AGM 2021 Breakout Sessions
—Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 8
You may choose one breakout presentation in each session: A, B, C, D, E, and F. As currently planned, some of the presenters in each session will deliver their presentations twice during the conference. The remaining will each give one live presentation and will be recorded (see the AGM FAQ for more information about content to be made available online). The breakout schedule is subject to adjustment if changes occur in speaker or facility availability.
UPDATE: Maria Clara Pivato Biajoli, Gillian Dooley, Hazel Jones, and Linda Zionkowski have informed us that they are unable to attend the AGM. Robert Sylvester’s presentation will be given by Andrea Kayne as a Special Interest Session.
In addition to Breakout Sessions, AGM attendee registration includes all presentations under the Plenary Speakers and Special Interest tabs.
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SESSION A
Friday, 2:10 pm- 3:00 pm
A1. Austen and Vermeer, Fellow Artists
Marsha Huff, Wisconsin Region
Reviewing the novel Emma in 1816, Walter Scott compared Jane Austen’s work to the genre painting of 17th-century Flemish masters. This presentation examines a dozen paintings by Johannes Vermeer and pairs seven of them with passages from Austen’s novels, read by actors, to illustrate the comparable manner in which the two artists depicted the lives of women.
Marsha Huff is an attorney specializing in nonprofit organizations. She was co-coordinator of the 2005 AGM in Milwaukee. As President of JASNA from 2006 through 2010, Marsha presented lectures to numerous JASNA Regions, and she was a breakout speaker at the 2019 AGM in Williamsburg. Her essay “Sir Thomas Bertram and the Slave Trade” is in the summer 2021 issue of Persuasions On-Line.
A2. The Culinary Arts at Chawton Cottage
Julienne Gehrer, Metropolitan Kansas City Region
We see culinary arts reflected in both Jane’s writing and Martha Lloyd’s Household Book, the handwritten recipes of Jane’s closest friend and housemate. Join this extensive and highly visual exploration of the first facsimile edition of Martha’s book. Learn the provenance and historical context of the manuscript, including women’s roles of managing the kitchen, bake house, dairy, game larder, and poultry yard.
Julienne Gehrer has presented at numerous AGMs, served on JASNA’s Board, and coordinated the 2018 AGM. Her articles have appeared in Persuasions and Texas Studies in Literature and Language. Her books include Dining with Jane Austen and Martha Lloyd’s Household Book: The Original Manuscript from Jane Austen’s Kitchen, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
A3. Performing to Strangers: Private Art and Public Performance
Elaine Bander, Montreal Region
The distinction between “Amateur” and “professional” existed in Austen’s time and was socially impermeable: ladies and gentlemen did not perform publicly, or for profit. Yet Austen became a professional artist seeking public and payment for her performances. We will see how rigid social distinctions between amateurs and professionals were evolving and liminal.
Elaine Bander has served JASNA since 1993 as Vice-President (Publications), Regional Coordinator (Montreal), Travelling Lecturer, International Visitor, and Coordinator of the 2014 AGM in Montreal, and has spoken to many AGMs and Regions. She is currently President of JASNA (Canada). Her chapter “Jane Austen and the Georgian Novel” is forthcoming in The Routledge Companion to Jane Austen, edited by Cheryl A. Wilson and Maria Frawley.
A4. “A Young Lady of Spirit Happened to be at the Playhouse”: Austen Re-Writes the Archetypal Coquette for Regency England
Claudia Martin, Binghamton University
The figure of the coquette, a woman publicly performing femininity in pursuit of pleasure and masculine attention, was an archetype that Austen knew well from plays and fictions of the 18th century. This presentation will look at theatrical influences on Austen’s flirts, using film clips to suggest why the coquette readily adapts to film and cross-cultural adaptations.
Claudia Martin is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Binghamton University in both the English Department and the Engineering School, teaching 18th and 19th century British Literature, Law and Literature, and Bad Girls and Wicked Women in Fiction. Her research focuses on the relationship between novels of the long 19th century and the network of laws and socio-legal practices that dispossessed women
A5. Contemplating Beauty: Jane Austen’s Women as Connoisseurs
Natasha Duquette, Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College, Ontario
In Jane Austen’s novels, she depicts women’s contemplation of landscapes, art, and male countenances, with the focus of a connoisseur. This session will illustrate how in Austen’s first three novels women’s connoisseurship progresses in stages: through familiarity with familial art, to contemplation of formal portraiture, and finally to art collection. We will also analyze scenes in Austen film adaptations.
Dr. Natasha Duquette is Academic Dean and Professor of Literature at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College in Barry’s Bay, Ontario. She is author of 30-Day Journey with Jane Austen and co-editor, with Dr. Elisabeth Lenckos, of Jane Austen and the Arts: Elegance, Propriety, Harmony (Lehigh University Press, 2013). She has authored numerous articles for Persuasions and has presented at multiple AGMs.
A6. “My Name Was Norval”: Douglas, Elocution, and Acting in Mansfield Park
Susan Allen Ford, Delta State University
When Tom Bertram defends himself by reciting the beginning of a speech from John Home’s tragedy Douglas, he points us not only to that play but also to a feature of the Bertram brothers’ education: recitation. This lecture highlights another way that the artistic culture of her youth and adulthood saturates Austen’s fiction—and how it penetrates other aspects of her characters’ world.
Susan Allen Ford has been Editor of Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line since 2006 and is a Life Member of JASNA. She is Professor of English Emerita at Delta State University and has published essays on Jane Austen and her contemporaries, the gothic, and Shakespeare. She is slowly working on a book on what Austen’s characters are reading, Jane Austen’s ‘Great Readers’: When Characters Read Books.
SESSION B
Friday, 3:20 pm-4:10 pm
B1. “Composed by an African": Ignatius Sancho's Country Dances
Lisa Brown, Central and Western New York Region
Ignatius Sancho was born on a slave ship during the long Middle Passage. He became an abolitionist, writer, and businessman. He is well known in the U.K. today (though virtually unknown in the U.S.), but few British people have any idea he wrote exquisite country dances. After a brief biography, Sancho’s music, signature dance sequences, and a full dance will be demonstrated.
Lisa Brown is Regional Coordinator of the Central and Western New York Region and is well known for her popular AGM workshops and fashion shows. During the pandemic, Lisa created Jane Austen Bingo and has been calling Zoom bingo for JASNA Regions across North America. She regularly gives presentations on the Georgian era and is proprietress of Regency Rentals, a costume rental business.
B2. Good, Quick, Cheap: Historically Inaccurate Costume Design Choices in Austen Adaptations
Alyssa C. Opishinski, Capital New York Region
Historical accuracy in film and theatre is extremely rare and difficult to achieve. This presentation offers insight into the roles of the designer and costumes to foster an understanding and appreciation of it as a living art form, rather than as a failed historic recreation. The audience will be taken on the journey of “concept to costume,” exploring costume design theory to practical problems faced by the designer.
Alyssa C. Opishinski is a theatrical costume designer and dress historian. She is currently taking time out of her costuming career to obtain a master's degree in Fashion History at the University of Rhode Island, in the Department of Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design. Her focus is on Western European fashion history from 1790-1830.
B3. The Artist and the Austen Collector
Juliette Wells, Goucher College
For more than forty years, two devoted Janeites—Alberta H. Burke of Baltimore, a self-taught expert in Austen, and Averil G. Hassall of Oxfordshire, a visual artist and teacher—collaborated on building Alberta’s famed collection of Austen materials, now housed at Goucher College. This extensively illustrated talk introduces the two women and share stories of the artifacts they preserved.
Juliette Wells, Professor of Literary Studies at Goucher College, is the author of two histories of Austen’s readers—Reading Austen in America and Everybody’s Jane: Austen in the Popular Imagination—and is working on a third. For Penguin Classics, she created 200th-anniversary editions of Persuasion and Emma. Her chapter “Intimate Portraiture and the Accomplished Woman Artist in Emma” is in the collection Art and Artifact in Austen.
B4. Jane Austen Society of TikTok
Linley Erickson, Greater Chicago Region
Elizabeth Roy, Connecticut Region
Rhonda Watts, Puget Sound Region
Every Austen fan knows that her works are just as relevant now as they were 200 years ago, and the Jane Austen Society of TikTok is proof. This interactive audiovisual presentation will introduce the world of Jane Austen fandom on the popular social media video app TikTok.
Linley Erickson is the Membership Secretary of the JASNA Greater Chicago Region. She holds a Master of Arts in History. Elizabeth Roy is a current student at Dickenson College. She is an American Studies major and an English minor. Rhonda Watts playfully discusses Austen’s works and other literature on her blog and social media as Rhonda With A Book and produces and co-hosts the pop culture analysis podcast Pop DNA.
B5. “Two hands and a new thimble”: Embroidery in Austen--Fine Art or Women’s Work?
Robin Henry, Texas South Central Region
Early feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft eschewed embroidery, adopting the default male position that women’s work was lesser; Austen did not. This presentation will analyze Austen’s references to embroidery to determine how Austen uses her female characters’ embroidery skills, or lack thereof, as markers of class, femininity, and artistic expression.
Robin Henry is a librarian and adjunct professor of Humanities and Library Science. Her research interests are the history of women’s reading and writing. Past presentations include “Men Reading Badly” at the 2018 AGM and serving as a panelist for “ReSisters of Americanization” at Northeast MLA in 2019. Her blog series, Austenalia, appears at Readerly.net.
B6. With Variations for Piano-Forte: Music Reflecting Current Events in Ackermann's Repository of Arts
Andrea Cawelti, Harvard University
Ackermann's Repository of Arts is famous for its spectacular fashion plates, but less well-known are its monthly music reviews, which provide a time capsule of the music recommended to the fashionable public from 1809-1829. Enjoy an overview of this music, illustrated with recordings and examples from the Ward Collection at the Harvard Theatre Collection, and linked to the significant events later in Austen’s life.
Andrea Cawelti, a former opera singer, is the John M. Ward Music Cataloger at Houghton Library, Harvard University. The Ward Collection comprises significant resources in British music composed for the stage as well as for the home throughout the life of Jane Austen, among other performance-related holdings. Andrea has published several articles on material from the collection.
SESSION C
Friday, 4:30 pm-5:20 pm
C1. Jane Austen Goes to the Opera
Douglas Murray, Belmont University
In this session Los Angeles-based mezzo-soprano Meagan Martin, New York-based composer Rachel deVore Fogarty and librettist Douglas Murray will explore why Austen’s characters are suited to opera and the choices which singers, librettists and composers must make to bring Austen to the stage. The session will conclude with the world premiere of a song cycle drawn from the opera.
Douglas Murray (Professor of English, Belmont University, Nashville) has written numerous essays on Jane Austen, most recently on Northanger Abbey and the #MeToo movement. Rising mezzo-soprano Meagan Martin has commissioned two song cycles based on Sense and Sensibility. Rachel deVore Fogarty’s works have been performed throughout the United States and the United Kingdom.
C2. “Here, There, and Everywhere”: Jane Austen in the Contemporary Popular Arts
Laura Dabundo, Kennesaw State University
Legions of imitators, devotees, and imaginists (borrowing Emma Woodhouse’s self-description) extensively expand the Austen canon in: sequels and prequels; retellings of the originals; novels in which Austen or her works are plot devices; filmed adaptations; theatrical presentations; and creative nonfiction. The discussion suggests how the Austen milieu became a veritable industrial complex and conquered the world.
Laura Dabundo is Professor of English, Emerita, at Kennesaw State University. Austen has long been a focus of her teaching and scholarship. Her works include the first Encyclopedia of Romanticism, Jane Austen and Mary Shelley and Their Sisters, The Marriage of Faith: Christianity in Jane Austen and William Wordsworth, and Jane Austen: A Companion (2021). She has presented papers in England, Ireland, Canada, and the USA.
C3. The World of Jane Austen Soundtracks
Ruth Mudge, Chicago Region
Soundtracks are one of the many vehicles used to portray the emotions, tone, era, comedy and more within films. In listening to and comparing musical themes, particularly from adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, this session will uncover the variety of ways that soundtracks interpret Jane’s stories and explores how music powerfully impacts the telling of these beloved stories.
Ruth Mudge is a cello and piano instructor in the western suburbs of the Chicago area. She also freelances regularly with local orchestras and ensembles. Ruth has written and collaborated on several soundtrack analysis projects over the past few years, and more recently began teaching soundtrack classes on Zoom, ranging from Harry Potter to The Sound of Music to a series on Jane Austen adaptations.
C4. Henry the Next: Shakespeare’s Histories and Jane Austen’s Art of Dramaturgy
Lesley Peterson, Winnipeg Region
Excerpts from Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, The Visit, and The History of England, alongside select moments in Shakespeare, will highlight Austen’s engagement with Shakespearean dramaturgy. We will then bring these ideas to life collaboratively with a staged reading of Austen’s dramatic adaptation of Sir Charles Grandison. Participants choose whether to perform, observe, or help direct this light-hearted production.
Lesley Peterson is retired from the University of North Alabama where, as Professor of English, she taught both Shakespeare and Jane Austen; she also teaches Shakespeare to children and is Editor of the Journal of Juvenilia Studies. She has directed Austen’s juvenile drama The Visit and has published on Jane Austen’s juvenilia in Persuasions On-Line.
C5. Francis and Charles Austen and the Art of Sketching
Toby R. Benis, St. Louis University
Francis and Charles Austen began their military careers at the Royal Naval Academy in Portsmouth, where the curriculum included instruction in drawing. The brothers' papers include sketches of shorelines, boats, bridges, and cottages. Such artistry was important training for sketching coastlines and making maps. This backdrop sheds new light on moments in Austen's novels that connect the military with the arts.
A professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at St. Louis University, Toby Benis has published extensively on Austen and her contemporaries. Her most recent book is Romantic Diasporas: French Emigres, British Convicts, and Jews. Her current book project, entitled Jane Austen's Neighborhood, explores the figure of the neighbor and the neighborhood in Austen's fiction.
C6. “My Name Was Norval”: Douglas, Elocution, and Acting in Mansfield Park
Susan Allen Ford, Delta State University
See description at A6.
SESSION D
Saturday, 10:30 am-11:20 am
D1. Satirical Cartoons and Austen’s Church of England
Brenda S. Cox, Georgia Region
Clergymen and the church play major roles in Austen’s novels. Popular satirical cartoons lampooned many of the underlying church issues. We’ll look together at some widely published cartoons by Hogarth, Rowlandson, and Newton and see how Austen’s characters might have fit into them.
Brenda S. Cox has extensively researched the church in Jane Austen’s England. She is writing a book called Fashionable Goodness: Faith in Jane Austen’s England, which explores connections between Austen’s work, her Church of England, and prominent church events and people of the time. She is a co-administrator and regular contributor to “Jane Austen’s World” and writes for her blog, “Faith, Science, Joy, and Jane Austen.”
D2. The Culinary Arts at Chawton Cottage
Julienne Gehrer, Metropolitan Kansas City Region
See description at A2.
D3. Performing to Strangers: Private Art and Public Performance
Elaine Bander, Montreal Region
See description at A3.
D4. “A Young Lady of Spirit Happened to be at the Playhouse”: Austen Re-Writes the Archetypal Coquette for Regency England
Claudia Martin, Binghamton University
See description at A4.
D5. “Two hands and a new thimble”: Embroidery in Austen--Fine Art or Women’s Work?
Robin Henry, Texas South Central Region
See description at B5.
D6. A Tale of Two Authors: Did Jane Austen Influence the Writings of Toni Morrison?
Carl Johnson, Greater Chicago Region
African-American author Toni Morrison’s obituary stated that Jane Austen was one of her favorite authors growing up as a child. Discovery of this delightful fact about Ms. Morrison inspired the question of whether or not Jane Austen influenced the writings of this celebrated author. This presentation will answer that question by examining the early novels of Toni Morrison and comparing and contrasting them with Jane Austen’s fiction.
Carl Johnson is a social worker and trainer. He has worked in child welfare, city and Federal government, an Employee Assistance Program and in academia. Carl is a member of the National Association of Social Workers, Toastmasters International, and the Association for Talent Development. Carl currently works as a Training Specialist at Jesse Brown VA Medical Center.
SESSION E
Saturday, 11:40 am-12:30 pm
E1. “Two or three French cooks at least”: Art and Artistry in Regency Cooking
Kim Wilson, Wisconsin Region
This session looks at the grand dishes and confectionary creations seen on the tables of British elites in Jane Austen’s time and how the works of such great chefs as Antonin Carême (employed by the Prince Regent) elevated the presentation of food to the level of art. We’ll imagine what we could expect to see on the tables of Austen’s various characters, from Mr. Darcy to the socially anxious Mrs. Bennet.
Kim Wilson is a writer and speaker, a Life Member of JASNA, and Regional Coordinator for JASNA-Wisconsin Region. She has presented at several previous AGMs. She is the author of At Home with Jane Austen, Tea with Jane Austen, and In the Garden with Jane Austen, and is currently writing Entertaining Mr. Darcy.
E2. Good, Quick, Cheap: Historically Inaccurate Costume Design Choices in Austen Adaptations
Alyssa C. Opishinski, Capital New York Region
See description at B2.
E3. The Artist and the Austen Collector
Juliette Wells, Goucher College
See description at B3.
E4. Henry the Next: Shakespeare’s Histories and Jane Austen’s Art of Dramaturgy
Lesley Peterson, Winnipeg Region
See description at C4.
E5. Contemplating Beauty: Jane Austen’s Women as Connoisseurs
Natasha Duquette, Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College, Ontario
See description at A5.
E6. With Variations for Piano-Forte: Music Reflecting Current Events in Ackermann's Repository of Arts
Andrea Cawelti, Harvard University
See description at B6.
SESSION F
Saturday, 3:00 pm -3:50 pm
F1. There is no presentation in Salon II/III during this session.
F2. “Here, There, and Everywhere”: Jane Austen in the Contemporary Popular Arts
Laura Dabundo, Kennesaw State University
See description at C2.
F3. The World of Jane Austen Soundtracks
Ruth Mudge, Chicago Region
See description at C3.
F4. Jane Austen Society of TikTok
Linley Erickson, Greater Chicago Region
Elizabeth Roy, Connecticut Region
Rhonda Watts, Puget Sound Region
See description at B4.
F5. Francis and Charles Austen and the Art of Sketching
Toby R. Benis, St. Louis University
See description at C5.
F6. A Tale of Two Authors: Did Jane Austen Influence the Writings of Toni Morrison?
Carl Johnson, Greater Chicago Region
See description at D6.