8:31 a.m., Feb. 2, 2009----The University of Delaware Library and the Delaware Art Museum announce the appointment of Thad Logan of Rice University as the recipient of the 2009 Fellowship in Pre-Raphaelite Studies.

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The purpose of the fellowship is for a scholar to work on the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates, which are strengths in the collections of both the University Library and the Delaware Art Museum.

Logan is Lecturer on English and the humanities at Rice University in Houston, and will be in Delaware during February and early March. Her teaching and research focuses on Victorian studies, including Victorian material culture, Victorian fiction and the art and literature of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Logan is the author of The Victorian Parlour: A Cultural Study published by Cambridge University Press in 2001, which investigates a particular space in the middle-class Victorian home, with attention to the discourses that circulated around the decoration of the parlour, the objects collected within it, and the way it was represented in the visual arts and in literature.

She has taught several courses on the Pre-Raphaelites and given presentations on them at a number of conferences, most recently those sponsored by the North American Victorian Studies Association and The Modern Language Association.

A short article on Rossetti's wombat is forthcoming in The William Morris Society Newsletter. She has been affiliated with the Dickens Project at the University of California Santa Cruz, and will participate in developing courses for the new Ph.D. program in art history at Rice.

Logan received a master of fine arts degree in poetry from Warren Wilson College, a doctorate and master's, both from Rice University, and a bachelor's degree from the University of California Santa Barbara.

Logan's research during the period of the fellowship will focus on a current book project, Rossetti's Things, and will draw upon her previous theoretical and historical work in the study of material objects, research into the life and work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and investigations into the connections among various personalities -- and artifacts -- associated with the Pre-Raphaelite circle.

She is particularly interested in the way material things appear in Rossetti's visual art, poetry, and private life and wants to understand their “appearance” not only in the phenomenological sense of what Rossetti's representations of things looked like, and how they are figuratively deployed, but also in the sense of how “real” things were acquired, stored and exchanged, how they became subjects of discourse and how they mediated relationships.

The first chapter, “Rossetti's Drawers,” focuses on the cluttered interiors of Tudor House, particularly the elaborate collection of fabrics, jewels, and exotic objects which are represented in many of the paintings done after 1860. Other chapters will consider Rossetti's wombat, Rossetti's money, Rossetti's china, Rossetti's manuscripts, and Rossetti's mother.

Logan will use of the resources of both the University of Delaware Library and the Delaware Art Museum.

The Delaware Art Museum is home to the most important collection of Pre-Raphaelite art in the U.S. Assembled largely by Samuel Bancroft Jr., the collection includes paintings, works on paper, decorative arts, manuscripts, and letters, and is augmented by the museum's Helen Farr Sloan Art Library.

With comprehensive holdings in books, periodicals, electronic resources, and microforms, the University of Delaware Library is a major resource for the study of literature and art. The Special Collections Department contains material related to the Pre-Raphaelites, who are also well-represented in the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection of Victorian books, manuscripts, and artworks.