Dr. Linda Shires, David and Ruth Gottesman Professor and Chair of the English Department at Stern College for Women, was honored to deliver the Jane Stedman Plenary Lecture on May 1 at the Midwest Victorian Studies Conference, held in Iowa City. The conference topic was "Victorian Sense and the Senses," treated from aesthetic, philosophical, literary, and scientific perspectives. Her lecture "Coming to our Senses: Colors in the 19th Century" offered background on color theory of the period and explained how 19th century artists J.M.W. Turner, William Holman Hunt, and William Dyce used pigments differently and for different reasons in their oil paintings: "Mortlake Terrace," "The Fighting Temeraire," "Our English Coasts," and "Pegwell Bay, Kent, a Recollection of October 5, 1858."