2023 - 2024 Season
Meetings this season will be held at 2pm, at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in Waltham, MA.
The Charles River Museum of Industry has a modern ventilation system that maintains a high percentage of fresh air in the facility.
However, in order for all attendees to feel as safe and comfortable as possible, we encourage the wearing of masks.
Of course, if you do not feel well, pleasae stay at home.
Some meetings will be a hybrid of in-person and Zoom. Members, check your email for the meeting notice to register for Zoom.
Meeting fee is $5 JASNA members, $10 non-members. Non-members may attend up to five events before joining JASNA.
Click here for driving directions and parking information. Parking is free on Sundays.
"It is such a happiness when good people get together -- and they always do."
Sunday, March 17, 2024
2 pm, Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
Charlotte Gordon
Mothers and Daughters: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen
Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, died ten days after her daughter Mary Shelley was born.
Though Shelley never knew her mother, she dedicated her life to fulfilling Wollstonecraft's dreams,
writing Frankenstein and other works that upheld the ideals of women's independence.
Jane Austen was also deeply influenced by Wollstonecraft's principles, so much so that some critics refer to her
as Wollstonecraft's "other daughter". Like Shelley, Austen places Wollstonecraft's ideas at the center of her work,
but, unlike Shelley, she was careful to cover her tracks.
Charlotte Gordon has published six books and her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The Washington Post,
The Cambridge Companion to Early American Poetry and Harvard Magazine.
She has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to write her new book, The Talk Circuit: Feuds, Friendships, and the Origins of the Women's Movement.
Her most recent book is Mary Shelley: A Very Short Introduction. Her previous book is Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley.
A graduate of Harvard College, she received a master's degree in creative writing and a Ph.D. in history and literature from Boston University. Currently, she is the Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Endicott College.
Sunday, May 5, 2024
2 pm, Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
Marcia Huff
Austen and Vermeer, Fellow Artists
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 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 and President
of JASNA 2006-2010. Marsha was a breakout speaker at the 2019 AGM in Williamsburg and the 2021 AGM in Chicago. Her essay "Sir Thomas Bertram and the Slave Trade"
is in the summer 2021 issue of Persuasions On-Line.
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