Daniel Williams
LightNews LightNews
banner
dbenjw.bsky.social
Daniel Williams
@dbenjw.bsky.social
1.4K followers 1.8K following 32 posts
Asst. Prof. of Literature at Bard College • fmr Harvard Society of Fellows • Victorian & South African Literature, Env. Humanities • THE ART OF UNCERTAINTY (Cambridge, 2024) • doi.org/10.1017/9781009436120 • www.danielbenjaminwilliams.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
dbenjw.bsky.social
Daniel Williams @dbenjw.bsky.social · Mar 6
✨The Art of Uncertainty: Probable Realism and the Victorian Novel✨ is out with Cambridge UP!

Available in US/UK (cambridge.org/9781009436113), 20% off w/ TAU2024

Huge thanks to all who shepherded it into print and to Kate Flint & Clare Pettitt for including it in their series!
Reposted by Daniel Williams
dbenjw.bsky.social
Reposting now the images load correctly—dm me if you need a free link!

❄️ Thx to Vcologies friends, esp. @kateflint.bsky.social, @devo3000.bsky.social, Liz Miller, @mortizrobles.bsky.social, @benjaminmorgan.bsky.social—& @pfyfe.bsky.social, one of two v. helpful readers! ❄️

doi.org/10.1093/jvcu...
October 17, 2025 at 5:34 PM
dbenjw.bsky.social
Reposting now the images load correctly—dm me if you need a free link!

❄️ Thx to Vcologies friends, esp. @kateflint.bsky.social, @devo3000.bsky.social, Liz Miller, @mortizrobles.bsky.social, @benjaminmorgan.bsky.social—& @pfyfe.bsky.social, one of two v. helpful readers! ❄️

doi.org/10.1093/jvcu...
October 17, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Reposted by Daniel Williams
dbenjw.bsky.social
“Crystal Forms: A Victorian Aesthetics of Accident” is out in JVC!

I read James/Cecilia Glaisher’s snow-crystal images as a case study in accidental aesthetics—unsettling familiar stories about representation, mechanical objectivity, and lookalike forms in science + art ❄️❄️❄️

doi.org/10.1093/jvcu...
Screenshot of article abstract. Text: Abstract. This essay uses the snow-crystal studies of the meteorologist James Glaisher and his wife, the illustrator-photographer Cecilia Glaisher, as a case study to describe a nineteenth-century aesthetics of accident, to assess its limits, and to draw wider lessons for the history of scientific and artistic representation. The argument is in two parts. The first examines the Glaishers’ accounts and images of snow-crystal morphology across a range of print media, from scientific periodicals to art journals. I argue that they pivoted from an empirical and taxonomic inquiry toward an aesthetics of design, developing representational strategies that emphasized symmetry. The latter part of the argument identifies two lessons we can draw from this case study. First, I complicate a narrative in the history of science that takes snow-crystals as exemplary of a nineteenth-century epistemic shift in styles of representation, from ‘truth to nature’ in hand-drawn images to ‘mechanical objectivity’ in photomicrography. The Glaishers’ case, I suggest, confounds this narrative of the ascendancy of mechanical reproductive techniques. Second, I contend that these images have an aesthetic kinship with projects of iterative representation in twentieth-century art, and anticipate conundrums about ‘pseudomorphism’. The Glaishers’ snow-crystals offer a compelling way to talk about quasi-identical forms in science and art, not so much by discriminating among them than by accommodating, even celebrating, the variety of causal stories and contexts that surround them. Their project reveals a nascent aesthetics of accident in the Victorian era whose legacy can be traced in, and help us understand, later representational forms. Woodcut engraving of a snow-crystal with symmetrical laminae, in white lines on a solid ox-blood red background. Woodcut engraving of two identical snow-crystals superimposed, in white on a solid dark green background, with a smaller cross-section showing the structure of the double crystal at lower left. Woodcut engraving of a snow-crystal with complex symmetrical needles and short laminae, in white lines on a solid Prussian blue background.
October 12, 2025 at 7:26 PM
dbenjw.bsky.social
“Crystal Forms: A Victorian Aesthetics of Accident” is out in JVC!

I read James/Cecilia Glaisher’s snow-crystal images as a case study in accidental aesthetics—unsettling familiar stories about representation, mechanical objectivity, and lookalike forms in science + art ❄️❄️❄️

doi.org/10.1093/jvcu...
Screenshot of article abstract. Text: Abstract. This essay uses the snow-crystal studies of the meteorologist James Glaisher and his wife, the illustrator-photographer Cecilia Glaisher, as a case study to describe a nineteenth-century aesthetics of accident, to assess its limits, and to draw wider lessons for the history of scientific and artistic representation. The argument is in two parts. The first examines the Glaishers’ accounts and images of snow-crystal morphology across a range of print media, from scientific periodicals to art journals. I argue that they pivoted from an empirical and taxonomic inquiry toward an aesthetics of design, developing representational strategies that emphasized symmetry. The latter part of the argument identifies two lessons we can draw from this case study. First, I complicate a narrative in the history of science that takes snow-crystals as exemplary of a nineteenth-century epistemic shift in styles of representation, from ‘truth to nature’ in hand-drawn images to ‘mechanical objectivity’ in photomicrography. The Glaishers’ case, I suggest, confounds this narrative of the ascendancy of mechanical reproductive techniques. Second, I contend that these images have an aesthetic kinship with projects of iterative representation in twentieth-century art, and anticipate conundrums about ‘pseudomorphism’. The Glaishers’ snow-crystals offer a compelling way to talk about quasi-identical forms in science and art, not so much by discriminating among them than by accommodating, even celebrating, the variety of causal stories and contexts that surround them. Their project reveals a nascent aesthetics of accident in the Victorian era whose legacy can be traced in, and help us understand, later representational forms. Woodcut engraving of a snow-crystal with symmetrical laminae, in white lines on a solid ox-blood red background. Woodcut engraving of two identical snow-crystals superimposed, in white on a solid dark green background, with a smaller cross-section showing the structure of the double crystal at lower left. Woodcut engraving of a snow-crystal with complex symmetrical needles and short laminae, in white lines on a solid Prussian blue background.
October 12, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Daniel Williams
dbenjw.bsky.social
Join the ranks of fabulous recent essays on the #Victorian Pacific + #Romantic lyric; on museums, collections, archives; on ecology, hydrography, atmosphere; on immunology, race and portraiture; and more!

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1741...
Literature Compass
Click on the title to browse this journal
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
September 30, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Daniel Williams
dbenjw.bsky.social
My periodic call for pitches to the 19th-Century Networks section of ✨Literature Compass✨:

Do you have a state-of-the-field essay to propose on #Romantic or #Victorian topics? a little-known or understudied author to spotlight?

Please get in touch!

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1741...
Literature Compass
Click on the title to browse this journal
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
September 30, 2025 at 2:19 PM
dbenjw.bsky.social
My periodic call for pitches to the 19th-Century Networks section of ✨Literature Compass✨:

Do you have a state-of-the-field essay to propose on #Romantic or #Victorian topics? a little-known or understudied author to spotlight?

Please get in touch!

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1741...
Literature Compass
Click on the title to browse this journal
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
September 30, 2025 at 2:19 PM
dbenjw.bsky.social
🌊 Please read Lindsay Wilhelm's marvelous state-of-the-field essay on the ✨ VICTORIAN PACIFIC ✨, out now in Literature Compass!!!

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
ABSTRACT: Despite (or perhaps because of) its distance from Britain, the Pacific islands occupied complicated symbolic and material terrain in Victorian culture. Home to major settler populations in New Zealand and Australia, the Pacific was also an exotic tourist destination, the setting for popular adventure novels and travelogues, a field laboratory for the burgeoning disciplines of ethnography, biology, and race science, and one of the last battlegrounds in the global scrabble for resources. This essay surveys the small but rich body of scholarship that has emerged over the past 30 years to elucidate Victorians' engagements with the Pacific. In particular, this essay highlights the unique challenges and opportunities posed by its study: attending to the Pacific requires us to rethink our terminology, expand our archives, refine our methods, and interrogate our approach to Indigeneity. As such, a survey of scholarship on this still somewhat marginal subject offers insights into the state of Victorian studies more broadly, at a juncture in which the field is reorienting itself toward the global.
June 30, 2025 at 6:37 PM
Reposted by Daniel Williams
tribelaw.bsky.social
What this long and detailed NYT piece calmly calls an “extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual” is in fact a blatantly unconstitutional usurpation of Congress’s Article I powers and delegation of the President’s Article II duties.

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/u...
Elon Musk’s Blitz Shakes U.S. Government as He Sweeps Through Agencies
The billionaire is creating major upheaval as his team sweeps through agencies, in what has been an extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual.
www.nytimes.com
February 4, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Reposted by Daniel Williams
darbysaxbe.bsky.social
🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.
list of banned keywords
February 4, 2025 at 1:26 AM
dbenjw.bsky.social
Deadline is tomorrow!
dbenjw.bsky.social Daniel Williams @dbenjw.bsky.social · Jan 8
6th annual 💥Vcologies Early Career Paper Prize💥! Please share/RT!

If you have a paper that fits the bill, “ecological thinking in the Anglophone world from 1750-1945,” do consider submitting!

Deadline: Jan. 31, 2025
Award: $250
The Vcologies Working Group announces the 2025 Early Career Paper Prize. The prize recognizes work by rising scholars that exemplifies the Vcologies effort to consider ecological thinking in the Anglophone world from 1750-1945. Early career scholars working in any field are eligible. Graduate students and contingently employed colleagues are especially encouraged to submit. "Early career" is defined as a scholar of any rank or affiliation who is working toward a PhD, or who has received the PhD in the past three calendar years (2021 or later). PhDs from 2020 are also eligible to apply in cases where parental duties or medical leave have affected research. The winning paper will be selected according to three criteria: (1) Potential significance for Victorian studies and its relation to the study of ecology, broadly construed; (2) Quality and depth of scholarly research and interpretation; (3) Clarity and effectiveness of presentation. Papers will be anonymized before being forwarded to three judges. The prize award is $250 Submission Guidelines The prize is open to papers of no more than 3,500 words (not including notes, image captions, or references) written by early career scholars. Please submit papers in MS Word or PDF (with no identifying information on the document itself), along with (as a separate document) a cover sheet stating (1) your name, (2) year of Ph.D. (or year expected), (3) name of your degree-granting institution, (4) title of your essay, and (5) contact information, to Kathleen Frederickson at kfrederickson@ucdavis.edu. Submission deadline is January 31, 2025.
January 30, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Reposted by Daniel Williams
dbenjw.bsky.social
6th annual 💥Vcologies Early Career Paper Prize💥! Please share/RT!

If you have a paper that fits the bill, “ecological thinking in the Anglophone world from 1750-1945,” do consider submitting!

Deadline: Jan. 31, 2025
Award: $250
The Vcologies Working Group announces the 2025 Early Career Paper Prize. The prize recognizes work by rising scholars that exemplifies the Vcologies effort to consider ecological thinking in the Anglophone world from 1750-1945. Early career scholars working in any field are eligible. Graduate students and contingently employed colleagues are especially encouraged to submit. "Early career" is defined as a scholar of any rank or affiliation who is working toward a PhD, or who has received the PhD in the past three calendar years (2021 or later). PhDs from 2020 are also eligible to apply in cases where parental duties or medical leave have affected research. The winning paper will be selected according to three criteria: (1) Potential significance for Victorian studies and its relation to the study of ecology, broadly construed; (2) Quality and depth of scholarly research and interpretation; (3) Clarity and effectiveness of presentation. Papers will be anonymized before being forwarded to three judges. The prize award is $250 Submission Guidelines The prize is open to papers of no more than 3,500 words (not including notes, image captions, or references) written by early career scholars. Please submit papers in MS Word or PDF (with no identifying information on the document itself), along with (as a separate document) a cover sheet stating (1) your name, (2) year of Ph.D. (or year expected), (3) name of your degree-granting institution, (4) title of your essay, and (5) contact information, to Kathleen Frederickson at kfrederickson@ucdavis.edu. Submission deadline is January 31, 2025.
January 8, 2025 at 3:26 PM
dbenjw.bsky.social
“Uncopyrightable” is the longest word in English to use each of its letters no more than once. —Christian Bök
January 29, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Reposted by Daniel Williams
annakornbluh.bsky.social
how, specifically, does freezing research dollars hurt your state's economy?

link for deets by state. keep in mind this is separate from all the other programs that support public schools, provide food for kids, supplies for hospitals, equipment for infrastructure.

www.faseb.org/science-poli...
Federal Research Funding Data
We advance health and well-being by promoting research and education in biological and biomedical sciences through collaborative advocacy and service to our societies and their members.
www.faseb.org
January 28, 2025 at 8:01 PM
Reposted by Daniel Williams
dbenjw.bsky.social
✨“the realist novel’s embrace of doubtful futurity is fundamental to its efforts at verisimilitude.”✨

Gratified by this alert, generous, sympathetic review of my book by Alicia Rix in @thetls.bsky.social!

buff.ly/4asoJpL
January 15, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Reposted by Daniel Williams
thetls.bsky.social
'...the habit of speculation is rife in Victorian fiction, and particularly incurable among Thomas Hardy’s fortune-tellers and gamblers.'

Alicia Rix on indecision in the Victorian novel
Indecision in the Victorian novel
“You can never be sure of weather till ’tis past”, gloomily avers Michael Henchard, the hero of The Mayor of Casterbridge. A familiar and profitless
buff.ly
January 14, 2025 at 5:21 PM
dbenjw.bsky.social
✨“the realist novel’s embrace of doubtful futurity is fundamental to its efforts at verisimilitude.”✨

Gratified by this alert, generous, sympathetic review of my book by Alicia Rix in @thetls.bsky.social!

buff.ly/4asoJpL
January 15, 2025 at 12:27 PM
dbenjw.bsky.social
6th annual 💥Vcologies Early Career Paper Prize💥! Please share/RT!

If you have a paper that fits the bill, “ecological thinking in the Anglophone world from 1750-1945,” do consider submitting!

Deadline: Jan. 31, 2025
Award: $250
The Vcologies Working Group announces the 2025 Early Career Paper Prize. The prize recognizes work by rising scholars that exemplifies the Vcologies effort to consider ecological thinking in the Anglophone world from 1750-1945. Early career scholars working in any field are eligible. Graduate students and contingently employed colleagues are especially encouraged to submit. "Early career" is defined as a scholar of any rank or affiliation who is working toward a PhD, or who has received the PhD in the past three calendar years (2021 or later). PhDs from 2020 are also eligible to apply in cases where parental duties or medical leave have affected research. The winning paper will be selected according to three criteria: (1) Potential significance for Victorian studies and its relation to the study of ecology, broadly construed; (2) Quality and depth of scholarly research and interpretation; (3) Clarity and effectiveness of presentation. Papers will be anonymized before being forwarded to three judges. The prize award is $250 Submission Guidelines The prize is open to papers of no more than 3,500 words (not including notes, image captions, or references) written by early career scholars. Please submit papers in MS Word or PDF (with no identifying information on the document itself), along with (as a separate document) a cover sheet stating (1) your name, (2) year of Ph.D. (or year expected), (3) name of your degree-granting institution, (4) title of your essay, and (5) contact information, to Kathleen Frederickson at kfrederickson@ucdavis.edu. Submission deadline is January 31, 2025.
January 8, 2025 at 3:26 PM
Reposted by Daniel Williams
@emmadavenport.bsky.social @navsa.bsky.social @clareclarke.bsky.social @aliped.bsky.social @nathankhensley.bsky.social @taliaschaffer.bsky.social @christopherpittard.bsky.social @dbenjw.bsky.social @susannegruss.bsky.social @c19qmul.bsky.social @19birkbeck.bsky.social
December 26, 2024 at 5:21 PM
Reposted by Daniel Williams
dbenjw.bsky.social
And our Introduction to ✨Collecting, Collections, and Collectors in the Long Nineteenth Century✨ is free to read!

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
Introduction: Collecting, Collections, and Collectors in the Long Nineteenth Century
You have to enable JavaScript in your browser's settings in order to use the eReader.
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 14, 2024 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Daniel Williams
dbenjw.bsky.social
"Collecting, Collections, and Collectors in the Long Nineteenth Century" includes work by

Margaret Gray * Alice Little * Lindsay Wells * Sophia Franchi * Lindsey Chappell * Sezen Ünlüönen * Tim Sommer * Brandon & Lindsay Katzir

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...
Collecting, Collections, and Collectors in the Long Nineteenth Century: Literature Compass
Click on the title to browse this issue
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 14, 2024 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by Daniel Williams
dbenjw.bsky.social
✨the Special Issue of Literature Compass✨ I edited with Jake Risinger is out!

🗃️ Collecting, Collections, and Collectors in the Long Nineteenth Century 🗃️ features a wide range of essays on the period's collecting practices in art, music, & science:

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...
Collecting, Collections, and Collectors in the Long Nineteenth Century: Literature Compass
Click on the title to browse this issue
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 14, 2024 at 3:11 PM
dbenjw.bsky.social
✨the Special Issue of Literature Compass✨ I edited with Jake Risinger is out!

🗃️ Collecting, Collections, and Collectors in the Long Nineteenth Century 🗃️ features a wide range of essays on the period's collecting practices in art, music, & science:

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...
Collecting, Collections, and Collectors in the Long Nineteenth Century: Literature Compass
Click on the title to browse this issue
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 14, 2024 at 3:11 PM