In Time and the Moment in Victorian Literature and Society, Professor Zemka examines the rhetorical device of the moment in British fiction from the 19th century. According to Zemka, sudden changes and revelations have always carried a special significance. During the Victorian period in particular, she argues, rapid industrialization and developments in time-keeping technology led to greater significance being attached to individual moments. Zemka’s larger argument, however, is that the device of the moment actually obscures a thread of 19th- and 20th-century literature that criticized the dominant theory about moments and their significance. Professor Zemka’s book promises to reshape literary criticism on Victorian literature and time as well as critical theories of temporality. Her book recently received the Pope Woodard Award for the best book in the last three years by a member of the English faculty. Professor Zemka is also the author of Victorian Testaments: The Bible, Christology, and Literary Authority in Early-Nineteenth-Century British Culture. Since joining the CU-Boulder faculty in 1989, she has received the Donald Gray Prize for the best essay in Victorian studies, the Woodrow Wilson Innovation Award, and an American Philosophical Society Fellowship.
