Wietske Smeele is a PhD candidate at Vanderbilt University. She is currently working on her dissertation, "The Victorian Posthuman: Monstrous Bodies in Science and Literature." This project explores what happens to the human body when it is comes into contact with non-human and mechanical materials. Taking into consideration nineteenth-century developments in science, medicine and technology as well as theories of the posthuman, Wietske argues that nineteenth-century literature and culture depicted the emergence of a new human--one informed more by its affinity with the non-human than by its kinship to the divine.