Megan Ward, Special Topics

Megan Ward

Assistant Professor of British Literature Oregon State University

Megan Ward teaches Victorian literature, the English novel, and digital humanities at Oregon State University. She is associate director of a digital archive of the Victorian explorer David Livingstone (Livingstone Online), and is currently completing a book manuscript, “Human Reproductions: Victorian Realist Character and Artificial Intelligence.”


Discussion

Fatima Saravia

Thank You Megan Ward for your talk on Reform. I would like to add on to the whole reform and web idea and how they are related. I feel that the reforms being advocated for in the novel are similar to a web because as mentioned, the important character such as Dorothea and Lydgate, are both opening links to the other different characters in the novel. And in a similar manner, the reforms are opening links into new innovations such as that of science, in terms of Lydgate. It is not only innovations, but also new opportunities in the sense that the reforms apply to the society and those who can take advantage of it, will be able to do so because they are given the opportunity.

Sammyy Suarez

Thank you professor Ward. I would like to expand on something you mentioned, which was how each character has a voice. I agree with your statement, because I believe that Eliot purposely created each character to represent social issues that were to be brought to people’s attention during that time. For example, she presents all these women from different social classes and presents how they all have the one thing in common, inequality. What I like most about how Eliot does it, is that she presents these issues through small details, while the characters are doing the most ordinary things. With the acknowledgement of these issues, Eliot herself is trying to reform the victorian society she lives in.

Klarissa Ayon

Thank you Megan Ward for the mini clip. Something that really got my attention was when Form Bill was also known as the Representation Act and how it is being used to think about people and how it is that they are being represented. George Eliot does not only use two specific characters through out the novel so that it can be all about them , but yet she uses a handful or characters so that their can be different types of agencies throughout the novel. I think that it is very significant that several agencies are included because not only does it somewhat demonstrate their gender and class and where they come from but it can also show who they really are as a person by the way that they speak a language .