Published work & current projects
Table of Contents
In-Progress Projects, Upcoming and Recent Talks
(2026) “Tangled up in Audio: Unseen Scripts, Shifting Affordances, and Modes of Typographic Design Histories.” Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century (G21C or /gʁafematik/), University of Reading, UK. June.
(since 2023) Creator and host of the Re(un)Covered Podcast:
Join Bethany, a literary researcher with a passion for the obscure, as she shares recovered and uncovered stories from archives around the world. It’s archival recovery, out loud. Subscribe to Re(un)Covered wherever you get your podcasts.
(book in progress) “Flying Reports, Fame, and Fortune: Gossip beyond Celebrity in Eighteenth-Century Print Culture”
(forthcoming 2027) “Cataloging the Restoration Jilt: Sexual Commodification, London Guidebooks, and Didactic Erotica.” Special Issue on Aphra Behn of Women’s Writing, edited by Hannah Straw and Elaine Hobby.
(article in progress) “Prostitutes, Priests, and Politics: The Celebrated Sally Salisbury’s Surprising Afterlives”
Recent Publications and Research Work
(September 2024–February 2026) Postdoctoral fellow, Punch’s Pocket Book Archive, Université de Caen Normandie, France.
Part of team launching project to digitize and create a fully searchable open-access archive for 39-volume collection of Punch’s Pocket Book (1843–81), an annual almanac/day planner/accounting book/collection of written and pictorial amusements published by Punch, or the London Charivari (1841–2002). I lead the creation of keywords for the website, prepared editorial materials, annotated texts and images, helped test tools created for the website, and was editor-in-chief of the project’s blog.
(2025) Encyclopedia entry on “Brothels” for Open-Access DIGITENS Digital Encyclopaedia on Sociability in Europe in the Long Eighteenth Century. June.
(2024) with Jessica Gray, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Commonplace Book.” K-SJ+ (Keats-Shelley Journal online supplement), Commonplacing and Commonplace Books Special Issue, vol. 2. September.
(2024) Created interactive collection “William Hogarth’s Harlot’s Progress (1732) and Rake’s Progress (1734-35)” locations and contexts, mapped via Layers of London. January
(2023) “Selling Sex, Work, and Literature: Then and Now.” Syllabus. August
(2022) “Gossip’s Ephemeral Longevity: Power, Circulation, and New Media.” NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, #Rumors Special Issue, edited by Nicholas Baer and Maggie Hennefeld, vol. 11, no. 1: 41–66.
(2021) with Ashley Bender et al. “WWA Reflection: Continuing to #WriteWithAphra.” ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830 11, no. 2.
(2021) with Kirsten T. Saxton. “Writing With Aphra: Solidarity, Generosity, and Fight Club Rules Beyond Summer 2020.” ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830 11, no. 1.
(2021) “‘I Have Such a Piece of News for You’: Serving Gossip at Haywood’s The Tea-Table.” In A Spy on Eliza Haywood, edited by Aleksondra Hultquist and Chris Mounsey, 194–218. Routledge.
(2021) with Sarah R. Creel and Anna K. Sagal. “Introduction,” for Fantomina by Eliza Haywood, 5–17. Renard Press.
(2019) “Fashion,” in Broadview Online: Jane Austen in Context. Broadview Press.
Invited Talks
(2026) “Why Metadata Matters: Texts, Images, and Keywords in the Digital Humanities,” for the course “Digital Humanities in the Anglophone World” (A6FHN11), Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France. March.
(2026) “How Do Cats Meme? Signifying Felines in Imagetexts from the 1700s to 2020s.” Digital Humanities Lab, University of Basel, Switzerland. March. See v1.0 of my cat imagetext corpus here.
(2024) “A Brief History of Pocket Books with DIY Bookbinding Session.” Presentation on pocketbooks, almanacs, and calendars, plus an interactive handbinding workshop for the conference “We Are Amused: Victorian Humour in the Digital Age,” MRSH, Université de Caen Normandie, France and online. November.
(2023) “Sally Salisbury from Sex Work to Coffin Robbery: A Case Study in Eighteenth-Century Fame.” Open Digital Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies (ODSECS). November.
(2023) “Recovering the Forgotten Women of Metal Type Design.” Salon Series, Letterform Archive, San Francisco, CA.
(2023) Roundtable participant for “The Future of the Humanities” presidential session. American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Annual Conference. St. Louis, MO. March.
(2022) “The Art and Mystery of Gossip; or, How Busybodies, Tittle-Tattle, and Bohea Created 18th-Century Print Culture.” Virtual Coffee Hour, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. April.
(2021) guest with Erika Rappaport on “Tea Tables and Empire.” The Global Tea Initiative’s Cha Chat Podcast, episode 8. November.
(2021) “Recovering the Forgotten Women of Metal Type Design.” Mellon Public Scholars 2021 Showcase, University of California, Davis. November.
(2021) “Eighteenth-Century Periodicals, Gossip, and Social Media: or, How to best profit from the stories of strangers.” Sponsored by the Brandeis Arts and Sciences Co-curricular Fund, Brandeis University. September.
(2020) “Who Spilled the Tea? Gossip, Tea Tables, and Eighteenth-Century Print Culture.” San Francisco State University English Department. March.
(2018) “‘We see Thick Scandal circulate with right Bohea’: Bringing Gossip, Fame, and Tattling Jades to the Table.” Sterling Library, Yale University. August.
Conference Presentations
(2026) “Politick Whores, Nightwalkers, and She-Friends: Navigating London’s Sex Industry in the Long Eighteenth Century.” American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Annual Conference. Philadelphia, PA. April.
(2025) “Visions of Pocket Technology: Materiality as Digital Practice with the Punch’s Pocket Book Archive Project.” Research Society of Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) Annual Conference. Online Virtual Panel, June.
(2025) “Uncommon Fame, Reputation Transitions, and Information Shifts in Richardson’s Clarissa.” Société d’Études Anglo-Américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe Siècles (SEAA 17-18) workshop at Société des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur (SAES) Annual Conference. Toulouse, France, June.
(2025) “Have Cats Always Been Memes? The Prevalence of Signifying Felines in Imagetexts from the 1700s to Today.” ASECS Annual Conference. Online, March–April.
(2024) “Cataloging the Restoration Jilt: Sexual Commodification, London Guidebooks, & Didactic Erotica.” Aphra Behn and Her Restoration International Conference, Aphra Behn (Europe) Society. University of Kent, UK. July.
(2024) “Teaching the Jilt; or, Possible Futures of Eighteenth-Century Sex Worker Literature in Twenty-First-Century Classrooms.” Western Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (WSECS). San Francisco, CA. February. Helene W. Koon Memorial Award, 2nd place
(2023) “‘Gimme more’: What Defoe’s Roxana and Britney Spears Can Tell Us about Celebrity, Commodification, and Autonomy.” Defoe Society and Early Caribbean Society Atlantic Routes & Roots Conference. San Juan, Puerto Rico. July.
(2023) “Modernism Goes Eighteenth-Century: Literary Hoaxes, Travel Narratives, and The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion, 1764–1765 (1925).” American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Annual Conference. St. Louis, MO. March.
(2022) “Tittle-Tattle, News, or Babble? Gossip’s Many Branches, Circulations, and Bad Reputation in Early Modern England.” Gendering News in the Early Modern World. Durham University, UK. August.
(2022) “Reimagining the Creation of B-List Celebrity: Sally Salisbury’s Eighteenth-Century Transmedia Adaptations.” ASECS Annual Conference. Baltimore, MD. April.
(2021) “Print, Social Media, and Gossip’s Longevity: From The Tea-Table to #SpillTheTea.” ASECS Annual Conference. Online. April.
(2019) “Serving Gossip and Fame at Haywood’s The Tea-Table.” Eliza Haywood: 300 Years of Love in Excess Conference. Indianapolis, IN. April.
(2019) “Secret Histories, Secret Signals, and Subalterity in the Haitian Revolution.” ASECS Annual Conference. Denver, CO. March 2019.
(2018) “Talking Statues, Treasonous Bishops, and Grave Robbery: Creating the Celebrated Sally Salisbury’s Print Afterlives.” ASECS Annual Conference. Orlando, FL. March 2018. Winner of the ASECS Women’s Caucus Catherine Macaulay Prize.
(2018) “How Sally Gets Around: Gossip, Information, and Serial Print Culture in Victorian England.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS) Conference. San Francisco, CA. March.
(2017) “Women on Display in the Papers: Prostitute Narratives and Charlotte Lennox’s The Lady’s Museum.” ASECS Annual Conference. Minneapolis, MN. March.
(2015) “Getting Graphic: Sex Work, Comics, and Coalitions of Genre.” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Annual Conference. Portland, OR. November.
(2015) “Sleeping Her Way to the Top: The Menace of the Female Sexual Predator in Early American Cinema.” Humanities Education and Research Association Annual Conference. San Francisco, CA. April.
(2014) “Just Who Is Moving that Invisible Hand? Virtue Production and Commodification in Transatlantic Nineteenth-Century Mysteries.” PAMLA Annual Conference. Riverside, CA. November.