Tara MacDonald
@tara-macdonald.bsky.social
Director of the Centre for Feminist Research; Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Lethbridge, Canada.
Starstruck 🤩 Got to meet one of my academic heroes today and hear her amazing keynote on sex work and care work in Victorian Pop Fiction. How can we be more caring and sympathetic in our community social care systems? #VPFAPublics @tara-macdonald.bsky.social
"Gaslighting can be many diff things...But in any manifestation, it is a form & function of narrative. [It] depends on the power to propagate a false story that negates another person’s reality." Get a taste of VICTORIAN GASLIGHTING on the @sunypress.bsky.social blog sunypress.edu/Blog/2026/Ga...
Gaslighting Eras, Past and Present
sunypress.edu
In fabulous news, the paperback of VICTORIAN GASLIGHTING: GENEALOGY OF AN INJUSTICE is now available for preorder: sunypress.edu/Books/V/Vict.... DYK that SUNY P *always* comes out with a paperback a mere 6 months after the hardcover?? We do, we do!!
Victorian Gaslighting
sunypress.edu
A new special issue of VP on material conditions is out & it’s a banger. It considers what it looks like to interrogate the protocols whereby intellectual production’s insides are quarantined from their constitutive outsides in conversation with Victorian poetry. muse.jhu.edu/issue/56685
Well look at that, Victorian Gaslighting made the list! www.choice360.org/choice-pick/...
Forthcoming Titles in Women's and Gender Studies, 2026 - Choice 360
A list of the latest and soon-to-be-released reference publications through April 2026.
choice360.org
Member Publication Victorian Gaslighting: Genealogy of an Injustice (Bellonby, Gilbert, MacDonald) navsa.org/Member-Publi...
My Gaslighting book arrived! It was such a pleasure to work on this with my brilliant co-editors and such a wonderful group of feminist scholars. ❤️
It's alive! Editor copies of "Victorian Gaslighting" arrived yesterday, and the book is now available for order at sunypress.edu/Books/V/Vict.... Go get (or go ask your library to get) yours! #gaslighting #Gaslight @dbellonby.bsky.social @tara-macdonald.bsky.social @sunypress.bsky.social
Reminder: The extended deadline to submit your proposal for VSAWC 2026 is in five days!
Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada@vsawc.bsky.social · 8mo agoHad a busy week? You're in luck! The deadline to submit your proposals to present at our May 2026 conference on Victorian Trade as been extended to December 15th! Please go to vsawc.org/events/ for more details!
My office view is really stunning. Pre and post snow!
hello Ottawa! I am giving this talk tomorrow please come! + thank you @kqandrews.bsky.social for inviting me!
Happy to have this new piece out in @publicbooks.bsky.social today about political #gaslighting, a lost version of the play #Gaslight, and how the latter can help us reframe the way we think about and push back against the former!
Public Books @publicbooks.bsky.social · 9mo agoIn 2023, @noragilbert.bsky.social uncovered a synopsis of a lost version of "Gaslight" in the MGM archives. This version's different ending is a lesson in radical solidarity—and, Gilbert argues, it should change the way we think of "gaslighting" as a term.
Want to attend NAVSA 2025: Aftermaths but can't make it to DC? Want MORE brilliant Victorianist scholarship than you can get at the in-person event? The NAVSA 2025 DIGITAL PRESESSION is free and open to all —registration required for security (thread of papers below)
NAVSA 2025@navsa2025.bsky.social · 10mo ago#NAVSA2025 is running special digital panels on Fri, Nov 7 and Sat Nov 8! Registration is FREE but required: tinyurl.com/hy2zhe2y
Our CFP for our May 2026 conference is live! Please see the attachment or the thread for details about our upcoming conference on VICTORIAN TRADE
Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada@vsawc.bsky.social · 11mo agoVSAWC's next conference, on Victorian Trade, will take place in Winnipeg MB (Treaty One Territory) on May 1 and 2, 2026. We look forward to welcoming Dr. Sarah Fee (Senior Curator, Global Fashion & Textiles; Royal Ontario Museum) as our plenary speaker. +
We launched the Centre for Feminist Research to a packed room of colleagues, students, and friends this morning. A good day! www.ulethbridge.ca/unews/articl...
University launches Centre for Feminist Research | UNews
ulethbridge.ca
Cover image for our new book! The essays are really phenomenal and the topic is, sadly, just as urgent today. Doesn’t that Bergman expression sum up a lot?! Available March 2026!
The book prize is especially validating as my book came out when my son was 9 months old and I was returning as Dept Chair (a combo I do not recommend), and I did not have the energy or time to promote the book. So this feels great.
THRILLED to share that my book has won the VPFA Second Book Prize! 🎉
Victorian Popular Fiction Association@vpfa.bsky.social · last yr.We are delighted to announce the winner of the 2024 VPFA Second Book Prize: Tara MacDonald, Narrative, Affect, and Victorian Sensation: Wilful Bodies (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). Prof. MacDonald will receive a £200 cash prize and be honoured at the Annual Conference AGM.
Sobering and no doubt accurate. www.ipolitics.ca/2025/07/02/i...
‘It’s too late’: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost - iPolitics
"We have failed to shift the narrative and we are still caught up in the same legal, economic and political systems," said David Suzuki in an exclusive interview with iPolitics. "For me, what we've go...
ipolitics.ca
Bluesky peeps: please help! This is for the book I'm working on. Did you have family fire drills when you were growing up? (And what generation are you?) If you have kids, do you have family fire drills now? THANK YOU for your help and please REPOST this question! 😘 #AcademicSky #Writing #History
And in more book news, my book on affect theory and sensation fiction is now out in paperback: edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-narrati...
Narrative, Affect and Victorian Sensation
Narrative, Affect and Victorian Sensation
edinburghuniversitypress.com
Eek! Our Gaslighting book has a date! (And an amazing editor!)
Rebecca Colesworthy@rcolesworthy.bsky.social · last yr.Not only that but as of next wk it will officially be in production & slated for publication in March 2026, which Diana and her fantastic co-creators don't even know yet, because she is wonderfully ON IT when it comes to spreading the word. Fab for c19ers & film, gender, & cultural studies scholars!
Wanna know the history of #gaslighting? My co-edited book of essays, *Victorian Gaslighting*, will make you an expert! This juicy guide, co-created with @noragilbert.bsky.social and @tara-macdonald.bsky.social, is officially in pre-production at @sunypress.bsky.social and slated for pub in 2026!
Watching Mary Poppins with a sick toddler and forgot that the first song is the brilliant Sister Suffragette: “Though we adore men individually / We agree that as a group they're rather stupid.”
Friends, big news: starting this July, we are moving back to Canada! I’ll be Director of the Centre for Feminist Research and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Lethbridge. Very excited!
CFP: The Routledge Companion to Sensation Fiction (Abstract Deadline: 5/15/25) bit.ly/42mhg7J
CFP: The Routledge Companion to Sensation Fiction (Abstract Deadline: 5/15/25) | NAVSA
bit.ly
This is so terrifying and alarming and cruel: These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration
Federal agencies have issued guidance to employees on hundreds of terms to limit or avoid using. An analysis of government websites shows many of the same words being removed.
nytimes.com
The Victorian Interdisciplinary Association of the Western US conference will be in St Louis in October. Abstracts are due March 1! Consider applying: this is a great group. Friendly, collaborative, and creative. www.visawus.org/visawus-conf...
VISAWUS Conference — 2025 – Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States
visawus.org
![Reading Scenario Experiments. This series of prompts is designed to get you thinking about how the setting for reading affects concentration, comprehension, and even the existential experience of reading. Every week, one of the following prompts will appear on the syllabus. I encourage you to try all of them that you are able. How does a different reading setting affect your mood? Your receptiveness to the prose? Your pleasure or difficulty reading? What are the particular impacts of changing your lighting or surroundings? What do you notice about yourself and about the work you are reading during this experiment?
1. read by candlelight (use a small lamp in dorms where no candles are allowed!)
2. read for one hour without checking any devices, answering texts, etc.
3. walk out into nature (climb a tree, sit on a rock, grab a spot in a hammock) and read
4. host a reading night with friends & food (sit in companionable silence, reading without chatting)
5. read aloud a chapter to someone else
6. climb into bed at night and read by flashlight under the covers for at least 30 minutes, as if you’ve already been told “lights out” as a kid
7. reread a chapter and see what new things you notice the second time through
8. change your ambient-noise level: add music if you normally read in the quiet; or read without music if you are normally a music-listener
9. read with a sketchpad at hand and sketch scenes, characters, or other elements from the story
10. practice focused listening: have someone read to you
11. make yourself a special, fancy snack on a real plate to nibble while eating: pay attention to the cooking or arranging or choosing of ingredients to make it especially appetizing first
12. make tea (even if you’re not usually a tea drinker), and read and sip
13. invent a new reading scenario for yourself, or repeat the one you liked the best from this term
[writing assignment using these prompts follows; text character limit prevents inclusion of it in full]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:rfs7afx6ue4mknbhhpnrzkyz/bafkreiel77b25truczj372qokmg5p3apa2dphux3jtplpz3dv35jul6wdu)