Katie Bell 🇵🇸
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decadentdickens.bsky.social
Katie Bell 🇵🇸
@decadentdickens.bsky.social
Victorianist & PhD in Dickens studies. High school educator in Atlanta. Blog editor for the Dickens Society. Trekkie. Dabbles in dance. Founder of Ga Herp Association. www.gaherp.com
Pay as you can virtual workshop on Shakespeare coming up!
www.eventbrite.com/e/shakespear...
Shakespeare Now
An Urgent Political Conversation
www.eventbrite.com
September 14, 2026 at 11:27 PM
I had to wait to get to my editing software at home to post this but here is Olafur Eliasson’s “Your rainbow panorama” from #Dickenssociety2026 and featuring @drchrislouttit.bsky.social in a brief cameo.
July 21, 2026 at 6:51 PM
I ended my #Dickenssociety2026 with a stop off in London to take a class with Dimitri Gruzdev. He killed me, but in the best way possible. Exercising my mind and my body this week!
July 17, 2026 at 1:33 PM
Beautiful images shared by Jeremy Parrott in his talk about the Adelphi in London. I will now be doing some side quest literary tourism. #dickenssociety2026
July 16, 2026 at 1:13 PM
Céline Prest defines Jo’s not knowing “nothink” as equating to his not existing. Jo is continually defined by negative terms and his body gradually loses its integrity through the narrator’s description. #Dickenssociety2026
July 16, 2026 at 8:07 AM
A symposium first on day 3 of #Dickenssociety2026 : a double panel! Nora Schalkers & Matthias Bauer on the uses of ‘enlightenment’ in Dickens.
July 16, 2026 at 7:44 AM
🎉 I am thrilled to work alongside such wonderful Dickensian scholars as @liliu430.bsky.social who won the Parlow Prize and @saramalton.bsky.social and Meg Cronin who won the Paroissien Prize! 🎉
July 15, 2026 at 8:06 PM
Dickensians watching England v. Argentina! ⚽️ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇦🇷#Dickenssociety2026
July 15, 2026 at 7:32 PM
Day 2 of #dickenssociety2026 provides a beautiful walk to ARoS museum for our symposium dinner. Denmark is gorgeous!
July 15, 2026 at 2:08 PM
Thank you, @dickenssociety.bsky.social for letting me talk about ghosts again. I’ll hit a new topic next year.
At #Dickenssociety2026 we hear from @decadentdickens.bsky.social about ghosts, the communication between the living and the dead, and how Dickens believed in ‘the trance state’
July 14, 2026 at 3:08 PM
Virginia Zimmerman discussing homemade children’s literature, including the Gad’s Hill Gazette’s (produced by Dickens’s younger teenage sons) story on the death of the Dickens’ family dog, Turk. #Dickenssociety2026
July 14, 2026 at 3:07 PM
Michelle Allen Emerson speaking about Edwin Stanley Brookes, Dickensian actor, elocution teacher, & psychical researcher, who was witness to “Dickensian Miracle.” After losing his voice before a show, 👻 Dickens lended his voice to Brookes a mere 30 minutes prior to the recital. #Dickenssociety2026
July 14, 2026 at 2:46 PM
“Typographical Exuberance” of serial installments offer excitement for the reader (see below) but Joel Brattin also examines the lack of consistency in Dickens’s textually exuberant writing: Pocket-Breaches or Pocket Breeches? The world may never know. #Dickenssociety2026
July 14, 2026 at 12:35 PM
Meoghan Cronin discussing narrators of ‘The Signal-Man’ and Sarah Smith’s ‘The Traveling Post-Office’ of Mugby Junction: each narrator has a compulsion to solve the mystery. They imagine they are subjective but they are not. #Dickenssociety2026
July 14, 2026 at 12:25 PM
Natalie McKnight on Dickens’ tendencies to deconstruct binaries: the Shakespearean wise fools, Mr. Dick & Dora, become more emotionally intelligent than the hero of his own novel with their “the mind[s] of the heart”. #Dickenssociety2026
July 14, 2026 at 10:45 AM
‘Dickens Thinking on His Feet’: Edward Grimble discussed how aggression peppers Dickens’ descriptions of walking. The imaginative labor required of him to write was difficult to endure; the need to walk the streets was bound to his writing. #Dickenssociety2026
July 14, 2026 at 10:20 AM
Wiktoria Pierzak outlined alternative family models: social surrogacy, neighborly adoption, & families of choice. Pierzak explained how David abandons his alternative lifestyle & childhood with social outlier, Betsy, in favor of social normalcy. #Dickenssociety2026
July 14, 2026 at 10:07 AM
Rob Jacklosky dissects Dickens’s humor, pointing out that comedy is structured through incongruity and juxtaposition, and it’s a meeting point between two incompatible frames of reference: to see the world as it is AND to see it slant. #Dickenssociety2026
July 14, 2026 at 8:37 AM
Lillian Nader: the brain as the “organ of the mind” versus a “temporary housing for the soul.” Elliotson, intimacy with God, and phrenology all weigh into Dickens’ thoughts & were especially on his mind during “Barnaby Rudge” with John Willet and Barnaby: material brain vs soul #Dickenssociety2026
July 14, 2026 at 8:22 AM
Mark Cronin on the verbose, amorous description of Belle’s daughter in “X-mas Carol”: “did he not know he was speaking out loud?!” 😂
The narrator of ‘Carol’ exists in an undefined space—fully realized at times, rhetorical device at others. It changes with each Stave.
#Dickenssociety2026
July 14, 2026 at 7:54 AM
Departing a rather balmy Atlanta (62% humidity) for a similarly balmy Aarhus. At least I’ll feel at home as I sweat. #Dickenssociety2026
July 12, 2026 at 4:43 PM
I’m reading GWTW for the first time and I have enjoyed Scarlett: she is a hilarious PAIN, hates the war, and also makes some great points about women’s rights. BUT Mitchell’s take on Reconstruction is flawed. Abell explains why and counters with Mitchell’s ATL contemporary, WEB DuBois!
The Dunning School: The Biased Study of Reconstruction that Shaped "Gone With the Wind"
www.atlantahistorycenter.com
June 16, 2026 at 5:39 AM
Finally met a sequoia!
May 16, 2026 at 1:36 AM
I’m gonna send my upcoming student loan payments to…
Gil Scott-Heron - Whitey On the Moon (Official Audio)
YouTube video by Ace Records
youtube.com
April 9, 2026 at 10:04 PM