SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900

In SEL's latest issue, Sheldon’s article centers readings of the Black abolitionist Robert Wedderburn, particularly his 1824 The Horrors of Slavery, to “historicize the family as an organ for the extraction of value under plantation slavery.” Read now on Project MUSE! muse.jhu.edu/article/983663

Check out the full article on Project MUSE. muse.jhu.edu/article/983664

Image: Morning Glory with Black (1926), Georgia O'Keeffe, The Cleveland Museum of Art. Credit Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr. 1958.42

In SEL 64.1, Miller’s article discusses flowers that resist being useful for reproduction in Victorian poetry. Miller argues that such a depiction of “unproductive flowering challenges the anthropocentric, agricultural value system that underwrites the reproductive imperative.”

Read the full article on Project MUSE! muse.jhu.edu/article/983661 Image Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington Hogarth, William. 1732. A Harlot's Progress: pl.1.

In SEL's latest issue, McCall's article reads The Fortunate Transport to analyze mid-eighteenth-century connections between labor and race. McCall contends “The novel’s many reproducing women help us situate gendered labor at the heart of eighteenth-century geopolitical and fictional worldbuilding.”

SEL makes the best conference-traveling companion! Check out our latest winter issue (64.1) on Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/issue/56448

🚨 New Issue Alert! SEL is pleased to announce our latest issue Winter 2026 (64.1) is now available. A huge thank you to our guest editors Ashley Miller, Doreen Thierauf, and Livia Arndal Woods! Read now on Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/journal/178 and stay tuned for more updates on content!

NEW ISSUE OUT NOW SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 64.1, Winter 2026 Special Issue: Reproduction Without Bodies, Bodies Without Reproduction CONTRIBUTORS Amy Kahrmann Huseby Ashley Miller Doreen Thierauf Livia Arndal Woods Hannah Chambers Sarah-Gray Lesley Lu Cardelli Delilah Bermudez Brataas Li Qi Peh Jolene Zigarovich Srimayee Basu McCall Joellen Delucia Ryan Kaveh Sheldon Ashley Miller Doreen Thierauf Susan Fraiman Gayle Salamon Heather Meek HOPKINS PRESS JOURNALS www.press.jhu.edu/journals/sel-studies-english-literature-1500-1900

NEW ISSUE OUT NOW
SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900
64.1, Winter 2026
Special Issue: Reproduction Without Bodies, Bodies Without Reproduction
tinyurl.com/37jaajta


CONTRIBUTORS
Amy Kahrmann Huseby
Ashley Miller
Doreen Thierauf
Livia Arndal Woods
Hannah Chambers
Lu Cardelli
and more

#RenSA26 was such a great time. Thanks again to organizers @rsaorg.bsky.social for all of your hard work. If you're looking for something to fill that post-conference void, consider submitting your work to SEL! Check out SEL's website for our submission guidelines.

Background photograph of the Golden Gate Bridge. Red text in upper left corner reads "Happy RSA 2026 from SEL" and yellow text below that reads "Have a great conference." Bottom left corner has red logo for Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

Happy #RenSA26 to all who's attending! Thanks to the amazing organizers at @rsaorg.bsky.social. We are excited for everyone's work!!!

SEL's partner publication, Marginalia, has a new interview series. Take a first listen to our upcoming conversation with Dr. Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, Assistant Professor of English and author of Overdetermined: How Indian English Literature Becomes Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone.

Call for Papers! Consider submitting to a themed issue on Victorian Personhood(s). This call welcomes essays that consider the troublesome conception of Victorian personhood, understood as a legal but also a literary-cultural property. Find the full CFP shared on SEL's website sel.rice.edu/open-cfps

Spooner finds a "surpising" echo of a Gothic trope characterizing a critical paradigm of this scholarship: "19th-century Gothic texts are positioned not only as the distant progenitors of contemporary Gothic texts but also as anticipating, or offering a trenchant commentary on, 21st-century culture"

Celikkol remarks that "methodologies and topics are so diverse that it is hard to imagine how it was once possible to group scholarship on literature and the economy/economics under a single moniker, New Economic Criticism, or as a branch of a single critical approach, New Historicism."

Behlman finds that several texts feature their "critics' willingness to front their own personal, even physical responses to poems, and at length." A common thread of note: "an emphasis on the bodily, experiential, emotional, and philosophical work that poetry--and only poetry--can do."

Want to keep up with recent scholarship in Nineteenth-Century Studies? Check out our three thematic reviews essays from SEL's latest autumn 2025 issue, covering everything from poetics, to industrialization, to the gothic. Now available on Project MUSE!

Have you checked out our latest issue on Nineteenth-Century Neology yet? Swipe for a fun peek at some neologisms explored in this issue and leave a comment with your favorite words!! Read SEL's Autumn 2025 issue now on Project MUSE.

Cover of Cornish Gothic which features a black and white photo of a sinking ship

'richly researched, literate in material contexts, and engagingly written.'

An excellent review of 'Cornish Gothic: 1830-1913' by @joanpassey.bsky.social in Catherine Spooner's 'Thematic Review' in the most recent issue of @sel1500to1900.bsky.social.

Light purple background with swirling purple and pink lines around edges. Front page of article with award ribbon graphic titled "Almanac Time and Growing Older in Andrew Marvell's Mower Poems" by Margaret Summerfield. Left aligned heading reads "Early Career Scholar Essay Award" and subheading states "Read now on Project Muse"

🎉 SEL is pleased to announce that the Early Career Scholar Essay Award for volume 63 is awarded to Margaret Summerfield for the Winter 2025 essay "Almanac Time and Growing Older in Andrew Marvell's Mower Poems." Find the full article on Project MUSE! doi.org/10.1353/sel....

SEL is excited to announce the winner of the volume 63 Monroe Kirk Spears Award, for the Autumn 2025 essay "The Soulzight of Neologistic Nostalgia in Thomas Hardy and William Barnes," is Veronica Alfano. Check out the full article on Project MUSE buff.ly/4ZrdXFP

Centered text that reads 2025 Robert Lowry Patten Award Winner. Book cover for Kevis Goodman's Pathologies of Motion: Historical Thinking in Medicine, Aesthetics, and Poetics. Dark blue background with gold filigree trim and gold laurels enclosing book cover

🏆 It's award season!🏅 SEL is pleased to announce the winner of the 2025 Robert Lowry Patten Award: Kevis Goodman for Pathologies of Motion: Historical Thinking in Medicine, Aesthetics, and Poetics (Yale Univ. Press, 2023 @yalebooks.bsky.social). #SEL1500to1900 #AcademicSky

#MLA2026 was a blast! Thanks again to all those who made it happen @modernlanguage.bsky.social. If you're looking for a sign to send your work out for publication, here it is! SEL welcomes the opportunity to consider your work sel.rice.edu/submission-g...

#AcademicSky #SEL1500to1900 #callforpapers

A yellow background with confetti and a silhouette image of the Toronto skyline. Also contains a logo for the MLA 2026 Convention. The text says "Happy MLA 2026 from SEL. Have a great conference!

🎉 Happy #MLA2026 to all! Thanks to the organizers @modernlanguage.bsky.social for all of your hard work. Wishing everyone a great conference!
#MLA26 #AcademicSky #SEL1500to1900 #literarystudies

SEL is excited to announce the release of our Autumn 2025 issue, 63.4 all about Neologisms. A huge thank you to our guest editors Padma Rangarajan and Michele Speitz! Read now on @ProjectMuse.bsky.social. Stay tuned for more updates on content and contributors! @hopkinspress.bsky.social

🚨New cover alert! In honor of our 65th anniversary, our Winter 2026 issue (64.1) features our first new cover. This themed issue, "Reproduction without Bodies, Bodies without Reproduction," is edited by guest editors Doreen Thierauf, Ashley Miller, and Livia Arndal Woods! #SEL1500to1900 #AcademicSky

What a wonderful event #NAVSA2025 Thanks to all who worked to make it happen @navsa2025.bsky.social 🙌 If you are looking for a sign to send that paper out for publication 👉 This is it! SEL welcomes the opportunity to consider your work sel.rice.edu/submission-g...

image for NAVSA 2025 conference theme Aftermaths with greeting from SEL: Happy NAVSA 2025

image of Thursday schedule for NAVSA 2025 with arrow pointing to 7pm Welcome Reception inviting you to end your day at the Welcome Reception

Call to Submit your work to SEL, visit sel.rice.edu, and have a great conference at NAVSA 2025

Happy #NAVSA2025 to all! Thanks to @navsa2025.bsky.social organizers - excited for everyone's work 👀 See you at tonight's reception! 🎈🥳

It was very great to talk w/ the amazing SEL managing editor Kelly McKisson about institutions & pandemic-time in dialogue w work by @marymullen.bsky.social, @annakornbluh.bsky.social @mltondre.bsky.social, @devingarofalo.bsky.social, Liz Miller, Barbara Leckie, & others

@sel1500to1900.bsky.social

Today is National Coming Out Day, and we're reading an article about one of the most famous stories of (maybe (not)) coming out ever told,:Twelfth Night! Jami Ake's "Glimpsing a 'Lesbian' Poetics in Twelfth Night" (43.2, pp. 375-94)

As the summer season departs at 1:19PM CT, there's still a chance to make a splash with issue 63.3 at the poolside.

Whether you're relaxing by the pool or going for a cool swim, 63.3 is the ideal companion. Secure your copy and cherish the last hours of summer! @ricehumanities @hopkinspress