For a special issue devoted to the inaugural NAVSA conference held in Bloomington, Victorian Studies asked three participants—Phillipa Levine, Leah Price, and Lee Sterrenburg—to select and introduce papers which they thought addressed in provocative ways especially fresh and pressing topics.   In this fashion, the journal hopes to sustain the interaction developed at the conference, circulating some of its best papers while conveying the forward-looking, open-ended nature of the event as a whole. (The image on the right is discussed by Miles Taylor.)

Section One

ROBERT AGUIRRE,
"Agencies of the Letter:   The Foreign Office and the Ruins of Central America"

JOE CHILDERS,
"Outside Looking In: Colonials, Immigrants, and the Pleasure of the Archive"

OZ FRANKEL,
"Blue Books and the Victorian Reader"

PHILIPPA LEVINE,
Response

Section Two

STEPHEN ARATA,
"On Not Paying Attention"

NICK DAMES,
"Wave-Theories and Affective Physiologies: The Cognitive Strain in Victorian Novel Theories"

GARRETT STEWART,
"Pictured Reading in Nineteenth-Century Painting"

LEAH PRICE,
Response

Section Three

JEFFREY COX,
"Were Victorian Nonconformists the Worst Imperialists of All?"

BERNARD PORTER,
"'Empire, what empire?' Or, why 80% of early- and mid-Victorians were deliberately kept in ignorance of it"

MILES TAYLOR,
"Queen Victoria and India, 1837-76"

LEE STERRENBURG,
Response