Seminar Content

A syllabus of readings and guest speakers will follow here, as plans are confirmed.

We will read four Austen novels (Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Northanger Abbey) and several novels by her contemporaries, including Anna Maria Porter, Jane West, and Mary Brunton, as well as shorter critical essays on the topic of the seminar.

We will also have several guest speakers joining us, including Prof. Laura Mandell (Texas A & M Univ.; 18thConnect), Prof. Laura Mooneyham-White and Steve Ramsay (Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln; Austen Corpus Search Investigation), Prof. George Justice (MU; editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Emma), and Jay Jenkins of Valancourt Books, who will talk to us about selecting, editing, and getting published a scholarly edition of an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century novel. We will also be taking a group day-trip to the Spencer Library at the University of Kansas and working with librarians Karen Cook and Elspeth Healey on traditional archival research methods.