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Notes On Contributors 2008

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Kathleen Adams was Secretary of the Fellowship from 1968 until her retirement in the spring of this year. She initiated the Review in 1970, was editor until 1981 and co-editor 1982-91. She published Those of Us Who Loved Her in 1980 and A Community of Interest: The Story of the George Eliot Fellowship 1930-2000 in 2000.

Juliette Atkinson is a teaching assistant at University College London, where she recently completed her PhD thesis on Victorian Biography and the Representation of 'Obscure' Lives, which is partly concerned with the manner in which Thomas Carlyle and George Eliot influenced nineteenth-century life-writing.

Michael …

Review Of Women And Authorship In Revolutionary America And Learning To Stand And Speak: Women, Education, And Public Life In America’S Republic, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Two books the 1980s had a deep influence on the study of American women novelists of the early republic and the antebellum era. Mary Kelley’s Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America (1984) presented twelve popular women novelists as deeply conflicted about their role as public producers of culture. The chapters in Cathy Davidson’s Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (1986) that treat women novelists and their readers as worthy of serious analysis significantly altered the course of scholarship on the early American novel. Angela Vietto clearly frames Women and Authorship in Revolutionary …

Uncoverings: The Research Papers Of The American Quilt Study Group, Volume 29 (2008), Laurel Horton, Susan Price Miller, Aimee E. Newell, Sue C. Cummings, Marin F. Hanson, Arlesa J. Shephard, Loretta B. Chase

Uncoverings Journal

Preface by Laurel Horton

The Circuit Rider's Quilt: Reality and Romance by Susan Price Miller

More than Warmth: Gift Quilts by Aging Women in Antebellum America by Aimee E. Newell

Irene Post: Quilt Artist and Neighbor of Bertha Stenge by Sue C. Cummings

Modern, Yet Anti-Modern: Two Sides of Late-Nineteenthand Early-Twentieth-Century Quiltmaking by Marin F. Hanson

Quilts for McKinley: Women's Involvement in Politics by Arlesa J. Shephard

Quilts in Transition: A Study of Strafford County, New Hampshire, Probate Inventories by Loretta B. Chase

Contributors

Index

Review Of Exposing Men: The Science And Politics Of Male Reproduction By Cynthia R. Daniels, Rose Holz

Women's and Gender Studies Program: Faculty Publications

To begin with, although Daniels's work could be categorized as political science, part of this book's appeal is that it addresses what we historians might call a massive hole in the historiography--in this case, regarding men's health. In other words, we just do not know very much about this topic, nor do we know much about its history. Ironically, this dearth of knowledge stands in stark contrast to the wealth of information about the history of women's health--something that might seem a bit odd given the feminist argument that history has more often been about men than about women. However, …

Gender-Linked Stereotypic Content In Youth Magazines, Devon Cadwell Bazata

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

This study evaluates youth magazines aimed at or read by three different target audiences--boys, girls, boys and girls--and examines whether the magazines reinforce gender stereotypes, and whether the intended audience makes a difference in that reinforcement or lack of it. First, this study established a theoretical framework upon which the selection of the target age group for the sample was based. Piaget and Kohlberg's seminal work, and Gilligan and other feminist theory, is considered in the context of the results. Second, it defined stereotypic, counter-stereotypic, and gender-neutral attributes based on five previous peer-reviewed studies dating from 1957-1975, and confirmed the …

Gender Identity Disorder, Jennifer Mckitrick

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

According to the DSM IV, a person with GID is a male or female that feels a strong identification with the opposite sex and experiences considerable stress because of their actual sex (Task Force on DSM-IV and American Psychiatric Association, 2000). The way GID is characterized by health professionals, patients, and lay people belies certain assumptions about gender that are strongly held, yet nevertheless questionable. The phenomena of transsexuality and sex-reassignment surgery puts into stark relief the following question: “What does it mean to be male or female?” But while the answer to that question may be informed by contemplation …

Review Of Reclaiming Authorship: Literary Women In America, 1850-1900, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Like Naomi Z. Sofer's Making the America of Art (2005) and Anne E. Boyd's Writing for Immorality (2004), Susan Williams Reclaiming Authorship seeks to recreate and analyze how American women authors in the second half of the nineteenth century understood their own authorship. All three include Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Constance Fenimore Woolson as subjects, but Williams includes authors who did not conceive of their authorship in a high cultural mode (Maria Cummins, Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Abigail Dodge), and she traverses the careers of Alcott and Phelps so as to emphasize their movements in and out of …

Awakening The 'Mere Pulsation Of Desire' In Silas Marner, Melissa Raines

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In George Eliot's Middlemarch, the narrator reflects on those crucial events which shape pathways in our lives. For Tertius Lydgate, this occurs with the chance opening of a book to a particular page:

[T]he first passage that drew his eyes was on the valves of the heart. He was not much acquainted with valves of any sort, but he knew that valvae were folding doors, and through this crevice came a sudden light startling him with his first vivid notion of finely adjusted mechanism in the human frame.'

For Lydgate, this seminal instant is the one which inspires him to …

Review Of George Eliot, Rosemary Ashton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Oxford's publication of 'Bite-sized biographies of Britain's most fascinating historical figures' brings to mind Pascal's famous apology for the length of his letter: 'I have not had time to make it shorter'. Would Rosemary Ashton, who has written both long and short biographies, agree that it is more taxing to produce a 'bite-sized' account that a long one? Brevity demands clear aims, selection of salient points, stringent compression. These tests Rosemary Ashton passes with enviable ease, combining compression with elegance. She begins by summarizing her aims: 'In this study, originally written for the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, I …

Review Of George Eliot And Nineteenth-Century Psychology: Exploring The Unmapped Country, Michael Davis

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Michael Davis packs a dense yet deft discussion of George Eliot's relationship with the scientific theories of mind of her contemporaries into this short book. Revisiting the novels and essays, and to a lesser extent the letters, he adds to our understanding of her place as a thinking novelist by his careful negotiation of intellectual positions, his weaving of the discussion among such Eliot contemporaries as Darwin, Spencer, Lewes, Huxley, Alexander Bain, W. B. Carpenter, and E. S. Dallas, and his engagement with recent studies in the field by Gillian Beer, Sally Shuttleworth, K. K. Collins, Tess Cosslett, David Carroll, …

Review Of 142 Strand: A Radical Address In Victorian London & George Eliot In Germany,1854-55: 'Cherished Memories', Rosemary Ashton, Gerlinde Roder-Bolton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The outlines of Marian Evans's life in the years immediately preceding her emergence as George Eliot are well-known-her work for the Westminster Review, her relationships with Chapman, Spencer and Lewes, and then her departure with the latter to Germany in July 1854. What these two studies do in their different ways is fill in the picture with fascinating detail. In focusing on the house that John Chapman rented from 1847 to 1854 and from which he ran the Westminster Review and his publishing business, Rosemary Ashton recreates the circle of radical intellectuals that the future novelist came into contact with …

Address At Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Garden, Nuneaton 11 June 2006, Tim Over

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

May I begin by thanking the Fellowship for the invitation to be the principal guest at the annual wreath-laying ceremony. My association with today's event goes back over a number of years bringing students to lay a floral tribute at the obelisk. Indeed, when I first came more schools were involved. It is fitting that the secondary school named after many would say the greatest Victorian woman novelist, still comes along faithfully to the Memorial Garden. Kathleen and Bill Adams have visited the school, talked to groups of students and presented the school with a portrait of George Eliot and …

Review Of George Eliot: A Critic's Biography, Barbara Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Barbara Hardy has been thinking and writing about George Eliot for about fifty years, always in ways that push against reigning orthodoxies, and that immerse us in particular patterns of imagery, affect, or narrative organization that make the substance and texture of George Eliot's work come alive. Her new book is no exception. This 'anti-biography', as she calls it, is an attempt 'to redress the balance' of conventional biography by focusing on the effect of George Eliot's life on her writing, rather than on retelling the story of her life (xi). In fact, it redresses more balances than that. Hardy …

Review Of Identifying The Remains: George Eliot's Death In The London Religious Press, K.K. Collins

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is a detailed examination of the various religious-based obituaries which followed George Eliot's death in December 1880. It exposes misinformation, largely biographical, examines bias, confusion, open and concealed concerns, direct, responsible and weighted theological arguments, dubious and inconclusive conclusions, the forms and themes of the debate about the beliefs of a major writer. Collins's dissertation-like topic is informed with foreground and background research: his footnotes read as tellingly as his text and provide wide-ranging and perceptive quotation.

He considers the idea, derived from Richard Simpson, that the appearance of George Eliot's name on the title-pages of Scenes of Clerical …

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 19 November 2006- The Toast To The Immortal Memory, Adrian Litvinoff

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I was surprised, honoured and delighted by the invitation to join you today and propose the toast to the immortal memory of George Eliot. I am no George Eliot expert, or indeed scholar, although I am an enthusiast. She is, after all, Warwickshire's other world-class writer, and it is tempting to think how much better known she might have been in her home county had Shakespeare been born in Stoke-on-Trent, say, rather than Stratford-upon-Avon.

My first encounter with George Eliot was while taking' A' level English at school. I still recall my dawning surprise and admiration as I, an inexperienced …

The George Eliot Centenary Of 1919, Margaret Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The centenary of George Eliot's birth in 1919 was recognized as an opportunity to commemorate her connection with the parts of Warwickshire where she was born and spent her early life. While her association with Coventry and Nuneaton had been noted during her lifetime and in obituaries, and emphasized again when George Eliot's Life as related in her letters and journals, arranged and edited by her husband J. W. Cross was published in 1885, there were some inhibitions about too enthusiastically claiming an agnostic libertine as a local celebrity. Both Nuneaton and Coventry chose to celebrate the centenary, and reconstruction …

Review Of Middlemarch In The Twenty-First Century, Karen Chase

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This set of eight original essays engages afresh with a novel that many readers might claim to know well, in such a way as to make 'the lights and shadows ... fall with a certain difference' (chap. xxi). Karen Chase is well-known for her own studies of George Eliot, not least George Eliot: 'Middlemarch' (1991). Here, she confines herself to an introductory essay, which cogently states the brief given to her contributors, to reflect on how Middlemarch can be read in the twenty-first century. 'Who besides Eliot has been better aware of the alteration of objects given a change in …

Review Of George Eliot And The Discourses Of Medievalism, Judith Johnston

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot and the Discourses of Medievalism argues that Eliot abandons realism in her last two novels in favour of medievalism, and that recognizing the presence and function of medieval discourses in Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda enables subversive political readings. Johnston positions these readings against criticism of the novels that identifies a collapse of narrative coherence and characterization in Eliot's 'failure' to sustain their apparent realism. In contrast, Johnston proposes that Eliot's manipulation of medievalism signals neither the failure of realism nor realism's antithesis. Johnston argues that the discourses of medievalism that Eliot manipulates share a facility for transformation: hagiography …

Notes On Contributors- 2007

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Kathleen Adams has been Secretary of the Fellowship since 1968. She initiated the Review in 1970, was editor until 1981 and co-editor 1982-91. She published Those of Us Who Loved Her in 1980 and A Community of Interest: The Story of the George Eliot Fellowship 1930-2000 in 2000.

Rosemary Ashton is Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College London. She is the author of acclaimed critical biographies of George Eliot (1996) and G. H. Lewes (1991). Her many publications on George Eliot include The Mill on the Floss: A Natural History (1990), and editions of Middlemarch (Penguin, …

The Thirty-Fifth George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 2006- Glimpses Of Life At 142 Strand, Rosemary Ashton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

1. John Chapman and the Strand in 1847

24 July 1847 the following advertisement appeared in the weekly periodical, the Athenaeum:

MR CHAPMAN, Bookseller and Publisher, begs to announce that he has REMOVED his Business from 121 Newgate Street, to more spacious premises on the South side of the STRAND, No 142, a few doors West of Somerset House; and requests, therefore, that all communications may be forwarded to the latter address.

For the next seven years John Chapman's 'spacious premises' - consisting of the bookselling business and publishing house, his family home, and rooms for literary lodgers - was …

Journal Of Women In Educational Leadership, Vol. 5, No. 1-January 2007

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

No abstract provided.

Louisa May Alcott [From Oxford Encyclopedia Of Women In World History], Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

American fiction writer best known as the author of the girls’ novel Little Women (1868-1869). Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, to Abigail May Alcott and the progressive educator Bronson Alcott. The March family of Little Women was an idealized version of her own family, which was far less stable and more mobile. Alcott’s father’s idealistic education, and reform ventures regularly failed, necessitating the family’s frequent moves, and she and her mother increasingly provided the family’s economic support. Her childhood and adolescence were split primarily between Concord and Boston, Massachusetts, where she was deeply influenced by members of her father’s …

Willa Cather [From The Oxford Encyclopedia Of Women In World History], Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

American novelist, Born in Virginia, Cather moved with her family to Nebraska in 1883 and is best known as a novelist of the American prairie. However, her life history and literary output belie this characterization. As a student at the University of Nebraska she published short stories and poems and worked as a journalist. This experience earned her a position at the Home Monthly magazine in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When the magazine failed, she stayed in Pittsburgh, first returning to newspaper journalism and then teaching high school. For several years she lived in the family home of Isabelle McClung, a young …

Introduction To Signet Classic's The Song Of The Lark By Willa Cather (2007), Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

In May of 1912, Willa Cather traveled to Winslow, Arizona, to visit her brother, Douglass, who worked for the railroad. The year before, she had begun a leave of absence from McClure's Magazine, where she had been an editor since 1906, so that she could focus her energies on writing fiction. Although she had been publishing short fiction regularly since 1892, her first novel-the cosmopolitan, somewhat derivative Alexander's Bridge ‒ did not appear until 1912. Feeling tired and unwell, she, like many other Americans, sought renewal in the dry air and open spaces of the desert. After six years in …

From The Cloister To The World: Mainstreaming Early Modern French Convent Writing: An État Présent, Thomas M. Carr

French Language and Literature Papers

The article is an overview on recent scholarship dealing Ancien Régime convent writing. Although nuns constitute a large percentage of the seventeenth-century women authors whose writings were published, except for a few figures like Marie de l’Incarnation Guyart or the Port-Royal nuns, their texts have been largely ignored, even by scholars engaged in the retrieval of women’s writing during the period. This is in contrast to Italian and Hispanic studies, where the contribution of convent writing is acknowledged as central. The état present discusses reasons for this neglect, the methodological challenges and perspectives for further research, along with a 120 …

Uncoverings: The Research Papers Of The American Quilt Study Group, Volume 28 (2007), Joanna E. Evans, Virginia Gunn, Eleanor Knowles Dugan, Jonathan Gregory, Lynne Shultis, Carol Williams Gebel, Mary Horton Robare, Laurel Horton

Uncoverings Journal

Preface by Joanna E. Evans

The Gingham Dog or the Calico Cat: Grassroots Quilts of the Early Twentieth Century by Virginia Gunn

Rachel's Tat by Eleanor Knowles Dugan

The Joy of Beauty: The Creative Life and Quilts of Rose Kretsinger by Jonathan Gregory

Analysis of a Late Nineteenth-Century Redwork Quilt Top by Lynne Shultis

The Princess Feather: Exploring a Quilt Design by Carol Williams Gebel

Cheerful and Loving Persistence: Two Historical Quaker Quilts by Mary Horton Robare

The Underground Railroad Quilt Code: The Experience of Belief by Laurel Horton

Authors and editor

Index

Regional Advocacy Networks And The Protocol On The Rights Of Women In Africa, Melinda Adams, Alice J. Kang

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

While there has been a significant amount of research on transnational feminist activism at the global level, many feminist transnational advocacy networks are mobilizing within world regions. The lack of attention to the regional level has created a considerable imbalance in research on transnational activism. This article's first objective is to define regional advocacy networks (RANs) as a collection of individuals and organizations from the same world region working together toward a common goal. The article's second objective is to explore the conditions under which RANs are influential. We investigate conditions for RAN success through a case study of an …

A Checklist Of Published Writings In French By Early Modern Nuns, Thomas M. Carr

French Language and Literature Papers

The great amount of writing by early modern nuns that was published during the Ancien Régime is underexploited because no master list of it exists. For example, at least ninety books by some sixty different nuns were published between 1600 and 1700, and many more that have been published since. The Checklist of over 300 items is an effort to fill this gap. Besides books authored by nuns, it includes many biographies that contain samples of their writings. Short occasional texts, such as death notices, lettres circulaires, and legal factums have generally been excluded, however. Unless another location is noted, …

Female Superintendents: Historic Barriers And Prospects For The Future, Stephen K. Miller, Youlanda C. Washington, Jeanna R. Fiene

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

This paper addresses the historic under representation of female superintendents. The primary focus is the legacy of discrimination, in which the barriers to female advancement in a traditionally male field are described. Particular attention is given to three different models of male dominance that have been developed to explain how and/or why women have been excluded from top positions in educational administration. In part two, recognition of the importance of women's contributions to evolving theory in educational administration and a description of the feminine leadership model is offered, wherein women utilize flexible web-like structures, empower others, and prioritize children and …

First Things First: Writing Strategies--Drops Of Blood, Marilyn L. Grady

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

Recently, I was gifted with the best writing quotation of the season. It follows. "I don't know how many times I read this Gene Fowler quote: 'Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead'" (Weinberg, 2006, p. 8). The quote captures the truth of the writing enterprise. It isn't easy. In fact, if you don't bleed a little and feel some pain, you aren't putting enough effort into your work. There are a slew of adages about effort and work. All hold a kernel of truth …