Hello everyone! My name is Nikita Willeford Kastrinos and I’m very excited to join the UW Textual Studies Program as a Research Associate this academic year. I’m a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of English and an alum of the UW Textual Studies graduate certificate program. In this blog, I’ll tell you a bit about myself and my research, as well as my role this year working with the program.
I specialize in British literature of the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with concentrations in book history, the environmental humanities, media and material cultural studies, and the digital humanities. I’m currently completing my dissertation, Of Form(es) and Form(ats): Ecologies of the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Novel. This project narrates an ecological history of print in Britain by examining the developing genre of the novel. Moving from its emergence in the hand-press period to its mass production in the machine-press era, this work tracks the novel’s literary development as it coincides with the shift from pre- to post-industrialized print and the rise of extraction capitalism, offering new ways to think about the relationship between literature and the environment.
Participating in the UW Textual Studies Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies was hugely influential in developing my dissertation research. My capstone project, “Intimate Threads: Text and Textile in the Pages of Pamela,” began my thinking about the materiality of the book object and its natural origins, and research support from the program helped me to visit library collections important to my chapters, such as my visit to Emory University, where I got to view first and early editions of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Most recently, UW Textual Studies support helped me to attend to Rare Book School at the University of Chicago for the inaugural session of “An Environmental History of the Book,” a course taught by Dr. Eric Slaughter (University of Chicago) focused on the way in which the natural world has shaped the book object and how book objects, in turn, shape our perceptions of nature and environment. From papyrus fragments to bookworm holes to arsenic-dyed bookcloth, we learned about the ecological origins and impacts of books and writing from antiquity to the present day.
This year as an Research Associate, I’m looking forward to contributing to the UW Textual Studies program by helping to reach new students and academic units who can join in and add to the interdisciplinary community of UW Textual Studies. I’m especially excited to work with programs within and outside the university, like the UW Humanities Data Lab, the UW Libraries, Open Scholarship Commons, and Special Collections, and the Seattle-based non-profit, Partners in Print, to help generate new possibilities for research collaboration with UW students completing their Textual Studies capstones.
But most of all, I’m gratified to be in a position to help encourage students in their own research trajectories, connecting them with classes and opportunities that can inspire them and enrich their time in the UW Textual Studies Program.
You’ll hear from me on the Textual Studies blog and our social media accounts where I’ll be sharing UW Textual Studies news, upcoming events, and updates on faculty and student research. Don’t forget to sign up for the Textual Studies listserv and to follow us on Instagram and X to keep up-to-date on all things TXTDS.
If you have work to share or events to promote, I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me by email at nikitaw@uw.edu.