Project Directors
Principal Investigator and Technical Coordinator
Elisa Beshero-Bondar, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, Founding Editor↴Elisa Beshero-Bondar organized the Digital Mitford project in the spring of 2013. She has written and maintains the project’s adapation of the TEI, and she manages the coding and programming involved in storing, publishing, and sharing the project’s editions and prosopography data. With Gregory Bondar, she has worked on photographing Mitford’s manuscripts at the Reading Central Library and the John Rylands Library, and she is involved in editing letters and plays, and in training editors and assistants in TEI XML and related coding and programming for the project at the Digital Mitford Coding School. Dr. Beshero-Bondar researches British Romanticism in poetry and drama from the 1790s - 1830s. Her book about women Romantic poets, Women, Epic, and Transition in British Romanticism, was published by the University of Delaware Press in 2011. Her published articles in ELH, Genre, Philological Quarterly, and The Wordsworth Circle investigate the poetry of Robert Southey, Mary Russell Mitford, and Lord Byron in context with 18th- and 19th-century views of revolution, world empires, natural sciences, and theater productions. An active member of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), she was elected to serve on from 2016 to 2017 on the TEI Technical Council, an eleven-member international committee that supervises amendments to the TEI Guidelines. Dr. Beshero-Bondar is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Digital Text at Pitt-Greensburg, where she helps coordinate a Digital Studies certificate program for undergraduates.Managing Editor
Lisa M. Wilson, State University of New York at Potsdam, Founding Editor↴Lisa Wilson is Professor in the Department of English and Communication at SUNY Potsdam, where she has taught since 2005. She is also the Director of interdisciplinary Learning Communities for the campus, and currently serves as Chair of Faculty Senate. Her areas of interest include transatlantic Romantic and Victorian era literature, particularly women’s writing and popular forms such as the Gothic novel and the literary ballad. She is also interested in book history and bibliographical studies, particularly in the study of authorship in the long nineteenth century (1780-1900). She has published in European Romantic Review, Romanticism on the Net (now RaVon), Romantic Circles, Romantic Textualities, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a monograph on Romantic-period authorship and literary celebrity. Her work on Digital Mitford thus far includes editing and coding Mitford’s “Introduction” to her collected Dramatic Works (1854), a critical memoir that recounts the author’s influences and experiences at Covent Garden and Drury Lane in the 1820s and 30s. It also includes researching Mitford’s publication history for the site’s working bibliography, particularly tracking the migration of Mitford’s stories from their first publication to their later reappearances in collections and periodicals. A Founding Editor of Digital Mitford, she and her team of student research assistants have been at work since 2013 on transcribing, coding, and researching Mitford’s letters from 1819 to the early 1820s.Section Editors
Bibliography and Correspondence
Lisa M. Wilson, State University of New York at Potsdam, Founding Editor↴Lisa Wilson is Professor in the Department of English and Communication at SUNY Potsdam, where she has taught since 2005. She is also the Director of interdisciplinary Learning Communities for the campus, and currently serves as Chair of Faculty Senate. Her areas of interest include transatlantic Romantic and Victorian era literature, particularly women’s writing and popular forms such as the Gothic novel and the literary ballad. She is also interested in book history and bibliographical studies, particularly in the study of authorship in the long nineteenth century (1780-1900). She has published in European Romantic Review, Romanticism on the Net (now RaVon), Romantic Circles, Romantic Textualities, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a monograph on Romantic-period authorship and literary celebrity. Her work on Digital Mitford thus far includes editing and coding Mitford’s “Introduction” to her collected Dramatic Works (1854), a critical memoir that recounts the author’s influences and experiences at Covent Garden and Drury Lane in the 1820s and 30s. It also includes researching Mitford’s publication history for the site’s working bibliography, particularly tracking the migration of Mitford’s stories from their first publication to their later reappearances in collections and periodicals. A Founding Editor of Digital Mitford, she and her team of student research assistants have been at work since 2013 on transcribing, coding, and researching Mitford’s letters from 1819 to the early 1820s.Drama
Elizabeth Raisanen, University of Oregon, Founding Editor↴ Elizabeth Raisanen is the Director of Undergraduate Advising and an Instructor of Literature in the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. A specialist in the women writers of the British Romantic era, Elizabeth’s research interests also extend to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, Romantic drama, and the Digital Humanities. She has presented papers on Mitford’s plays at the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, the Wordsworth Summer Conference, and the British Women Writer’s Conference, and her article on Mitford’s play Rienzi appeared in European Romantic Reviewin 2011 . Other essays on Romantic women writers have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Women’s Studies and an edited collection on Mary Wollstonecraft. Elizabeth has also taught undergraduate students how to transcribe, code, and conduct research on a collection of Mitford’s letters stored at Reading Central Library.Fiction
Samantha Webb, University of Montevallo, Founding Editor↴Samantha Webb is Professor of English, specializing in British Romantic literature, with a particular focus on the intersection of food, agricultural politics, and ecology. She has published in The European Romantic Review, Romanticism, Essays in Romanticism, and elsewhere. At the University of Montevallo, she teaches courses in British Romantic literature, children’s literature, folk and fairy tales, and global literature. She is a Founding Editor and Fiction Section Editor for Digital Mitford.Manuscript Archaeology
Gregory Bondar, Penn State University, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, Founding Editor↴Greg Bondar has photographed over 800 of Mitford’s letters in the Reading Central Library, the John Rylands Library in Manchester, and elsewhere. He maintains the Digital Mitford project’s database documenting over 2700 individual letters and manuscripts. He teaches courses in Anthropology and Archaeology for Penn State Greater Allegheny and the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg campuses, and occasionally teaches Digital Humanities for Pitt. His research involves archaeological excavations at Tell Timai in Egypt, San Jose de Moro in Peru, and analyzing stone tools with Penn State’s nuclear reactor. While he has only been involved with Digital Humanities applications since 2013, he spent many years marking up ethnographic data in the mid-1990s.Poetry
Kellie Donovan-Condron, Babson College, Founding Editor↴Kellie Donovan-Condron is a Founding Editor and Poetry Section Editor for Digital Mitford. She writes primarily about the intersection of urban literature and the Gothic in the Romantic era. Her research interests are an interdisciplinary mix of literature, history, and material culture. Additional areas of particular interest include women’s writing, consumerism and consumption in literature, Southern Gothic, and questions about genre and social networking. In the summer of 2013, she was selected to be a summer scholar in the National Endowment for the Humanities seminar "Reassessing Romanticism." She is coding Mitford’s epic poem Blanch for the Digital Mitford Archive, and has co-authored with Elisa Beshero-Bondar an article analyzing Mitford’s correspondence network across her lifetime. Previously, she worked on a grant to digitize a collection of 17th- and 18th-century maps and ephemeral materials through the Tufts University Perseus Project.Editors:
Amy Colombo, Virginia Commonwealth UniversityKellie Donovan-Condron, Babson College, Founding Editor↴Kellie Donovan-Condron is a Founding Editor and Poetry Section Editor for Digital Mitford. She writes primarily about the intersection of urban literature and the Gothic in the Romantic era. Her research interests are an interdisciplinary mix of literature, history, and material culture. Additional areas of particular interest include women’s writing, consumerism and consumption in literature, Southern Gothic, and questions about genre and social networking. In the summer of 2013, she was selected to be a summer scholar in the National Endowment for the Humanities seminar "Reassessing Romanticism." She is coding Mitford’s epic poem Blanch for the Digital Mitford Archive, and has co-authored with Elisa Beshero-Bondar an article analyzing Mitford’s correspondence network across her lifetime. Previously, she worked on a grant to digitize a collection of 17th- and 18th-century maps and ephemeral materials through the Tufts University Perseus Project.Amy L. Gates, Missouri Southern State University, ↴Amy L. Gates is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at Missouri Southern State University. Her teaching and research are centered around eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, with a focus on British Romanticism. For the Digital Mitford project, she works on letters and is the editor of Mitford’s play Inez de Castro. Eric Hood, Adrian College, Founding Editor↴Eric Hood is an Assistant Professor at Adrian College and holds a PhD from the University of Kansas. He specializes in literary theory, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British poetry (particularly, the epic), and intellectual networks. http://academichood.wordpress.com Melissa Klamer, Michigan State University↴Melissa Klamer is a Ph.D. student in English at Michigan State University, and is currently a Research Assistant working with MATRIX: Center for the Digital Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research focuses on Victorian women’s life writing, particularly letters and diaries. Anne Longmuir, Kansas State University↴ Anne Longmuir is Associate Professor of English at Kansas State University. Anne specializes in Victorian literature and has published more than ten articles and book chapters on Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Wilkie Collins, among others. She also co-edited Victorian Literature: Criticism and Debates (Routledge 2016) with Lee Behlman (Montclair State University). Anne is currently working on a book on the gender politics of John Ruskin's economic theory, which will explore his relationship with several nineteenth-century women writers, including Mary Russell Mitford. Anne is working on Mitford's letters and Our Village for the Digital Mitford Project. Rebecca Nesvet, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, Founding Editor↴Rebecca Nesvet’s other digital humanities projects include the general editorship of a student-produced edition of James Malcolm Rymer’s The String of Pearls, or the Barber of Fleet-street (1850), the first complete documentary edition of this source of the legend of Sweeney Todd; and Science and Art, a Farce , by Malcolm Rymer (1820), edited by James Malcolm Rymer (1842), in Scholarly Editing: The Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing 38 (2017). Nesvet’s research on James Malcolm Rymer, Romanticism, travel literature, and drama appears in the Keats-Shelley Journal, Prism(s): Essays in Romanticism, Notes and Queries, Studies in Travel Writing, Women’s Writing, The Review of English Studies, Literature Compass, Shakespearean International Yearbook, and, in Romania, American, British, and Canadian Studies. She won the International Conference on Romanticism’s 2012 Lore Metzger Award for the best graduate paper. She is a Founding Editor for Digital Mitford.Molly C. O’Donnell, University of Nevada, Las Vegas↴ Molly O’Donnell is the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, President’s Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. She has recently contributed to Victoriographies and the Norton Anthology, and was formerly associate faculty at Notre Dame of Maryland University. Her dissertation uses contemporary sociolinguistics to examine the nineteenth-century tales novel as a useful mode for exploration in the areas of genre, narrative, and gender studies.Rebecca Jeanne Parker, Loyola University Chicago↴Rebecca Parker is pursuing an M.A. in Digital Humanities at Loyola University in Chicago. She graduated with a B.A. in English Literature and Social Sciences from the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, where she has worked as an assistant for the Center for the Digital Text. She is currently working on a digital archive of her own. Her project, The Restoration of Nell Nelson, started in spring 2014 as research for her capstone thesis in history. The Nell Nelson archive intends to restore the importance of a female investigative reporter that exposed the harmful effects of industrialization in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century. Parker’s interest in Digital Humanities stemmed from her involvement on the Digital Mitford Project working as Dr. Beshero-Bondar’s Green Scholar. She is helping to prepare a digital edition of Mary Russell Mitford’s journal of 1819-1823.James Rovira, Tiffin University, ↴ James Rovira teaches British literature, Creative Writing: Poetry, Creative Writing: Creative Non-Fiction, and Literary Theory at Tiffin University in Tiffin, OH. His research interests include William Blake, Søren Kierkegaard, British and Danish history and literature, poetry, and theory. His book, Blake and Kierkegaard: Creation and Anxiety is available in both hardcover and paperback from Bloomsbury/Continuum. He currently lives in the greater Columbus area with his wife Sheridan and his children Penn, Grace, and Zoe.Daniel Schierenbeck, University of Central Missouri↴Daniel Schierenbeck has published essays on Romantic authors including Jane Austen, William Blake, Charles and Mary Lamb, Mary Mitford, Mary Shelley, and Jane West. He is currently at work on project that examines the impact of conservative religous discourse on the cultural politics and aesthetics of early ninteenth-century British literature.Samantha Webb, University of Montevallo, Founding Editor↴Samantha Webb is Professor of English, specializing in British Romantic literature, with a particular focus on the intersection of food, agricultural politics, and ecology. She has published in The European Romantic Review, Romanticism, Essays in Romanticism, and elsewhere. At the University of Montevallo, she teaches courses in British Romantic literature, children’s literature, folk and fairy tales, and global literature. She is a Founding Editor and Fiction Section Editor for Digital Mitford.Consulting Editors: Data Visualization Group
Mark Algee-Hewitt, Stanford Literary LabDavid J. Birnbaum, University of PittsburghThomas Lombardi, Washington and Jefferson CollegeMary Erica Zimmer, Editorial Institute, Boston University↴Mary Erica Zimmer comes to Digital Mitford through her interests in scholarly editing, data visualization, textual scholarship, literary influence, and media change. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in Editorial Studies at Boston University’s Editorial Institute and is also associated with several projects through the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Early Modern Digital Agendas group (http://emdigitalagendas.folger.edu/2013/12/03/emda-news/).Student Assistants
Olivia Allard, State University of New York at Potsdam↴Olivia Allard expects to graduate in 2017 with a B.A. in Communication from the State University of New York at Potsdam. She is also completing a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies. She has worked as a Digital Mitford Research Assistant since Spring 2015. In fall 2015, she wrote a book history of Mitford’s 1824 Our Village as a final project for Dr. Wilson’s undergraduate course in Victorian literature. Sylvan Baker, University of Montevallo↴Sylvan Baker graduated with a B.A. in English from the University of Montevallo in May 2017, and will be attending the University of Nevada-Reno for graduate school in the fall. Before attending Montevallo, Sylvan spent a year and a half in Ireland with her mom (who thankfully is living back here in the US now), and she gained a lot of cultural knowledge and a love for the Irish countryside. At UM, she found a love for studying nature and the environment in texts, especially in Romantic texts. She has thoroughly enjoyed the Lake Poets and Mitford’s connections to the natural landscape in "Our Village.” She worked on the Digital Mitford Archive while enrolled in Samantha Webb’s Digital Romanticism course in Spring 2017.John Bawden, University of Montevallo↴John Bawden is Associate Professor of History at the University of Montevallo. He teaches courses in various areas of Latin American History, as well as courses in Digital History. His publications have appeared in The Latinamericanist and The Journal of Latin American Studies. His book, The Pinochet Generation: The Chilean Military in the Twentieth Century, was published by the University of Alabama Press in 2016.Temani Beck, University of Montevallo↴Temani Beck is completing her Master’s degree in Education at the University of Montevallo. She worked on the Digital Mitford Archive while enrolled in Samantha Webb’s Digital Romanticism course in Spring 2017.Courtney Collins Younes, State University of New York, Potsdam↴Courtney Younes Collins plans to graduate in 2017 with a B.A. in English: Literature from the State University of New York at Potsdam. She is working as a Digital Mitford Research Assistant in Fall 2017. She plans to go on to graduate work and teaching in Elementary Education.Shawntel Courtney, State University of New York, Potsdam↴Shawntel Courtney plans to graduate in 2018 with a B.A. in English: Writing and a minor in Literature from the State University of New York at Potsdam. She is working as a Digital Mitford Research Assistant in Fall 2017 and Spring 2018. Her interests include scholarly editing and British and American fiction of the Romantic period.Julie Fish, State University of New York, Potsdam↴Julie Fish plans to graduate in 2017 with a B.A. in English: Literature from the State University of New York at Potsdam. She is working as a Digital Mitford Research Assistant in Spring and Fall 2017. Her interests include bibliographical studies and book history, and she plans to pursue graduate studies in Library and Information Science.Shekneko Garrett, University of Montevallo↴Shekneko Garrett is pursuing a Master’s degree in Secondary Education in English at the University of Montevallo, after earning her undergraduate degree in English from Talladega College in May 2013. She aspires to become a teacher, and to coach basketball, softball, volleyball, or cheerleading. She worked on the Digital Mitford Archive while enrolled in Samantha Webb’s Digital Romanticism course in Spring 2017.Annie Gill, University of Montevallo↴Annie Gill is a Theatre major and English minor at the University of Montevallo. She worked on the Digital Mitford Archive while enrolled in Samantha Webb’s Digital Romanticism course in Spring 2017.Jonathan Michael Horanic, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg↴Jonathan M. Horanic is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English Literature with Secondary Education and History minors, and a Digital Studies Certificate at Pitt-Greensburg. He is currently working on another on-going digital archive that focuses on the curation and visulization of graveyard records at Brush Creek Cemetery in Irwin, PA. His project, theGraveyard , involves the collection and study of data collected from on-site gravestone inscriptions, burial records, and gravesite maps. Jonathan is a member of the international English honor society Sigma Tau Delta, and a research assistant on the Digital Mitford Project.Sara Perry, University of Montevallo↴Sara Perry is an English major and Game Studies and Design minor at the University of Montevallo, hailing from the tiny town of Deatsville, Alabama. She has a passion for reading, crafts, and games, and plans on pursuing a career in game design after graduation. She worked on the Digital Mitford Archive while enrolled in Samantha Webb’s Digital Romanticism course in Spring 2017.Jordan Price, University of Montevallo↴Jordan Price earned his Bachelor’s in English at the University of Montevallo in May 2017. He is from Huntsville, Alabama. He worked on the Digital Mitford Archive while enrolled in Samantha Webb’s Digital Romanticism course in Spring 2017.Quinton A. Reed, University of Montevallo↴Quinton Reed is an alumnus of the University of Montevallo, where he attended from 2013 to 2017. He currently serves as the editor for Gold Orchid Publishing in Ceredigion, Wales, and is a freelance editor and copywriter in Portland, Oregon. His areas of interest include psychoanalytical and disability studies, particularly in postmodern literature, as well as Gothic and dystopian literature. He is also interested in the life sciences, particularly zoology and anatomy, and the significance of animals and illness in literature. He worked on the Mitford Archive while enrolled in Samantha Webb’s Digital Romanticism course in Spring 2017, and continues to assist the project in a consulting role.Susannah Ritchey, University of Montevallo↴Originally from Maylene, Alabama, Susannah Ritchey earned her Bachelor’s degree at the University of Montevallo in May 2017, with a major in English and a minor in History. She plans to attend graduate school to specialize in Restoration literature. She worked on the Digital Mitford Archive while enrolled in Samantha Webb’s Digital Romanticism course in Spring 2017.Brooke Ann Stewart, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg↴Brooke A. Stewart is a student at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, where she is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and a Digital Studies Certificate. Brooke is currently working on another digital archive that focuses on Emily Dickinson. Her project, Emily Dickinson , looks closely at Dickinson’s original poem manuscripts and compares them to published versions, which often differ in significant ways from Dickinson’s original work. Brooke is a member of the honor societies Phi Eta Sigma and Sigma Tau Delta, and she is an active participant in Habitat for Humanity on her campus. She is currently working as a research assistant on the Digital Mitford Project. Aymee Lynn Woody, University of Montevallo↴Aymee Lynn Woody received her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Montevallo in 2016. She is currently working towards her Master’s degree in Education at Montevallo and is slated to graduate in May of 2018. In her spare time, Aymee enjoys reading, writing, quilting, sewing, and embroidery. She worked on the Digital Mitford Archive while enrolled in Samantha Webb’s Digital Romanticism course in Spring 2017.Advisory Board
Mark Algee-Hewitt, Stanford Literary LabDavid J. Birnbaum, University of PittsburghCarol Bolton, Loughborough UniversityAlison Booth, University of Virginia↴Professor of English, Booth directs the Collective Biographies of Women (CBW) project at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities and Scholars’ Lab, with supported from the English Department, an ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship, and an NEH Level II Startup Grant, Office of Digital Humanities. An annotated bibliography, http://womensbios.lib.virginia.edu led to a relational database of the more than 1200 books and 8000 persons represented in the 13,000 biographical chapters in those books. See http://cbw.iath.virginia.edu/public/index.php. With a stand-aside XML schema, Biographical Elements and Structure Schema, the project team analyzes the narrative conventions of women’s biographies in documentary social networks, focusing on sample collections of types of personae. In 2015-2016, CBW collaborates with Social Networks in Archival Contexts to enhance access to archival records of women worldwide. Booth’s research on nineteenth-century transatlantic literary reception history includes a chapter on Mitford and women writers in the completed book, "Homes and Haunts: Visting Writers’ Shrines and Countries."Frederick Burwick, University of California, Los AngelesPatricia M. Duck, University of PittsburghNicholas Joukovsky, Penn State UniversityDiego Saglia, Università degli Studi di ParmaMartha Nell Smith, University of Maryland↴The founding Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, or MITH, Martha Nell Smith is Professor of English and a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland. She has published and contributed extensively to print and digital textual scholarship of Emily Dickinson and her circle, especially Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. She launched the Dickinson Electronic Archives in 1997 and with Lara Vetter she is developing Emily Dickinson’s Correspondences: A Born-Digital Textual Inquiry.Consultants
Thanks to the following scholars who have each played some small but significant part in the project: Karen Bourrier, Sara Cantwell, Catherine S. Cox, Melinda Creech, Alexandra Drayton, Daniel Hitt, Megan Abigail Hughes, M. Stephanie Murray, Catherine M. Parisian, Elaine Frantz Parsons, Quinton A. Reed, David Robinson, and Stacey Triplette.Past student assistants
Thanks to the following students from SUNY Potsdam and UCLA who helped us with this project in the past: Gracia Amos, William Barr, Ella Beckman, Jaime Burwell, Austin Calderwood, Tracy Harnish, Toni Hays, Nathaniel Hebert, Chi-Ya Huang, Mehaque Kohli, Corie LaSalle, Heather Long, Hailey Lown, Kristen Murphy, Chelsie Murray, Margo Paine, Ashante Parker, Wilmina Sainbert, Perdita Sasu, Rebecca Tang, and Robin Xiong.Maintained by: Elisa E. Beshero-Bondar
(ebb8 at pitt.edu) 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.This project is built with the <oXygen/> XML Editor and eXist-db: the open-source XML database.Last modified: