2023 was an especially festive year for the WPHP.
Our otherwise small team seemingly doubled with the inclusion of several new RAs. Emily Molinari rejoined us after a two-year hiatus from the team; Timon Glaesser joined from the Beedie School of Business and has been instrumental in creating our visualization data; Kanksha Chawla, Julia Gorospe, and Serena Spacek have all joined as undergraduate students and have been making strides in checking our Title records. And, lastly, Andrew Gardener and Salena Wiener, have each joined the team as our most recent Front End Developer and English PhD candidate, respectively.
We would also like to extend praise to our current RAs: Isabelle Burrows has joined Concordia’s History MA program in Montreal, while Isabelle (Belle) Eist joined SFU's English Department as an MA candidate. Tammy T. took a one-year hiatus from SFU to intern for the publishing giant Simon & Schuster in Toronto. Congratulations, all!
We are also excited to share that our previous Project Manager and now Lead Editor, Dr. Kandice Sharren, has joined the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of English as an Assistant Professor of Romanticism. Hear, hear!
Prof. Kandice Sharren in all her glory!
In May, our Project Director Michelle Levy, Leith Davis, and Diana Solomon organized a two-day conference in honour of the extraordinary career of Betty A. Schellenberg, long-time friend of the WPHP. The event was held at the historic Sylvia Hotel in Vancouver and was attended by Betty’s colleagues, collaborators, mentors, and students. Betty’s Bluestocking expertise is featured in our Season 1, Episode 9 podcast episode of The WPHP Monthly Mercury, “Bluestockings in Print,” which can be heard here.
Top left to right: Julianna Wagar, Kate Moffatt, Michelle Levy; bottom left to right: Betty Schellenberg, Angela Wachowich, and Sara Penn.
July welcomed our mini Spotlight Series, “By Our Books: Bibliography in the WPHP,” to trace, reflect, and debate our data fields, including our Title, Genre, and Format fields.
Although we undertook a brief hiatus for The WPHP Monthly Mercury Podcast, our loyal listeners were nevertheless treated to a live episode from the conference for the British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS) and the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR,) in addition to a bonus series featuring full interviews with Jennie Batchelor, Manu Samriti Chander, Noah Heringman, Patricia Matthew and Andrew McInnes, and Kirsteen McCue, and a Halloween episode.
Contributing Scholar, Kate Ozment (fondly known to us as California Kate, not to be mistaken with our Project Manager, Vancouver Kate), blessed us with not one but two exciting publications. Her first book, The Hroswitha Club and the Impact of Women Book Collectors was published in April of this year with Cambridge Elements. Subsequently, Kate’s book chapter, entitled “Teaching a Feminist Book History” was featured in the edited volume Teaching the History of the Book, released by the University of Massachusetts Press in August.
In October, Kate Moffatt was joined by RAs Sara Penn and Julianna Wagar and newly minted Prof. Kandice Sharren in Montreal for the annual conference of the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. It was a much needed getaway for them, as many a bookstore and coffee shop were visited during their travels.
Left to right: Rebecca Stuive (a friend of the WPHP), alongside Kate Moffatt, Sara Penn, Kandice Sharren, and Julianna Wagar.
The team also enjoyed pumpkin patch festivities courtesy of Michelle (who is skeptical of pumpkin patches).
Left to right: Julianna Wagar, Amanda Law, Sara Penn, Belle Eist (bottom), Kandice Sharren (top), Salena Wiener, and Kate Moffatt.
Left to right: Julianna Wagar, Sara Penn, Belle Eist, and Amanda Law. (The skeletons in the back are the Project Manager(s) waiting for Sara to clean up the citations and Project Methodology.)
Our new RA Salena livened up Vancouver’s otherwise dreary winter evenings by reading poetry from her new chapbook bodies like gardens at the much anticipated SFU Chapbook Launch and Fundraiser event alongside Vancouver Poet Laureate Fiona Tinwei Lam. Go, Salena!
The team also had the immense pleasure of celebrating Michelle’s 20th year at SFU’s Department of English. The surprise event, endearingly coined #LevyTurns20, was hosted by Sara, Kate, and Julianna, and was attended by past and present RAs (including Abdul Zahir); members from the Digital Humanities Innovation Lab; faculty members from the department; Michelle’s family; and, in spirit, Michelle’s UCLA advisor, Anne K. Mellor, who was a major inspiration behind Michelle’s interest in female authors. It was a special occasion indeed and we would like to think that our Project Director was very touched by the gesture. A very heartfelt congratulations to Michelle!
Michelle arriving to #LevyTurns20 at Sitar Restaurant in Gastown! Picture taken by the WPHP’s stealthiest RA, Julianna.
Wishing you all, dear readers, a healthy and prosperous New Year. We look forward to updating you all on our adventures in 2024!
For more WPHP updates, please refer to our Twitter, BlueSky, Instagram, and Facebook pages. To catch up on our podcast, check out Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Our 2019–2022 Year in Reviews can be found at the top of our Team page.