Historians: welcome to the 2009 party!

The Journal of Victorian Studies is doing a 2009 special on 'Darwin and the evolution of Victorian studies', editor Jon Smith invites essays on

"all aspects of Darwin and Darwin studies in the Victorian period from scholars working in a range of areas, including history and history of science, literary and cultural criticism, art history, and history of the book."

and

investigations of Darwin's impact on previously overlooked areas (e.g., art and visual culture, psychology and the emotions), and new approaches to Darwinism's impact on Victorian attitudes to gender and courtship, race and empire, literature and publishing.

Well I'm delighted that historians are joining in the party and I'm sure they have much to contribute (some may even wish to sail with us), but as one who has a lot of Google alerts about Darwin and sees daily ranting, gibbering screeds blaming him for the misdeeds of Hitler, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, Stalin, eugenics, the sky falling on Chicken Licken's head and the failure of the Second Coming, my heart sinks to see him being held responsible for how Victorians copped off with one another. That's a real can of worms.

That rumbling you hear outside Westminster Abbey (London, where the poor chap was buried against his wishes) isn't the traffic its poor old Charles spinning in his grave at the millions of hands tugging his great ideas and life's graft in their own preferred directions.

Hat-tip: The Dispersal of Darwin.