iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Pay as you can virtual workshop on Shakespeare coming up! www.eventbrite.com/e/shakespear...

eventbrite.com

Shakespeare Now

An Urgent Political Conversation

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

I had to wait to get to my editing software at home to post this but here is Olafur Eliasson’s “Your rainbow panorama” from #Dickenssociety2026 and featuring @drchrislouttit.bsky.social in a brief cameo.

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I ended my #Dickenssociety2026 with a stop off in London to take a class with Dimitri Gruzdev. He killed me, but in the best way possible. Exercising my mind and my body this week!

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Beautiful images shared by Jeremy Parrott in his talk about the Adelphi in London. I will now be doing some side quest literary tourism. #dickenssociety2026

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

“Jo is wandering in a labyrinth of signs and symbols […] he takes revenge on the urban environment by requesting his will be put on the walls ‘wery large.’”

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Céline Prest defines Jo’s not knowing “nothink” as equating to his not existing. Jo is continually defined by negative terms and his body gradually loses its integrity through the narrator’s description. #Dickenssociety2026

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

A symposium first on day 3 of #Dickenssociety2026 : a double panel! Nora Schalkers & Matthias Bauer on the uses of ‘enlightenment’ in Dickens.

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

🎉 I am thrilled to work alongside such wonderful Dickensian scholars as @liliu430.bsky.social who won the Parlow Prize and @saramalton.bsky.social and Meg Cronin who won the Paroissien Prize! 🎉

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Dickensians watching England v. Argentina! ⚽️ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇦🇷#Dickenssociety2026

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Day 2 of #dickenssociety2026 provides a beautiful walk to ARoS museum for our symposium dinner. Denmark is gorgeous!

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I’ll be thinking about this topic as I walk through London later this week after the symposium!

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Thank you, @dickenssociety.bsky.social for letting me talk about ghosts again. I’ll hit a new topic next year.

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Virginia Zimmerman discussing homemade children’s literature, including the Gad’s Hill Gazette’s (produced by Dickens’s younger teenage sons) story on the death of the Dickens’ family dog, Turk. #Dickenssociety2026

Gad’s Hill Gazette printing of the death of Dickens’s dog, Turk.

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Michelle Allen Emerson speaking about Edwin Stanley Brookes, Dickensian actor, elocution teacher, & psychical researcher, who was witness to “Dickensian Miracle.” After losing his voice before a show, 👻 Dickens lended his voice to Brookes a mere 30 minutes prior to the recital. #Dickenssociety2026

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Curly braces were also a topic of note: { As were instances where Dickens draws emphasis with eccentric hyphenation: qui-i-ite, m-m-m-m-music

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Curly braces { were also a topic of discussion (I had no idea they were called that!)

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

“Typographical Exuberance” of serial installments offer excitement for the reader (see below) but Joel Brattin also examines the lack of consistency in Dickens’s textually exuberant writing: Pocket-Breaches or Pocket Breeches? The world may never know. #Dickenssociety2026

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Meoghan Cronin discussing narrators of ‘The Signal-Man’ and Sarah Smith’s ‘The Traveling Post-Office’ of Mugby Junction: each narrator has a compulsion to solve the mystery. They imagine they are subjective but they are not. #Dickenssociety2026

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

In his relationship to Dora, David becomes a mirroring of Murdstone. They both try to mould their wives and end up murdering them. Perhaps it is self-deception that David doesn’t recognize this.

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Natalie McKnight on Dickens’ tendencies to deconstruct binaries: the Shakespearean wise fools, Mr. Dick & Dora, become more emotionally intelligent than the hero of his own novel with their “the mind[s] of the heart”. #Dickenssociety2026

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

‘Dickens Thinking on His Feet’: Edward Grimble discussed how aggression peppers Dickens’ descriptions of walking. The imaginative labor required of him to write was difficult to endure; the need to walk the streets was bound to his writing. #Dickenssociety2026

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Wiktoria Pierzak outlined alternative family models: social surrogacy, neighborly adoption, & families of choice. Pierzak explained how David abandons his alternative lifestyle & childhood with social outlier, Betsy, in favor of social normalcy. #Dickenssociety2026

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Rob Jacklosky dissects Dickens’s humor, pointing out that comedy is structured through incongruity and juxtaposition, and it’s a meeting point between two incompatible frames of reference: to see the world as it is AND to see it slant. #Dickenssociety2026

Slide highlighting Dickens’ letter to John Forster re. “Great Expectations” and Dickens’ comedic crafting.

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Lillian Nader: the brain as the “organ of the mind” versus a “temporary housing for the soul.” Elliotson, intimacy with God, and phrenology all weigh into Dickens’ thoughts & were especially on his mind during “Barnaby Rudge” with John Willet and Barnaby: material brain vs soul #Dickenssociety2026

John Elliotson. “Human Physiology”, 1835

A graph showing heavier use of the word “brain” in Dickens during the years of his friendship with Elliotson

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Mark Cronin on the verbose, amorous description of Belle’s daughter in “X-mas Carol”: “did he not know he was speaking out loud?!” 😂 The narrator of ‘Carol’ exists in an undefined space—fully realized at times, rhetorical device at others. It changes with each Stave. #Dickenssociety2026

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Departing a rather balmy Atlanta (62% humidity) for a similarly balmy Aarhus. At least I’ll feel at home as I sweat. #Dickenssociety2026

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

I love Mugby! It’s so odd. I think you hit the nail on the head with Hardy.

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Oh yes, that’s Grandma Fontaine (neighboring family). She added that Scarlett should be careful of thinking she was afraid of nothing because when you have nothing else to fear or nothing else to love, that’s really the end.

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

I’m reading GWTW for the first time and I have enjoyed Scarlett: she is a hilarious PAIN, hates the war, and also makes some great points about women’s rights. BUT Mitchell’s take on Reconstruction is flawed. Abell explains why and counters with Mitchell’s ATL contemporary, WEB DuBois!

atlantahistorycenter.com

The Dunning School: The Biased Study of Reconstruction that Shaped "Gone With the Wind"

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

The “kids these days” talks have always existed but the tech that led to my brain rot wasn’t portable. The Nintendo stayed plugged in and went off when my parents wanted to watch something. Now, I have to READ TO 18 year olds b/c they can’t understand Macbeth alone due to 24/7 bite sized videos.

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Reposted by Katie Bell 🇵🇸

cait (and adonis) @cait.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

when you're not a morning person but you get a morning person job, everyone tells you you'll get used to waking up early but i'm here to tell you that's a fat fucking lie

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Reposted by Katie Bell 🇵🇸

👻madeline bOoOoOoOodent👻 @oldenoughtosay.com · 08/04/2026

all these universities kept axing medieval history departments as if they thought tyrants beefing with the Pope was going to stop being relevant

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Margaret Mitchell’s book even says that multiple times but people always gloss over that part.

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

The day and respite programs aren’t helpful for me. They leave elders to rot.

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

Just in case my account meets readers looking for the perfect matching of Christopher Lee and MR James for Xmas Eve… archive.org/details/ghos...

archive.org

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

What kind of possum is this? I’m only used to the ones in the American south.

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Reposted by Katie Bell 🇵🇸

ianVisits @ianvisits.co.uk · 03/10/2025

In memoriam...

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

Now, that’s not said to diminish Potter’s work; authors and artists receive inspiration from what they see and read, and this is a perfect example of that in action. In a time where AA artist contributions are being questioned by the establishment, I believe it’s important to see these connections.

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

As a literature researcher, this interweaving of authors, artists, and stories is fascinating to me. To put it simply: because Joel Chandler Harris was in a special position to witness the stories of Georgia slaves, Peter Rabbit was born. We owe much to the oral traditions of American slaves.

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

So, while some readers may find Peter Rabbit to be a British copy of Brer, that isn’t exactly the case, as these stories weren’t Harris’s to begin with; he was merely the person who recorded them (albeit for white audiences).

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

Brer Rabbit often undergoes misfortune, is tricked and taken advantage of by others, but because he is cunning, he always finds a way out and survives.

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

Because of this, he was included in the story telling sessions of these Georgia slaves, which included the long established oral tradition of the stories of anthropomorphic animals. Brer Rabbit has been identified by African American scholars as an allegorical character to the plight of slaves.

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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

Brer Rabbit wasn’t the sole creation of #JoelChandlerHarris. Harris had lived on a Georgia plantation as a young man, and since his mother wasn’t married to his father (and because he had red hair), he wasn’t allowed in the “big house.” He was told to bunk with the slaves.

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