Introduction

• Published in: Nineteenth-Century gender studies Vol. 11; no. 3
• Main Authors: Fuller, Julia, Hoffman, Meechal, Livia Arndal Woods
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Lexington Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies 01.01.2015
• Subjects: Austen, Jane (1775-1817); College students; Essays; Feminism; Graduate students; Women
• ISSN: 1556-7524

What are our responses to women writers and scholars; what are our obligations to our intellectual predecessors (and heirs); what does the unwieldy nature of relations among women look like; what do we want it to look like? [ 3 ] Relationality is a particularly apt focus for any conference and the papers in this special issue closely reflect conference proceedings: the essays by Mary Jean Corbett and Nancy Yousef are keynote-length talks while the essays by Constance Walker, Mimi Winick, Rachel Ablow, and Anna MacDonald are panel talks a little shorter than your average journal article. (2) Our focus in this issue on relations and markets makes more visible the imbrications of affects and bodies in isolated, impersonal, professional, and/or market-driven relations, challenging the notion that the feelings and physicalities of relations are primarily “personal.” Constance Walker’s paper, for instance, makes us wonder about the point at which literary exchange becomes something that sells a journal; Corbett encourages us to think about the point at which markets inform (bad) relations and the role of the abjected body in that dynamic; Mimi Winick asks about the point at which relations are productive of greater potential in a resistant marketplace; Nancy Yousef makes visible the surprising overlaps between various marketplaces of ideas, revealing an unexpected correspondence between contemporary affect theory and Romantic and post-Romantic thinking on the relation between emotion and reason; Anna MacDonald troubles our notions about the points at which women’s relations with marketplaces work violently on bodies and the points at which they work productively in bodies; Rachel Ablow suggests that bodies in pain produce relations that both reject and rewrite affective expectations. BWWA and the annual conference it organizes are both known for actively supporting and welcoming early-career scholars, graduate students, and even in some cases students from BA or MA programs who have been encouraged by faculty mentors to investigate the field in its professional