It was only after reaching out to PhD alum Jennifer Schell for a few comments about Troy Boone that I learned that my colleague, who is retiring this year, likes to sail. Wrote Schell, who is currently a professor of English at the University of Alaska Fairbanks: “I wish him well as he embarks on new oceanic adventures on his sailboat Miranda. I hope he steers clear of all the orcas. . . .”
Schell recalled finding common interests with Boone while she was working on her PhD at Pitt: “Though our scholarly interests differed, we shared an interest in oceanic writing and sailing vessels, so we kept in touch, chatting inside and outside the Cathedral on many occasions.” Boone’s areas of focus include Victorian and Edwardian English literature, as well as children’s literature and, more recently, ecopoetics. His book, Youth of Darkest England: Working-Class Children at the Heart of Victorian Empire (Routledge), first published in 2005, was reissued in paperback in 2012. Diana Maltz, reviewing the monograph for Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, describes the work as “a theoretically informed and meticulously researched” project that “explor[es] the infantilization of working-class adults at the heart of the middle-class imperial vision. To this end, Boone examines sociological journalism, lowbrow and high-modernist fictions, popular guides, and visual resources.”
Boone completed his PhD at the University of Rochester, going on to teach at the University of California Santa Cruz, then joining Pitt’s faculty in 1999. He has sat on numerous PhD comprehensive exam and dissertation committees, and from 2007–2011 served as director of graduate studies. “Always generous with his time,” Schell observed, “he has provided me with excellent career advice, brilliant sample syllabi, and wonderful letters of recommendation.” His scholarship has led to numerous publications in journals, including Studies in the Novel and Children’s Literature, chapters in edited collections including Victorians and the Environment: Ecocritical Perspectives (Routledge, 2017) and Historicizing Christian Encounters with the Other (New York University Press, 1998), and research grants that have enabled him to spend time in British archives. He has been a invited speaker at several academic gatherings; in 2013, he gave a keynote address, “The Evolution of Ecopoetics,” at the Pacific Rim Conference on Literature and Rhetoric in Anchorage, Alaska.
Boone’s departmental and University service has been extensive, including multiple appointments to Literature curriculum committees during a period of extensive reinvention of the Literature major; he has headed the Children’s Literature program and has served terms on the Sustainability Task Force Subcommittee, 2018-2020 and Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Tenure Council, 2021-2024. Not only has he supported undergraduate and graduate students, but he has provided support to colleagues seeking tenure. For Jennifer Schell, Boone’s support began during her PhD studies but continues to this day: “ I will always appreciate his staunch support of my teaching and scholarship, and I will always remember our reunions at conferences in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Davis, and Anchorage with great fondness.”
—Ellen McGrath Smith