Call for Papers:
Persuasions/Persuasions On-Line
May 9, 2020
“Staying at Home” with Jane Austen:
Reading and Writing during a Pandemic.
Mrs. Elton’s oft-quoted remark, “There’s nothing like staying at home for real comfort,” cuts in a number of ways both in Austen’s Emma and in our present condition. Persuasions/Persuasions On-Line seeks essays for a cluster or clusters within our regular issues: Persuasions 42 (the 2020 edition, which will be mailed in 2021) and Persuasions On-Line 41.1 (December 2020). Possibilities might include but are not limited to:
- Life at home
- Confinement and social distancing
- Play
- Social engagement despite physical distance
- Social rituals and the individual
- Isolation (and how it can be mitigated)
- Letter-writing
- Epidemics in Jane Austen’s time
- Illness and/or death
- Nursing and/or the health professions
- Service
- Disease and religion in Austen’s world
- Hope and/or despair
- The uses of Austen in troublous times
Essays need not address our current situation but could focus only on Austen and her period (or on her afterlives). Other ideas are welcome.
Please address inquiries to Susan Allen Ford, Editor, at sford@deltastate.edu. Submissions of 2500-4000 words should be sent on or before September 1. Please follow the journal’s style guide, which may be found online.
And, as always, we welcome submissions for the Miscellany, the non-thematic section of the journals.
