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Priyanka Jacob

Assistant Professor

Bio

I work on Victorian literature, drawing together research in novel theory, material culture and thing theory, and media and information studies. In my book-in-progress Things That Linger: Objects, Information & the Victorian Novel, I locate the unactivated things in the background of the Victorian novel: papers left on file, containers that aren’t opened, stock that doesn’t sell, secrets that aren’t told. I demonstrate how the capacious novel accommodates more than it can use, accumulating data and deferring meaning. Drawing attention to the novel’s overlooked affordance of storage, I treat the novel as an information system and a storage medium. The novel contains a litter of things embedded with potential that remains untapped, registering information that has not yet become knowledge, and reflecting the archival compulsions of the Victorian era.

My courses include: an introduction to Victorian literature and culture that explores issues such as class, gender, faith, and science; “The Novel and Its Secrets” on how secrets ripple through 19th-century fiction, whether detective or domestic; and a graduate seminar called “The Paper Trails of Victorian Literature,” that examines the cultural and formal effects of Victorian media, information, and communication technologies.

Education

  • BA, Amherst College (2007)
  • PhD, Princeton University (2015) 

Research Interests

  • The Novel and Narrative Theory
  • Victorian Literature'
  • Eighteenth-Century British Fiction
  • Material Culture and Thing Theory
  • Media and Information Studies
  • The City
  • Gothic, Detective, and Sensation Fiction  

Publications/Research Listings

Articles:

  • “The Pocket-book and the Pigeon-hole: The Files of Victorian Fiction,” Victorian Studies 61.3 (2019), pp. 371-394.
  • “Surfaces and Signs: On the Pond in Claire-Louise Bennett’s Pond,” Fall 2017 in Arcade.
  • “The Relic and the Ruin: Equivocal Objects and the Presence of the Past in Daniel Deronda,” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 44, no. 4, 2016.

Works-in-Progress:

  • Monograph. Things That Linger: Objects, Information, and the Victorian Novel.