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Breakout Sessions
A: Friday, October 3 3:30 - 4:15 PM
A1:
Anatomy of a Janeite
Jeanne
Kiefer, Cave Creek, AZ
Who are the readers that
constitute the true Austen legacy? Kiefer presents the results of an online
survey conducted earlier this year, from which she has created a profile of
21st century Janeites.
A2:
Covering Jane Austen
Deirdre
Gilbert, Independent Scholar, Colorado Springs, CO
This session discusses the
history of the covers of Austen’s novels. Gilbert asks many fascinating
questions about “packaging” Austen, among them, why some covers sell more
novels than others—or is it the inside story?
A3: An
Austen Legacy: The Henry and Alberta Hirshheimer Burke Collection at Goucher
College
Laurie
Kaplan, Nancy Magnuson, and Carol Pippen,
Goucher College, Timonium, MD
The Hirshheimers spent over
40 years amassing material by and about Jane Austen. The panel focuses on the
importance of the collection in the context of Austen’s legacy.
A4: Austen
and The Importance of Being Earnest
Laura
Mooneyham White, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Oscar Wilde’s most popular
play, “The Importance of Being Earnest”, seems to inherit Austen’s comic
spirit. White contrasts the specifics of verbal irony in Austen’s novels and
Wilde’s plays, the differing treatment of the genre and plot devices, and the
implications they have for Austen’s and Wilde’s differing worldviews.
A5: The
Pemberley Effect: Austen’s Legacy to the Historic House Industry
Sarah
Parry, Chawton House Library, Hampshire, UK
Published in Persuasions 30 (2008).
“The Pemberley Effect: Austen’s Legacy to the Historic House Industry.”
Persuasions 30 (2008): 113-122.
Is the
real star of Pride and Prejudice
Pemberley? Parry suggests that using historic houses in Austen adaptations has
helped to secure their future, as they serve the film and television industry
as unsurpassed backdrops. Thus, Austen’s legacy to the historic house industry
is important and growing.
A6: Margaret
Oliphant’s Miss Marjoribanks: A
Victorian Emma
Amy
Robinson, University of Florida, Gainesville
Published in Persuasions 30 (2008).
“Margaret Oliphant’s Miss Marjoribanks: A Victorian Emma.”
Persuasions 30 (2008): 67-75.
Fifty years after the
publication of Emma (1816), Margaret
Oliphant published Miss Marjoribanks (1866),
whose heroine is a descendant of Emma Woodhouse. This session highlights the
ways in which Oliphant’s Victorian novel stands in the tradition of Austen’s
comic town novels.
A7: The
Catherine Hubback Archive at the Jane Austen House Museum: Preserving the
Legacies of Niece and Aunt
Alice
Marie Villaseñor, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
Although sequel writing is
considered a 20th century phenomenon, it was begun by Austen’s niece Catherine
Hubback in 1850 when she completed The
Watsons as a novel titled The Younger
Sister. White highlights the importance of this sequel and how the museum
preserves the legacy of writers in the Austen family.
B: Friday, October 3 4:30 - 5:15 PM
B1: Love
in the Shrubbery: Austen’s Garden Legacy
Kim
Wilson, Jones Books, Madison, WI
“The garden is quite a love.
. . .I go & refresh myself every now & then and then come back to
Solitary Coolness.” This session takes a photographic tour through the Austen
garden sites and explores the roles gardens played in the lives and loves of Austen
and her characters.
B2: Louisa
Sets Lord Brabourne Straight
Edith
Lank, Rochester, NY
Published in Persuasions 30 (2008).
“Family and Scholarly Annotations in Lord Brabourne’s Letters: Adventures of an Amateur Academic.”
Persuasions 30 (2008): 76-87.
Louisa, a granddaughter of
James Austen-Leigh, annotated her copy of Lord Brabourne’s (censored)
collection of Austen letters with comments and corrections that have proved invaluable
to biographers. Lank discusses Louisa’s observations and shares previously
unpublished gossip and items from her own collection.
B3: Romanticism,
Feminism, and the Role of Nature in Austen
Kadesh
Lauridsen Minter, Jacksonville, FL
Minter draws on the work of
feminist theorists to discuss Austen’s “Romantic” use of nature and
demonstrates ways in which Austen addresses, but ultimately revises, the
masculine themes set forth by the Romantic poets,
including Wordsworth.
B4:
Jane of Green Gables: L.M. Montgomery’s
Reworking of Austen’s Legacy
Miriam
Rheingold Fuller, University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg
Montgomery
recasts Austen’s plots and scenarios in her most famous book. Anne Shirley
embodies characteristics of Austen’s heroines and her romantic experiences
resemble those of Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse. Fuller suggests that
Montgomery inherits Austen’s legacy while creating her own.
B5: Digging
Into Austen’s World
Carol Chernega, Pittsburgh, PA
As JASNA’ first
International Visitor, Chernega immersed herself in Austen’s world for two
months. Her session discusses how she studied gardening in Austen’s day and
researched 18th century plants for Chawton House Library.
B6: Second
Attachments in the Duchess of Devonshire’s The
Sylph and Austen’s Sense and
Sensibility
Jonathan
Gross, DePaul University, Chicago, IL
Gross
explores the influence of Duchess of Devonshire’s The Sylph on Austen’s Sense
and Sensibility. Both works emphasize the importance of discernment in
choosing a mate, and although Georgiana’s novel is very different from Jane’s,
it anticipates her concern with the vicissitudes of romantic love.
B7:
Father Fenimore and Aunt Jane: Jane
Austen’s Influence on James Fenimore Cooper
Barbara
Alice Mann, University of Toledo, OH
Mann examines the original
stimulus to Cooper’s writing as well as the profound debt of his female
characters to Austen’s memorable women, drawing on examples from his first
novel and his famous Leather-Stocking
Tales.
C: Saturday, October 4 10:15 - 11:00 AM
C1:
The
Geese vs. the “Niminy Piminy” Spinster: Virginia Woolf Defends Austen
Emily Auerbach, University of Wisconsin at Madison
Woolf singled Jane Austen
out for praise in A Room of One’s Own.
The geese in her essay “Jane Austen and the Geese” are Austen’s critics, and
the session highlights ways in which 20th century authors like Woolf have
attempted to rescue Austen from her geese-like critics and biographers.
C2: Shades
of Austen in Ian McEwan’s Atonement
Juliette
Wells, Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY
Published in Persuasions 30 (2008).
“Shades of Austen in Ian McEwan’s Atonement.”
Persuasions 30 (2008): 101-112.
Although McEwan cites
Elizabeth Bowen, rather than Austen, as a source of inspiration for Atonement, Wells considers the novel
part of the Austen legacy and discusses both the invocation and disavowal of
Austen as its model.
C3:
Exhibiting
the Learning: Austen on Display
Phyllis
Roth, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY and Annette LeClair, Union
College, Schenectady, NY
Roth and LeClair discuss how
their development of multi-media exhibits examining Austen’s legacy encourages
students to generate fresh interpretations of the author and to “inhabit her
world” in unique ways, enhancing conventional classroom experiences.
C4: The
Legacy of Her Voice: Ethics and Wit in Austen’s Novel Pride and Prejudice, and Its Filmed Adaptations
Margaret
McBride Horwitz, New College Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
Horwitz explores Austen’s
development of a view of gentility based not on social rank, but on ethical
attitudes, which Austen often conveys through wit, as illustrated in her novel,
and film and television productions of Pride
and Prejudice.
C5: Austen’s
Womanist World
Kathleen
Anderson, Palm Beach Atlantic University, West Palm Beach, FL
Though the world belonged to
men in terms of political, economic, and social privilege, they occupy a
marginal position in Austen’s novels. Drawing on the theories of Simone de
Beauvior, Anderson suggests Austen’s women are the essential Self and her men
the inessential Other.
C6: The
Completions of Austen’s The Watsons and Sanditon
Kathleen James-Cavan, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon
From 1830 to 2005, writers
have attempted to turn the fragments of “The Watsons” and “Sanditon” into
complete novels. James-Cavan explores these efforts, which testify to the
legacy of Austen who continues to inspire new writing.
C7: Austen’s
Legacy of Love and Laughter to Carol Shields
Nora
Foster Stovel, University of Alberta, Edmonton
Published in Persuasions 30 (2008).
“‘Moral Seriousness with Comic Drama’: Austen’s Legacy of Life, Love, and Laughter to Carol Shields.”
Persuasions 30 (2008): 88-100.
Shields calls herself “a
devoted reader of Jane Austen” and inherits from Austen a legacy of “consummate
artistry.” Stovel focuses on Shields’ biography of Austen and her Persuasions essays, and compares the
novels of Austen and Shields.
D: Saturday, October 4 1:30 - 2:15 PM
D1: Mrs.
Gaskell’s North and South: Austen’s
Early Legacy
Janine Barchas, University of Texas at Austin
Published in Persuasions 30 (2008).
“Mrs. Gaskell’s North and South: Austen’s Early Legacy.”
Persuasions 30 (2008): 53-66.
Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel
(1854) may be the first rewriting, albeit unacknowledged, of Pride and Prejudice. Barchas examines
familiar tropes from Austen in Gaskell’s novels, as well as Austen’s and
Gaskell’s regional prejudices, pastoral South versus industrial North.
D2: Austen:
End or Beginning?
Emily
C. Friedman, University of Missouri at Columbia
Austen holds a curious space
in literary history; three literary specialties (18th century novel, Romantics,
Victorians) claim her. Friedman answers the question whether Austen is a new
sort of Romantic writer, the literary heiress to novelists Richardson and
Fielding, or even the mother of a new kind
of novel.
D3: Looking
at Landscape with Austen in Her Time and Ours
Margaret
Chittick and Vera Quin, London, UK
Chittick
and Quin look at landscapes that fed Austen’s images, as well as 18th century
paintings of those landscapes, as they consider the theories of the landscape
movement, prevalent at the time, which influenced Austen and her novels.
D4: Austen
Revisited: Her Influence Writers of the 19th and 20th Centuries
Isa Schaff, Dedham, MA
There is a timeless quality
to the writings of Jane Austen and echoes of her voice are found in the works
of many fellow artists. Schaff explores the different ways in which 19th and
20th century writers have responded, with particular emphasis on William Dean
Howells and Karen Joy Fowler.
D5:
The Privilege of My Own Profession: The Living Legacy of
Austen in the Classroom
Marcia
McClintock Folsom, Wheelock College, Boston, MA
Folsom’s session highlights
strategies that bring Austen’s novels to life in the classroom. To suggest the
complexity of Austen’s “legacy,” she identifies ways in which Austen’s
depiction of consciousness changes in the author’s successive novels.
D6: Austen’s
Legacy in Japan: An Analysis of Young Women’s Desires
Hatsuyo Shimazaki, Tokyo, Japan
Shimazaki examines the
psychology of young women in contemporary Japan, who identify with Austen’s
world not through her novels, but through a subculture, the Japanese “manga”
Emma written by Kaoru Mori (comic book and an animated series) and through Bridget Jones’s Diary.
D7:
Mr.
Collins on Screen: Legacy of the Ridiculous
Mary
Chan, University of Alberta, Edmonton
Pride and Prejudice is the most filmed Austen novel and each adaptation provides the director
an opportunity to interpret the work in his own way. This session will examine
the various ways that Mr. Collins moves from page to screen in four films from
1940 to 2005.
E: Saturday, October 4 3:30 - 4:15 PM
E1: How
Does Austen Still Make Us Laugh?
Jocelyn
Harris, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
Published in Persuasions 30 (2008).
“Jane Austen, Samuel Johnson, and the Academy.”
Persuasions 30 (2008): 27-37.
Harris suggests that it
diminishes Austen to call her an ironical writer, laughing us gently into
virtue; arguing instead that her savage indignation, though labeled by some
“unfeminine,” is as tough and universal as that of her contemporaries and
predecessors: Pope, Swift, and others.
E2: Keeping
it Cool: The Role of Jane Austen’s House Museum in Delivering Her Legacy to
Young People
Louise West, Jane Austen’s House Museum, Chawton,
Hampshire, UK
Jane Austen’s House Museum
upholds Austen’s legacy, providing an experience of what Jane Austen
embodies–simplicity, integrity, and charm. The presentation focuses on the way the museum provides links between Austen’s writing and the life she
lived at Chawton to young visitors in particular.
E3: Confessions
of a Jane
Austen Addict: Paying Homage to the Master
Laurie
Viera Rigler, Pasadena, CA
In this session, Rigler
provides a glimpse into the creation and subtext of her own homage to Austen,
the comic novel Confessions of a Jane
Austen Addict.
E4: Emma
Woodhouse and Harry Potter: The Influence of Austen on J.K. Rowling
Jane
Spector Davis, Chicago, IL
Rowling is quoted as saying
‘’My favorite writer is Jane Austen. . .” Davis argues that although readers
may not suspect it, Rowling credits Austen with inspiring Potter’s universe and
that Harry’s journey into maturity is shaped by the mystery and comedy familiar
to readers of Emma.
E5: Austen’s
Heroines at the Margins: How Recent Film Versions Support the Theme of
Marginalization
JoAnne
M. Podis, Ursuline College, Pepper Pike, OH
Austen’s heroines are often
“edged out” of the narrative because of their lack of authority, or they
intentionally retreat to that position. Recent cinematography reinforces this
important theme, contributing to the survival of Austen’s legacy, which
consists of tackling the concern with women’s marginalization.
E6:
Mrs.
Bennet’s Legacy: Austen’s Mothers in Film and Fiction
June Sturrock, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC
This presentation examines
Austen’s mothers and mother figures as portrayed in film, with focus on the
various Mrs. Bennets, which illuminate perpetually shifting concepts of
maternal feeling, responsibility, and family interaction in the 20th and 21st
centuries.
E7:
The
Challenge of Reading Austen Reading
Elaine Bander, Dawson College, Montreal, QC
Austen’s genius as a writer
grew out of her temperament as a reader who enjoyed and burlesqued the
conventions of other authors. Bander suggests that films of her novels
frequently reinstate the conventions she worked to undermine, which may be why
so many adaptations fail to move us the way the novels do.
