Reposted by Victorian Poetry
Between the latest PMLA on Victorian Studies & Its Others and the recent issue of @victorianpoetry.bsky.social I’m not sure any Anglophone lit subfield is as full of critical self-reflection (complimentary!!) as Victorian studies right now. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
Latest issue | PMLA | Cambridge Core
PMLA
![Issue 63.2 of Victorian Poetry is live! The full issue is open access. Its contents are as follows:
EMMA DAVENPORT, "Crediting Toru Dutt's Poetic Labor: 'Our Casuarina Tree' and Paradise Lost -- winner of VP's inaugural early career essay prize
MONICA DAVID, "'Your Harlot Roofs': Women, Individualism, and the Towers of Idylls of the King"
JAMES QUINNELL, "'The Burden of the Strain': Self and World in the Poetry of Emily Brontë and Gerard Manley Hopkins"
ELIZABETH K. HELSINGER, "Writing Toward and Against Death: Tennyson and the Rossettis"
BENJAMIN O'DELL, "Verse Novel" -- a Poetry's Parts keyword essay
In other news, Victorian Poetry invites submissions for its 2026 Early Career Prize, which recognizes exemplary essays by untenured scholars of all ranks and affiliations (including NTT and graduate student colleagues). Conferred on an annual basis, the prize carries an award of $500 and publication in Victorian Poetry. Strong essays that do not win the award may also be considered for publication as recommended by the prize committee. Submissions are due 3 August 2026. Scholars wishing to be considered should submit anonymized MS Word essays and brief CVs to victorianpoetryjournal [at] gmail [dot] com with "Early Career Essay Prize" in the subject line. Prior to submission, consult our guidelines for authors. Essays conceived and / or written with the assistance of generative AI are ineligible for the prize.
Winning articles will be selected according to three criteria: (1) significance of contribution; (2) excellence of research, interpretation, and method; and (3) efficacy of presentation. The journal continues to expand its purview to a wider compass of archives and approaches. We welcome work that capaciously (re)interprets the field's originary contexts and reconsiders Victorian poetry (broadly construed) in new, innovative, cross-disciplinary, theoretical, and / or experimental ways.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7wjnxcnrdzx6s4zgv4fyajgp/bafkreifudkgyzgggjxm5t7tykygton66hc6i3aegeur2olq3ty4wdh3ug4)
![The Publisher as Critic
Drawing on my experience as an indie scholar and university press editor, I turn a critical eye on the conditions of scholarly production and consumption in literary studies and, more specifically, Victorian studies. From the “method wars” to “the institutional turn,” university presses, and scholarly publishing more generally, can be, if not a blind spot, then a practical stopping point of discourse about the state and fate of literature and literary studies—not to mention the state [End Page 70] and fate of the university.6 Nor do press workers much appear in spaces like Victorian Poetry, that is, journals and conferences devoted to literary studies. When we do appear, our primary mode is prescriptive.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ohk4pgrwhyhlp7zwrp3rzlj4/bafkreifujdun3llaqxmz2spx6c5dzl7eddjxafxqfbxyrazmoshpg24boi)
![Snippet of essay title & abstract.
TITLE: Literary Studies Inside Out: Notes Toward Critical University’s Press Studies
ABSTRACT: Metadiscourse about literary criticism often presupposes a distinction between academia’s inside, where we find authorized experts, and its outside, where we find “amateurs” and “the public.” Think, for example, of the commonplace that publishers want academic books with “crossover appeal,” that is, the potential to attract the interest and dollars of a mythical lay reader. Such notions and terms, however, obscure the material conditions of intellectual production and consumption today: how adjunctification, the cratering of the tenure-track job market, underfunding, and attacks on education have fostered what I call “manufactured amateurism” within colleges and universities while driving PhDs into contingent and so-called alt-ac positions, as well as other industries entirely. From my vantage as a university press editor and independent scholar, I argue that there are divisions to be drawn not between inside and outside but, rather, between disparate professional roles, labor conditions, markets for scholarly writing, and access to resources. Redressing the striking absence of publishers from discussions of the state and fate of literary studies, I argue, moreover, that university presses have long occupied a constitutive outside, mediating among far-flung communities and collaborating with scholars to sustain fields such as Victorian studies—and journals such as Victorian Poetry—amid and despite widespread institutional disinvestment. Including publishers in these discussions—both engaging us as fellow knowledge workers and critically reflecting on the role of university presses—helps bring into relief the collectivism at the heart of scholarly work and create the [End Page 65] solidarity we desperately need if we want to strengthen and build our shared institutions anew.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7wjnxcnrdzx6s4zgv4fyajgp/bafkreiccjnuk7iyhow3j4f7nnpir4kgcanwn644qgzocdumks5uxezu55y)
![Another stellar issue of VICTORIAN POETRY is now live! The full issue is open access. Its contents are as follows:
ANNA RIVERS, “‘Life whetted upon life’: Mathilde Blind, The Ascent of Man, and the Geological Record”
BLANCA SANTONJA, “Musical Lights: Illuminating the Shadows in Tennyson’s The Princess”
Syntheses of THE YEAR’S WORK in the field, featuring contributions by SUZANNE BAILEY (on Robert Browning), GALIA BENZIMAN (on Thomas Hardy), VERONICA ALFANO (on Gerard Manley Hopkins), FLORENCE S. BOOS (on Pre-Raphaelitism, Dante G. Rossetti, and William Morris), JUSTIN A. SIDER (on Algernon Charles Swinburne), LINDA K. HUGHES (on Alfred Lord Tennyson), and HEATHER BOZANT WITCHER (on women poets)
Victorian Poetry also invites submissions for its 2025 Early Career Essay Prize, which recognizes exemplary essays by untenured scholars of all ranks and affiliations (including contingently employed and graduate student colleagues). Conferred on an annual basis, the prize carries an award of $500 and publication in Victorian Poetry. Strong essays that do not win the award may also be considered for publication as recommended by the prize committee. Applications are due 25 August 2025. Scholars wishing to be considered should submit anonymized MS Word essays and brief CVs to victorianpoetryjournal [at] gmail [dot] com with “Early Career Prize” in the subject line. Prior to submission, please consult our guidelines for authors.
For more information about the journal’s latest initiatives, visit our Scholastica webpage. Direct proposals and queries to journal editor Devin M. Garofalo (University of California, San Diego) at victorianpoetryjournal [at] gmail [dot] com.
Scholastica webpage address: https://victorian-poetry.scholasticahq.com](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7wjnxcnrdzx6s4zgv4fyajgp/bafkreifeo6izxhjf36gktge4w2xuw3njveyar3goroqynkf3ghunqaey5q)
