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Writer's pictureDeborah Yaffe

Crossover artist

Jane Austen is the ultimate crossover artist, with an unchallenged position in both literary studies and popular culture. (Hey, didn’t somebody write a book about that?) And next year’s celebration of her 250th birthday will highlight both aspects of her legacy: While tourists visit pilgrimage sites and fans dress up, professorial types will be gathering to talk about the latest Austen scholarship.

 

Among the most important of these academic conferences will be “The Global Jane Austen: Celebrating and Commemorating 250 Years of Jane Austen,” cosponsored by the UK universities of Southampton and Stirling. The conference will take place July 10-12 in Southampton, the UK city where Austen lived from 1806 to 1809.

 

Earlier this year, conference organizers issued a call for papers on “all aspects of Austen’s writing and life, her posthumous reception, her influences, and her writing alongside that of her contemporaries,” setting an October 1 deadline for submissions. At the same time, they announced a pre-arranged, star-studded lineup of thirty-three Austen scholars hailing from Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, and the United States.  

 

Although the conference is open to Austen “enthusiasts,” not just academics, it seems likely to feature denser material than the average Jane Austen Society of North America gathering: Summarizing recent trends in Austen studies, the call for papers makes reference to “research informed by book history, the material, archival and linguistic turns in literary criticism, postcolonial studies and adaptation theory.”

 

In other words, it’s not clear if bonnets will be encouraged. Still, for Janeites with an appetite for academic discourse, this will be another can’t-miss stop during a busy anniversary year.

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