I had a phenomenal time at the North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) conference in Phoenix this year, where I presented my recent work: "Darwin among Phonologists: The Sociality of Shorthand and Evolutionary Biology." In my presentation, I used social correspondences between Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Erasmus Darwin, and the creators of both Pitman’s and Gurney’s shorthand writing systems, to argue that the concomitant development of phonetic writing systems and evolutionary biology—in conversation with one another—stemmed from the same necessity, in both fields, to find more precise ways of recording and remembering small details in order to understand a whole “language” system.
I am grateful for my colleagues' feedback and guidance, and honored to accept an invitation to present my research to the next NAVSA conference, the 2017 supernumerary in Florence, Italy this May. As my dissertation continues to develop, I look forward to bringing my latest work on "Darwin and Sound" to a series of specialty Darwin panels put together by George Levine.