Language professionals’ hard work and attention to detail is crucial to dissolving language barriers that might otherwise hinder the struggle for world peace and international security.

On May 24th, 2017, the United Nations General Assembly declared September 30th as International Translation Day under resolution 71/288. It chose September 30th as International Translation Day because September 30th traditionally observes the feast of Italian priest St. Jerome. St. Jerome is renowned for using Greek manuscripts of the New Testament to translate much of the Bible into Latin.

Since 2005, the UN has annually invited all of its staff, acclaimed permanent missions staff, and students from partner universities to enter its UN St. Jerome Translation Contest, which “rewards the best translations in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish,” and German. You may find the 2020 winners here. Here at the Bucknell University Press, however, we decided to do something a little different this year. Below, we highlight some of the most recent translated books we published and their translators as tribute to the language professionals’ diligence and intellect.

Mikhail Bakhtin: The Duvakin Interviews, 1973

Edited by Slav N. Gretchev and Margarita Marinova
Translated by Margarita Marinova

In August 2019, Bucknell University Press published the first English translation of twelve hours of transcripts of the interviews Mikhail Bakhtin conducted in Russian of Victor Duvakin 1973. Marinova’s work now allows English readers insight into Russian culture and Bakhtin’s perspective on Western art and thought.

Dr. Marinova is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. She is a translator and the author of Transnational Russian-American Travel Writing.

Beginning and End of the Snow: Début et Fin de la Neige

By Yves Bonnefoy
Translated by Emily Grosholz

Yves Bonnefoy’s book of poems, Beginning and End of the Snow followed by Where the Arrow Falls, combines two meditations in philosophy and religion in which the poet’s thoughts and a landscape reflect each other. Criticism and Reference notes that one reads Grosholz’s work “without the least twinge of regret for what might be lost in translation.”

She is a Liberal Arts Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University, and a member of the research group REHELS / SPHERE at the University of Paris Denis Diderot. Additionally, she has written and published six books of poetry (including Leaves / Feuilles with Farhad Ostovani) and works as an advisory editor for the Hudson Review.

Don’t Whisper Too Much and Portrait of a Young Artiste from Bona Mbella

By Frieda Ekotto
Translated by Corine Tachtiris

Don’t Whisper Too Much  and  Bona Mbella  present love stories between African women in a positive light. In presenting the emotional and romantic lives of gay African women, Ekotto addresses how female sexuality is often marked by violence, and yet is also a place for emotional connection, pleasure and agency. The late Carmen Gillespie described Tachtiris’ translation of Ekotto’s work as “a landmark addition to the canon of Afro-Francophone literature in translation.”

Corine Tachtiris translates literature primarily by contemporary women authors from Africa, the Caribbean, and the Czech Republic. She holds an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa and a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Michigan. Dr. Tachtiris teaches world literature and translation theory and practice.

Two Women

By Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda
Translated by Barbara F. Ichiishi

The first openly feminist novel published in Spanish, Two Women  tells the riveting tale of a tumultuous love triangle among a brilliant, young, widowed countess, her inexperienced lover, and his pure and virtuous wife. This first English translation captures the lyrical romanticism of the novel’s prose and includes a scholarly introduction to the author and her work.

Ichiishi is the author of The Apple of Earthly Love: Female Development in Esther Tusquets’ Fiction, and the translator of many of Tusquets’ major works. She has written articles on Spanish and Latin American women’s literature, and co-translated Edouard Glissant’s historical drama Monsieur Toussaint.

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National Poetry Month with Shanee Stepakoff

To wrap up National Poetry Month, we spoke with Bucknell author Shanee Stepakoff about poetry, publishing, and her forthcoming collection, Testimony: Found Poems from the Special Court for Sierra Leone. A remarkable collection of found poetry, Testimony is derived from public testimonies at a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Freetown and aims to breathe new life into the records of Sierra Leone’s civil war, delicately extracting heartbreaking human stories from the morass of legal jargon. By rendering selected trial transcripts in poetic form, Stepakoff finds a novel way to communicate not only the suffering of Sierra Leone’s people, but also their courage, dignity, and resilience.

As a psychologist and human rights activist, why did you turn to poetry to tell the stories of Sierra Leone? What does the found poetry form offer this difficult work of sharing the testimonies of trauma survivors?

I had lived and worked in the region for several years and was aware that many truths about the civil war of 1991-2002 were not reaching an international audience because most readers from outside of the West African sub-region were not inclined to spend hours poring through lengthy books in subjects such as global history or political science. 

I felt that a collection of poems would be a way to reach people who might otherwise not take an interest in the human impact of a war in a faraway country. In addition, the courtroom procedures and legal jargon that characterized the war crimes trials made it hard to hear the voices of the survivors who had come to testify. Distilling the lengthy trial transcripts into poetic form made it possible to listen to the narratives with greater attentiveness. I was also drawn to poetry as way to sort through my own vicarious traumatization. Of course, my effort to wrestle with the accounts of wartime atrocities was not nearly as arduous as those who were directly targeted, but nevertheless the process of composing poems provided me with a means of structuralizing reports that might otherwise have been overwhelming.  

In the introduction to Testimony, you write that “The survivor must not merely speak but rather must address other people—specifically, those who are not only willing but determined to hear and to know. This is the broader, deeper meaning of testimony. To bear witness does not necessarily imply participating in a legal or juridical proceeding. To bear witness implies the existence of a speaker, a committed listener, and a language.” How might poetry help us become better, more committed listeners?

A poem is a form of expression that arises when a deep chord is struck within the literary artist and ordinary language no longer suffices. A new way of speaking was required, one with greater-than-usual potency. Readers sense that the poem arose from this deep place, and this piques their attention. A poem communicates about a human experience in a highly concentrated manner, thereby fostering recognition of previously-undiscerned realities. Poems tend to move people at the emotional level, not just the cognitive level. Usually a poem is more memorable than other literary genres, because a strong poem has precise phrases and images that leave an imprint in the mind of the reader. Poems can bypass the defenses that many people mobilize when confronted with evidence of human rights abuses because most poems have auditory and rhythmical properties that are paradoxically soothing even when the subject matter is painful. Literary devices such as assonance, alliteration, near-rhyme, and the right combinations of variation and repetition intensify our willingness to bear witness to harsh truths in a sustained manner without flinching. 

Could you speak to the process of editing and publishing a first poetry collection?

I used a nontraditional approach, transforming prose transcripts into poetic structure, and the material was troubling in that it focused on a devastating war. Therefore, I was uncertain about whether any publisher would be open-minded enough to agree to even read the work, let alone commit to bringing it forth. I was extraordinarily lucky to have reached out to Carmen Gillespie, founding editor of the Griot Book Project Series, to ask if she would consider this collection. In 2019 she read some of the poems, then the manuscript, and committed to sending it out for review. She unexpectedly passed away amidst that process, and it seemed like the project might stall, but then Suzanne Guiod, editor-in-chief of Bucknell University Press, generously stepped in to carry it forward. I was given amazing support from a team of professionals, comprising Suzanne as well as two anonymous reviewers, Bucknell’s managing editor, the cover artist, the foreword writer, and later the copyeditor and production editors, with each person contributing their particular expertise. I am humbled and honored by their dedication and conscientiousness.

Who are other poets and writers you look to for inspiration or enjoyment? Who are you reading the most at the moment?

The “Further Resources” section in my book contains a list of writers from Sierra Leone and one from Liberia whose work highlights the wellsprings of creativity and resilience present in the region. For more than thirty years I have used poems in anti-racism training because they have a greater impact than any other genre. I’ve used Claudia Rankine’s 2014 collection, Citizen, which focuses on the insidious ways that anti-Black racism operates in day-to-day life in the US. I’ve also used a poem from Natasha Trethewey’s 2018 collection Monument, which portrays a childhood experience of racist terror. Yusuf Komunyakaa’s poems on the Vietnam War shed light on the legacy of war. Carolyn Forché’s 1981 collection The Country Between Us, about political repression and war in El Salvador, had a strong impact on me in my youth. More recently I read her 2019 memoir, What You Have Heard Is True, which explores the impact that her exposure to human rights abuses in El Salvador had on her writing. I am inspired by Brenda Hillman’s recent poems incorporating elements of found texts to give expression to grief and anger about militarism and hinting at possibilities for resistance. Aminatta Forna’s 2002 memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water, tracing her search for the truth about the politically motivated execution of her dissident father by a corrupt dictatorial regime in Sierra Leone, and her four novels and forthcoming essay collection, inspire me not only because of her literary gifts but also because of her psychological and moral courage and her recognition that sometimes remembrance is the only redemption.

Shanee Stepakoff is a psychologist and human rights advocate whose research on the traumatic aftermath of war has appeared in such journals as Peace and Conflict and The International Journal of Transitional Justice. She holds an MFA from The New School and is completing a PhD in English at the University of Rhode Island.

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Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850

A Discussion with the Series Editors

A landmark series in the long eighteenth-century and Romantic era, Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850 publishes books that are timely, transformative, and global in their engagement with arts, literature, culture, and history. Here, we talk with series co-editors Miriam Wallace and Mona Narain about their vision for the series, their new board of advisors, and the continuing relevance of long eighteenth-century studies in changing times.

Mona Narain

Q: Eighteenth-century studies has been long associated with a few, dominant figures and with traditional modes of reading texts. The Transits series invites projects that make “provocative connections between postcolonial and decolonial studies, that develop new modes of critical imagining such as those offered by critical race scholarship and the intersections among gender, sexuality, and disability studies.” How does your vision for the Transits series expand traditional thinking in the field?

[Mona]: Traditional eighteenth-century studies has had an interdisciplinary focus largely on Europe and the Anglo-Americas. The Transits series expands this focus further geographically and culturally, considering connections and entanglements across the globe. Transits also encourages new methodologies, emergent in western academia as well as other scholarly locations, that can energize the study of both canonical and different texts.

Miriam Wallace

[Miriam]: I might focus here on “reading” and “texts”—reading stands in for numerous ways to think about the interpretive work that humanists do. We attend carefully to details, whether of language and metaphor or of materials like fabric or painting. And “texts” is such a wonderfully flexible term—taking up the written words of a book, but also the paratextual elements such as puffs, subscription lists, reviews, and visual materials from high art to portraiture to illustration. So while “literature” in the broad sense is central, I’m also excited by work that presses on that concept, belles lettres and beyond—including “texts” that may not be primarily written (bodies, images, textiles, botanical). I’m hoping to be surprised and intrigued.

Q: How will the new Transits advisory board help reflect and extend your vision for the series?

Our board of advisors is composed of scholars who bring considerable expertise and who do precisely the kind of innovative work that we hope to attract to the series. We see these scholars both as models for aspiring authors and as our collaborators in keeping the series fresh and responsive. They represent a range of geographies, histories, critical methods, and cultural concerns that are central to the series, and many are BUP authors themselves. (See, for example, Manu Chander’s Brown Romantics and Jason Farr’s Novel Bodies.) Practically speaking, the board helps us to match readers to manuscripts, to reach scholars doing similarly innovative work, and to publicize new books in the series. Last but not least, the board helps us to keep our fingers on the pulse of new lines of thought developing in the field.

Q: As series editors, what do you look for in book proposals?

A book proposal is itself a genre of persuasive and imaginative writing—one that needs to bring the reader along and invite us in. A good proposal entices the reader, persuasively outlining an original approach and a coherent plan for a book—that is, a project that needs to be a book to have its full impact. We look for proposals that are readable, clear, show familiarity with current scholarship, but most of all that intrigue us—these are proposals and books we want to read!

Proposals should situate the project’s argument within current scholarship and effectively articulate how the project will extend or contribute to current scholarship. Chapter descriptions should be well-fleshed out so that we can see the book’s shape in embryo.

Tell us about the origins of the project. Did it begin life as a dissertation? If so, how has it been reconceived, and for what audience? Or are its roots in archival work that has expanded beyond the original intention? Or perhaps this project is a collection that developed out of a conference panel or two and is now ready to expand into a full-length work?

The proposal should include a realistic timeline for completion—we’d prefer to have a strong project that takes more time than one that is rushed forward. Some idea of the length or approximate word count is also very helpful. And our proposal form asks authors to indicate a sense of audience and some key works that they envision theirs sitting alongside—what does your bookshelf look like and where does your imagined book sit?

We are all the inheritors of the long eighteenth century.

Miriam Wallace and Mona Narain

Q: Why is it important to continue bringing fresh perspectives into eighteenth-century studies? In what ways is the eighteenth-century still relevant to today?

The long eighteenth century from 1650 to 1850 is complex and contradictory, encompassing both the concepts of Enlightenment and Romanticism, but also a period of rapid modernization and reverence for classicism. It was a period of exploration and colonization, of developing human rights and institutionalized abrogation of rights. Areas of intellectual study that found disciplines from literature to natural sciences were formalized, and world geographies were mapped in ways that still resonate today. It was also a period that saw the emergence of new voices and interlocutors—and struggles over global modes of communication including print publication.

While many aspects of the eighteenth century have been productively studied by scholars in the last half century, more sustained work is needed on global connections, multilinguistic archival work, and new interdisciplinary methods. The establishment and flourishing of empires and slavery, the increased circulation of global capital, and the geographical conditions that define our global climate have their roots in this period. We are all the inheritors of the long eighteenth century.

Q: What forthcoming books in the series are you most excited about?

[Mona] Knowing her previous publications, I am excited about Linda Van Blimke’s forthcoming book, Political Affairs of the Heart: Female Travel Writers, the Sentimental Travelogue, and Revolution, 1775-1800. This monograph joins a long list of BUP books on women travelers—including Transatlantic Women Travelers, edited by Misty Krueger, which is just out.

[Miriam] I’m particularly excited about Lindsey Eckert’s forthcoming The Limits of Familiarity: Authorship and Romantic Readers. Eckert’s book explores the cultural value of “familiarity”— an often-dismissed feeling of emotional closeness and comfortable predictability that she sees as foundational to Romanticism as what I might call a “structure of feeling.” Eckert’s book is compelling reading and intersects with recent interest in affect, celebrity, and reception studies.

Other projects currently under consideration touch on transatlantic ecologies and social justice; on animals and the Romantic era; on women and music in Georgian Britain; on landscape and gender; on drama and theatricality in multiple frames from theatrical couples to radical reform; social injustice and French thought; and on the consumption of goods and foodstuffs as ways to navigate Orientalisms. We are delighted by the breadth and richness of the work that is coming our way, promising to keep the series active and impactful.

Transits Advisory Board Members

Manu Samriti Chander is associate professor of English at Rutgers University-Newark, where he specializes in nineteenth-century studies and colonial/postcolonial literatures. He is the author of Brown Romantics (Bucknell, 2017), the editor of The Collected Works of Egbert Martin (Oxford, forthcoming), and a founding member of the Bigger 6 Collective.

Jason Farr, Marquette University, specializes in British literature and culture of the long eighteenth century with an emphasis on disability and queer studies, health humanities, and sound studies.

Patricia A. Matthew, associate professor of English at Montclair State University, is a specialist in the history of the novel, Romantic-era fiction, and British abolitionist literature and culture. A founding member of the Bigger6 Collective, she is interested in methodologically inventive projects that reimagine historical and geographical boundaries.

Louis Kirk McAuley, associate professor of English at Washington State University, has written on transatlantic eighteenth-century print culture, shifting recently to focus on the intersections among literature, ecology, colonialism and empire. He remains keenly interested in Scottish studies, Gothic fiction (or the politics of horror), and scholarly work that attends to geographies, histories, cultures, and species.  

Kate Parker (former co-editor of Transits) is associate professor in the department of English at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Her work centers on social justice pedagogy and the histories of gender, sexuality and feminist activism in—and since—the eighteenth century.

Norbert Schürer teaches in the English department at California State University, Long Beach. His research focuses on Anglo-Indian literature, book history, and women’s writing in the long eighteenth century.

For information about submitting a book proposal to the Transits series, contact Suzanne Guiod at seg016@bucknell.edu.

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Women’s History Month with Misty Krueger

Happy Women’s History Month! To celebrate, Bucknell University Press would like to share a few words from Misty Krueger, editor of Transatlantic Women Travelers, 1688-1843, followed by some of our own reading recommendations for learning about women’s lives throughout history. 

Transatlantic Women Travelers is an important new collection that brings fresh perspectives on representations of late seventeenth- through mid-nineteenth-century transatlantic women travelers across a range of historical and literary works. While at one time transatlantic studies concentrated predominantly on men’s travels, this volume highlights the resilience of women who ventured voluntarily and by force across the Atlantic—some seeking mobility, adventure, knowledge, wealth, and freedom, and others surviving subjugation, capture, and enslavement. 

Here’s more from our conversation with Misty Krueger: 

BUP: Where did the inspiration for Transatlantic Women Travelers, 1688-1843 come from? Why is the woman’s experience of transatlantic travels in particular an important area of study?

Krueger: Transatlantic Women Travelers, 1688-1843 was initially inspired by a course I designed in 2015 for the University of Maine at Farmington called “Transatlantic 18th-Century Women.” I focused on the lives and writings of and about (mostly) British and American women who traveled transatlantically during the “long” eighteenth century. After teaching the course two times and helping students find research for their essays, I realized that there was plenty of scholarship on transatlantic travel from this time period, but that almost all of it focused on male travelers. When female travelers were mentioned, they often appeared as characters written by male writers. The focus seemed to be placed on men, and women appeared to be on the fringes, or in the male gaze, even though my teaching was showing me that there were plenty of women writers who traveled transatlantically and wrote about either their own travels or fictionalized women’s transatlantic travels. On top of that, these women were amazing! The hardships most endured and the advantages some gained were impressive, to say the least, so why wasn’t there a monograph or collection of essays dedicated to transatlantic women’s travel, I asked. One day in class I said—half joking, half serious—maybe I should edit a collection on this topic.

I proposed a call for papers for a special Aphra Behn Society panel at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference to see what kind of interest the call might generate, and I received more submissions than I could accommodate for the session. Not long afterwards I wrote a call for papers and contacted Bucknell University Press. I knew that this collection would be perfect for Bucknell because of its Transits series and its excellent reputation for publishing some of the best scholarly work in eighteenth-century studies.

BUP: Could you speak to intersectionality in the collection?

Krueger: One of the things I hoped to find when I received submissions from the call for papers was variety: variety of travelers, authors, texts, and nationalities. I hoped to be able to bring together eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors from around the Atlantic Ocean, as well as to bring together scholars from different points on the Atlantic. In the end, this collection features women travelers from Africa, Europe, and all of the Americas, as well as the Caribbean. Scholars hail from Canada, England, and the U.S. 

I also hoped to put together a collection that would be intersectional in its broader representation of long eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women’s lives. It was important to show the ways women’s lived experiences depended on not only their points of embarkation and arrival, but also the many facets of their identities. I was excited to receive essays addressing race, gender, sexuality, and class as composite factors that determine the advantages, disadvantages, privileges, and discrimination, Black, white, and multiracial women faced in this time period and why it is important to examine their narratives from an intersectional perspective. A number of essays demonstrate how these factors shape women’s lives, as well as the interconnected nature of women’s networks. 

In the end, this volume collects the writings of amazing women scholars, including the fantastic Eve Tavor Bannet, who wrote the afterword, and focuses on a variety of women’s lives and writings. 

BUP: From your own research or in editing the collection of essays, what is something new or surprising about these women and their narratives that sticks with you?

Krueger: I have been thinking about the women featured in this collection for so long now that this question is difficult to answer. I could say it’s their adaptability, but that’s not new or surprising to me. I could say it’s their mobility, but again not new or surprising. I could say it’s their sense of solidarity, even despite the social forces that pull them apart and tear them down, but that does not surprise me either. Instead, I want to focus on what sticks with me: their resilience. This is what amazes me most—just how resilient they were and still are. Transatlantic women travelers crossed the ocean for a range of reasons, some of which had to do with charting a new life and escaping the past, and many of which were decided by others, especially in the case of enslaved women and women forced to leave their homelands due to patriarchal directives. 

Simply put, crossing the Atlantic Ocean from the eighteenth through the early nineteenth century was dangerous. To survive this journey, for some more than once in a roundtrip and some in the cargo hold of a slave ship, was no small feat. To survive this journey as a woman is even more spectacular. I am in awe of how the historical women featured in this collection managed this travel by sea and then land, and how writers of this era found ways to fictionalize women’s transatlantic journeys in order to make compelling arguments about women’s lives and their functions in their respective societies. This collection is dear to my heart because it reflects women’s strength and ability to persevere through the toughest times.

For more work on women’s history and lives, check out these other books from Bucknell University Press.

Intelligent Souls?: Feminist Orientalism in Eighteenth-Century English Literature

by Samara Anne Cahill

Intelligent Souls? offers a new understanding of Islam in eighteenth-century Britain. Cahill explores two overlapping strands of thinking about women and Islam, which produce the phenomenon of “feminist orientalism.” One strand describes seventeenth-century ideas about the nature of the soul used to denigrate religio-political opponents. A second tracks the transference of these ideas to Islam during the Glorious Revolution and the Trinitarian controversy of the 1690s. Rowe, Carter, Lennox, More, and Wollstonecraft, Cahill argues, established common ground with men by leveraging the “otherness” identified with Islam to dispute British culture’s assumption that British women were lacking in intelligence, selfhood, or professional abilities.

Don’t Whisper Too Much and Portrait of a Young Artiste from Bona Mbella

by Frieda Ekotto

Don’t Whisper Too Much was the first work of fiction by an African writer to present love stories between African women in a positive light. Bona Mbella is the second. In presenting the emotional and romantic lives of gay, African women, Ekotto comments upon larger issues that affect these women, including Africa as a post-colonial space, the circulation of knowledge, and the question of who writes history. In recounting the beauty and complexity of relationships between women who love women, Ekotto inscribes these stories within African history, both past and present. 

Jane Austen and Comedy

Edited by Erin M. Goss

Jane Austen and Comedy takes for granted two related notions. First, Jane Austen’s books are funny; they induce laughter, and that laughter is worth attending to for a variety of reasons. Second, Jane Austen’s books are comedies, understandable both through the generic form that ends in marriage after the potential hilarity of romantic adversity and through a more general promise of wish fulfillment. In bringing together Austen and comedy, which are both often dismissed as superfluous or irrelevant to a contemporary world, this collection of essays directs attention to the ways we laugh, the ways that Austen may make us do so, and the ways that our laughter is conditioned by the form in which Austen writes: comedy. 

Writing Home: A Quaker Immigrant on the Ohio Frontier

by Emma Alderson, edited by Donald Ingram Ulin

Writing Home offers readers a firsthand account of the life of Emma Alderson, an otherwise unexceptional English immigrant on the Ohio frontier in mid-nineteenth-century America, who documented the five years preceding her death with astonishing detail and insight. Her convictions as a Quaker offer unique perspectives on racism, slavery, and abolition; the impending war with Mexico; presidential elections; various religious and utopian movements; and the practices of everyday life in a young country. Introductions and notes situate the letters in relation to their critical, biographical, literary, and historical contexts.

Modern Spanish Women as Agents of Change: Essays in Honor of Maryellen Bieder

Edited by Jennifer Smith

This volume brings together cutting-edge research on modern Spanish women as writers, activists, and embodiments of cultural change, and simultaneously honors Maryellen Bieder’s invaluable scholarly contribution to the field. The essays are innovative in their consideration of lesser-known women writers, focus on women as political activists, and use of post-colonialism, queer theory, and spatial theory to examine the period from the Enlightenment until World War II. Canonical authors such as Emilia Pardo Bazán, Leopoldo Alas “Clarín,” and Carmen de Burgos are considered alongside lesser known writers and activists such as María Rosa Gálvez, Sofía Tartilán, and Caterina Albert i Paradís. 

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New Series Editor for Contemporary Irish Writers: Speaking with Anne Fogarty

Bucknell University Press is honored to announce the appointment of Anne Fogarty as the new general editor of our Contemporary Irish Writers series. Fogarty is Full Professor of James Joyce Studies in the School of English, Drama, and Film at University College Dublin.

The Contemporary Irish Writers series, with recent publications on Medbh McGuckian, Eavan Boland, John Banville, and Bernard MacLaverty, has long brought theoretically informed perspectives to the work and lives of major Irish writers

Under Fogarty’s leadership, the series will welcome projects that pay particular attention to feminist issues, the environmental humanities, the perspectives of migrants in Irish society, nationalism and transnationalism, Northern Ireland and its writers, the Irish language, and the lively and often genre-crossing fiction, poetry, drama, and film of contemporary Ireland.

The first planned volumes in development under Professor Fogarty’s editorship include a reconsideration of the later novels of Edna O’Brien, and a cultural study of Seamus Heaney’s American years. 

Here, we talk with Fogarty about her vision for the series and the changing landscape of Irish literary studies.

BUP: The Contemporary Irish Writers series considers how both larger frameworks and the major figures of Irish studies are being rethought. What does this reframing mean to you?

Fogarty: Like every other sector of literary studies, the aims and objectives of Irish Studies are currently being reconsidered in light of a host of contemporary concerns. Inclusivity and diversity have become bigger priorities than ever. Discrimination in other areas is mirrored in our reading agendas. Encompassing more work by writers of color, women, working class writers, LGBT authors and immigrant writers not alone allows more voices to be heard it also enriches our vision of the world and enables a more active understanding of difference and of a variety of experiences of the world.

BUP: Why is now the time to renew and expand the Contemporary Irish Writers series? In what ways can the series meet the contemporary moment in culture and scholarship? What recent trends, interests, or changes stand out?

Fogarty: Contemporary studies have only recently been recognized as a discrete area of inquiry. The contemporary, moreover, covers not just very recent publications but also work that stretches back over the past few decades.  In Ireland, as elsewhere there has been an explosion of new writing and readers now have many more genres by Irish authors from which to choose, including detective novels, non-fiction, science fiction, collections of essays,  and writing for young adults.   Established twentieth-century writers continue to produce apace, Anne Enright, Roddy Doyle, Colm Tóibín, Conor McPherson, Glenn Patterson, Deirdre Madden, Marina Carr, Edna O’Brien, Vona Groarke, Joseph O’Connor, and Paula Meehan. We need to continue to take stock of their work but also to explore how our current preoccupations are mirrored and reflected on in their texts. The most urgent issues besetting us all center on the building of a society that is more equitable and more welcoming of diversity and rescuing the planet from the effects of climate change before it becomes too late. Bringing perspectives from feminism, queer studies and race studies, and ecocriticism to bear on the reading of Irish texts is at once illuminating, involving, and politically and culturally vital.

BUP: Bucknell University Press’s original Irish Writers Series began in the 1970s as a way to promote writers whose works warrant monographic exposure, covering writers including Sean O’Casey, James Clarence Mangan, Standish O’Grady, W.R. Rogers, and Thomas Davis. This series was reinvigorated in 2009 as the Contemporary Irish Writers Series to consider the vigorous shifts in Irish studies. Considering this history, how does your vision perhaps differ from the existing publications in the series?

Fogarty: It’s clear that Irish Writers Series reflect the moment in which they are conceived. The original series pivots on the literary revival and is dismayingly but unsurprisingly male-centered. But it does range across a wide array of genres and is prepared to shine a spotlight on figures who are more marginal and would be overlooked today. My vision for the new series of Contemporary Irish Writers is that it will be inclusive, risk-taking, and open. It will also I hope be pre-emptive in being unafraid to give space to a current author before they have faded into hallowed memory or have to be rescued from oblivion. It will aim to provide approachable overviews of chosen writers but also to interrogate their work from a variety of perspectives.

BUP: Can you offer any thoughts on the format of the series? What do you hope will make this series unique in Irish studies?

Fogarty: There is still a paucity of monographs on leading Irish writers and none at all on certain writers who command a wide readership. This series will be unique in furnishing studies of well-known authors but also up-and-coming writers captured at a significant moment in their careers. In primarily sponsoring monographic investigations of writers, it will consolidate and widen the canon of Irish writers but also question whether fixed canons serve any purpose. The series will connect with the Irish works taught in university classrooms around the world such as Brooklyn, The Gathering, The Country Girls, Portia Coughlan, Translations, and North, but also consider a broad array of authors from Tana French to John Banville and Donal Ryan to Jan Carson.

BUP: Could you briefly describe some of your own scholarly work and interests? 

Fogarty: I trained as an early modern scholar and entered that field when it was being entirely rethought by new historicist, postcolonial, and feminist critics in the late 1980s. This has marked all my subsequent work, even though I am now a Joyce scholar and also have broad interests in Irish Studies.  My publications on Joyce have centered on historicist approaches to his work which draw out the revolutionary aspects and material embeddedness of his writing.  I have edited special issues of journals on Spenser in Ireland, Lady Gregory, Irish Women Novelists, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, and Benedict Kiely.  I have written especially about women writers, including  Eavan Boland, Lady Gregory, Mary Lavin, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Mary O’Donnell, Kate O’Brien, Elizabeth Bowen, Eimear McBride, and Sara Baume, but have also published essays on Colum McCann and Frank McGuinness.  I am currently editing a collection of essays on Flann O’Brien, writing an essay on Joyce and the eighteenth-century epistolary novel, and have co-edited with Marisol Morales-Ladrón the first collection of essays on the Irish novelist Deirdre Madden which is forthcoming from Manchester University Press. 

Anne Fogarty is Professor of James Joyce Studies at University College Dublin and founder and co-editor with Luca Crispi of the Dublin James Joyce Journal. She has written widely on aspects of twentieth century and contemporary Irish writing, including on Eavan Boland, Colum McCann, Colm Tóibín, Mary Lavin, Roddy Doyle, Eimear McBride, Frank McGuinness, and Emma Donoghue.

Those interested in the origins of the Contemporary Irish Writers series and its predecessor, the Irish Writers Series, might enjoy this post.

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Continued praise for Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen by Jocelyn Harris

Jocelyn Harris’s new book, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen, continues to receive high accolades. Read on for praise of the recent Bucknell Press publication.

Please follow this link to a page where you can purchase Jocelyn Harris’s new book:
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781611488395/Satire-Celebrity-and-Politics-in-Jane-Austen

In Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen, Jocelyn Harris argues that Jane Austen was a satirist, a celebrity-watcher, and a keen political observer. In Mansfield Park, she appears to base Fanny Price on Fanny Burney, criticize the royal heir as unfit to rule, and expose Susan Burney’s cruel husband through Mr. Price. In Northanger Abbey, she satirizes the young Prince of Wales as the vulgar John Thorpe; in Persuasion, she attacks both the regent’s failure to retrench, and his dangerous desire to become another Sun King. For Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Austen may draw on the actress Dorothy Jordan, mistress of the pro-slavery Duke of Clarence, while her West Indian heiress in Sanditonmay allude to Sara Baartman, who was exhibited in Paris and London as “The Hottentot Venus,” and adopted as a test case by the abolitionists. Thoroughly researched and elegantly written, this new book by Jocelyn Harris contributes significantly to the growing literature about Austen’s worldiness by presenting a highly particularized web of facts, people, texts, and issues vital to her historical moment.

REVIEWS

“[Jocelyn Harris is a giant who looms] large in the landscape of Austen scholarship…. [Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen positions] Austen as a writer of political import…because she commented incisively on the corruption of national leaders in her own day…. [These] chapters raise the important question of whether women’s celebrity, including Austen’s own, is received differently from men’s by the public.”
—Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature (Fall 2020)

“Harris’s monograph represents the crowning achievement of a career devoted to placing Austen’s novels in rich historical context…. In her newest book, Harris presents Austen as much more keenly aware of politics and celebrity figures—from bestselling novelists to the royal family—than has hitherto been recognized…. To re-encounter Austen’s works through the eyes of a scholar as knowledgeable as Harris is a bracing experience. She establishes with admirable thoroughness the degree of likelihood of every possible influence and parallel that she delineates. And she acknowledges scrupulously how her ideas intersect with and build on those of fellow scholars. The result is a master class in scholarly thinking and research.”
—European Romantic Review (2019)

“Ultimately, this book has much to teach Austen enthusiasts and scholars, as well as general readers interested in British literature, European history, and women’s studies…. Harris’s study provides a fascinating comparative narrative that illuminates Austen’s works in light of the events and lives of famous people from her time. Harris’ book fully captures the gamut of Austen’s life as well as her works, for it offers us an opportunity to expand our thinking on all of Austen’s writings —from her juvenilia up to her last piece of writing, her verses on Winchester. The result is a fresh way of seeing Austen as a flexible writer, editor, and reviser who taps into current events and furtively—and satirically—tucks them into her tales.”
—Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal (Spring 2020)

“Jane Austen has changed a lot in the past couple of decades. Not many scholars (and hopefully fewer and fewer readers) attach much credence to the image of the retired spinster, marooned in villages and rectories in the backwaters of Hampshire, but equally not many have tried to alter our perception of Austen quite as dramatically as Jocelyn Harris does in this remarkable book…. In all of her arguments, Harris uses painstaking research to connect [then-current] events to Austen, her movements and her letters, to show why they might have worked their way into the fiction…. By the end, we are presented with two Austens: one removed from the world of contemporary events and aspiring to some higher, universal plane, and one embracing current affairs, satire, and celebrity. There is, as Harris admits, no way of knowing which is right, and the ‘truth’ will in all probability lie somewhere between the two, but no one who reads this scholarly, meticulous book will ever discount the possibility that a very different Austen lies beneath the official family portrait.”
—The Cambridge Quarterly (2019)

“Harris is well established as a guide to the wider thought-world of the author…. In her latest book her expertise and questing curiosity are brought to bear on a set of themes that have not generally been associated with Austen.”
—Emma Clery, University of Southampton; Times Literary Supplement (February 2018)

“New Zealand academic Jocelyn Harris’s excellent Satire, Celebrity and Politics in Jane Austen published early this year shows what a keen political observer Austen was, and how her interest in the celebrities of the day, such as actress Dorothea Jordan and Sara Baartman (an African woman with very large buttocks who was exhibited in English freak shows as “the Hottentot Venus”), influenced and inspired characters in Austen’s fiction.”
—Susannah Fullerton; The Australian (July 2017)

“[T]his is a wonderfully rich and convincing presentation of much new material. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above.
—CHOICE

“This book is an enjoyable one for anyone who has read Austen’s novels or watched productions of them on television…. Jocelyn Harris is an excellent writer. For an academic study, the usual jargon and allusions to various post-modern theories are happily absent in this book. It is packed with detail and citations. It’s is valuable for Cook enthusiasts because of its chapter on Molesworth Phillips, and the broader considerations surrounding the death of Captain Cook.”
—Cook’s Log

“Satire, Celebrity, and Politics is unfailingly fascinating in its dissection of Jane Austen, the satirist, and the text is enhanced by a well-chosen selection of contemporary portraits and gloriously scurrilous cartoons. The ‘stories behind the stories’ always make for an interesting read and Harris has produced a book that will be read with great pleasure by academics and devoted readers alike.”
—Jane Austen’s Regency World

“Burney scholars will find Jocelyn Harris’s latest book Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen an enriching read.… [It] responds to, and expands upon, the work of critics who have demonstrated that Austen was so much more than the domestic, apolitical novelist her family portrayed her to be.… Harris reinforces the image of Austen as a well-informed and sharp-minded woman who was seriously engaged with the socio-political issues of the day…. With a keen eye for detail, Harris exposes the subtle connections between the unrestrained, public laughter surrounding such figures and the more restrained, oblique laughter in the novels, thereby deepening our understanding of Austen’s skill for sature in the process.”
—Elles Smallgoor, Burney Newsletter

“Jocelyn Harris’s book, which reflects on the ways in which Jane Austen’s work may have been influenced by what she knew about certain celebrities of her time, is a pleasant and accessible read…. On the whole…I would emphasise the thorough research into the socio-historical context that has gone into this book, and which makes it of interest to anyone who would like to know more of current events during Austen’s lifetime.”
—Rita J. Dashwood, The Jane Austen Society (Spring 2018)

“In Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen, University of Otago Emeritus Professor Jocelyn Harris approaches Austen in terms of the world in which she lived, using what is known of everything from her social networks to contemporary media portrayals of prominent figures, to argue that her novels are much more than mere domestic dramas…. Although primarily an academic text, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics has much of interest here for the lay reader too. The glimpses it offers into regency England and diversions into topics as diverse as the disputed accounts of Cook’s death and the misbehavior of the Prince Regent are as interesting as the primary analysis…. [Harris’s formidable thesis] is standing its ground in the fierce world of Austen scholarship.”
—Cushla McKinney, The Otago Daily Times (July 2018)

“Harris’s impressive new book, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen (2017), builds on the work of her pioneering 1989 study, deepening our sense of what Austen may have been up to in crafting her novels…. Harris’s well-written, deeply researched, and timely book has a great deal to offer…. It is difficult to find any scholarship on these subjects that is simultaneously attentive to Austen’s fiction, to the history of theory and criticism, and to the minutiae of Austen family history and biography. Harris weaves all of these kinds of evidence and arguments together to great effect…. For years to come, readers and critics will be weighing the massive number of new insights in this book, troubling through their implications for our future readings of Austen, politics, history, and popular culture.”
—Devoney Looser, Arizona State University

“Last year’s bicentenary commemoration of the death of Jane Austen has given her readers many reasons for celebration. This book is one of them…. Jocelyn Harris in this careful, enthusiastic and learned book shows how Jane Austen achieves vision through observation and creates a new and distinctive world from a recognisable world.”
—Tony Voss, Jane Austen Society of Australia

“Jocelyn Harris has studied the influences on Jane Austen’s writing for a long time…. [Her] thoroughness and detailed and intriguing analysis are exceptional. The text is dense. Her sleuth work is incredible and includes compelling evidence…. The twenty-first century student of Jane Austen will never read her in the same way after reflecting on Jocelyn Harris’s latest book.”
—Sylvia Kasey Marks, NYU Tandon School of Engineering

“Like most members of JASNA, I think that I know Jane Austen, but after reading Jocelyn Harris’s latest book, I’m not so sure…. For many readers…Jane Austen is isolated, safely removed from controversies of personality or politics. Jocelyn Harris overturns that view of Jane Austen and demonstrates just how connected the author was to her contemporary scene. Harris’s work…will prompt scholars to penetrate deeper into her suggested connections.”
—David Wheeler, JASNA News

“Throughout Satire, Celebrity, and Politics, we are thoroughly persuaded of Harris’s main argument that Austen ‘was a politician, in the former sense of a person keenly interested in practical politics….’ [Harris conducted] capacious research.”
—Melissa Rampelli, Holy Family University

“Harris’s thoroughness and detailed and intriguing analysis are exceptional…. Her sleuth work is incredible…. The twenty-first century student of Jane Austen will never read her in the same way.”
—Sylvia Kasey Marks, NYU Tandon School of Engineering, The Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer (March 2019)

“Harris’ book offers a fascinating study of Austen’s engagement with the cult of celebrity of her time.”
—Jennifer Golightly, Colorado College, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research (Winter 2016)