Among the many forms of disappointment brought on by the pandemic, the necessity of canceling the 2020 conference of the Society for Novel Studies at Oxford last spring was hardly the most life-changing. Nevertheless, we feel strongly that meetings where scholars from a range of universities come together over a topic dear to their intellectual work have taken on added importance to university life and thought during the year-long period of quarantine, not to mention the countless hours of intellectual work that went into the organization of this one. In homage to Penny Fielding, Andrew Taylor, and Lloyd Pratt, who planned the May 2020 SNS conference to the nines, as well as to the creative energy of those who sent in proposals that never materialized as onsite presentations, the editorial board of Novel, together with the Executive Board of the SNS, will be publishing a series of special issues devoted to article versions of some of the proposed conference papers, to which we have added selected essays by scholars whose work, we feel, will enrich the issues.
Read more about the two issues:
Form and Medium (a link is forthcoming with more information)