The @rarebookschool annual report includes this great photo of David Vander Meulen, faculty there & in English at UVA. Seeing it prompts to to tell a little Saturday story about the ways small acts of academic generosity can resonate through someone’s career

Because—spoiler alert—in a very real way I owe my entire career to David, though I never took a class with him & he was not on my dissertation committee—In fact, he ran the orientation to graduate studies for my cohort & the intensity of the bibliographic work scared me to death

I actively avoided his classes, in fact, not realizing the skills & knowledge I was passing up—the bibliographic contingent was present but relatively marginal to the larger UVA grad English cohort—when I'd see David at events we'd interact pleasantly but that was all for years

Fast forward to my diss—I was in archives reading newspapers from the Millerites , a US apocalyptic group in the 1830s and 40s & found Hawthorne's "The Celestial Railroad" reprinted—I decided to base my formal departmental diss presentation on it—why was this text in this paper?

I structured the talk thematically—a very lit studies approach—what are the themes in this story that would have resonated with apocalyptic believers during the period &c.? David was at the talk & asked a very simple question I'd not considered, "Who else reprinted this story?"

And that little question, folks, was my path into 1. book history/bibliography, 2. periodical studies, and 3. digital humanities—in other words, the three fields that define my entire career at this point, but which as a year 4 grad student I had no idea really existed

Because that question stuck with me—I did start digging & the history of reprinting that unfolded took over my intellectual imagination—I started building a digital edition of the Celestial Railroad, which led me into DH, which all eventually led to @ViralTexts & current projects

Side note—another scholar could have asked that question ungenerously—made me resent it rather than pursue it—"you know that reprinting was the dominant mode of newspaper production, right? Have you not even considered that this was just a popular text?"—David certainly knew that

He knew that me not taking his classes meant I was less able to grapple with the text from perspectives of material culture, print history, production & labor—& were he another person he could have taken this opportunity to emphasize those lacks—I am so thankful he is generous

Though David never joined my committee & didn't have any formal investment in my career, he continued to check in as my projects developed—he advocated for support for the edition while I was a grad student—& when I came back to RBS through @SoFCritBibRBS he was so glad to see me

I'll end with a story—3-4 years ago I ran into David at a @rarebookschool reception—he lit up, said "I have something for you" & produced an 1843 edition of *A Visit to the Celestial City*—the American Sunday-School Union's unauthorized reprint of "The Celestial Railroad"

David had found it during his regular historical book spelunking & thought I should have it—this book I would not have known existed had he not been so unassumingly generous—that he found it, saved it, and had it on his person just in case he saw me that day still blows my mind

I can't think of a moral to this story that's not a bit cheesy, but—small moments of intellectual generosity can have enormous ramifications to scholars around us—choose generative responses whenever possible—share your expertise rather than chastising those who don't yet have it

And to those certainly wondering—I have shared this gratitude with David since, though maybe not as fully as I've articulated it here—at first I was too immature to recognize it for what it was—but now I really should send him a longer note of thanks. I will do that today.

A brief addendum, I owe similar notes to @nowviskie, @mkirschenbaum, & @mlmcgill, all of whom contributed small & large acts of intellectual generosity—a consultation, a phone call, a panel—without which my career simply would not be—Those will have to be threads for future times