Gary Totten (Faculty Affairs) presented a paper, "Land, Blood, History: Edith Wharton and the Embodied Natural World," at the Edith Wharton Summit held June 4-6, 2026 at Wharton's historic home in Lenox, MA. In the paper, Totten explained the connections that Wharton made in her nonfiction and fiction writing between the environment, bloodlines, and historical tradition; the sometimes negative personal and cultural consequences of these connections for her fictional women characters; and how she imagined these characters creatively resisting such consequences.