2021-2022 JASNA Massachusetts Meetings

2021-2022 Meetings

These meetings were held between the fall of 2021 and the spring of 2022.

Sunday, September 12, 2021, 2pm
Event Venue: Zoom

Marcia McClintock Folsom

Marcia has a new book out!

Marcia McClintock Folsom is a retired Professor of Literature at Wheelock College. She edited Approaches to Teaching Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Approaches to Teaching Austen's Emma with John Wiltshire, Approaches to Teaching Mansfield Park, and now Approaches to Teaching Austen's Persuasion. Marcia is a frequent speaker at JASNA AGMs.

She will share news about the publication of her newest book and give a talk about the discarded ending of Persuasion. To order a copy,click here, and use the discount code MLA20.

Marcia is a member of the JASNA Massachusetts Region.

Sunday, November 7th 2021, 2pm

Meeting Venue: ZOOM

Julia Prewitt Brown

Persuasion and the Transient World

Julia Prewitt Brown has recently retired from Boston University as a Professor of English, specializing in nineteenth-century British literature and culture, the history of the novel, and film. She is the author of Jane Austen's Novels: Social Change and Literary Form, as well as numerous other writings. Her essay on Persuasion is included in Marcia Folsom's newest book: Approaches to Teaching Austen's Persuasion.

Sunday, December 5th 2021, 1pm

Meeting Venue: ZOOM

This will be our annual celebration of Jane Austen's Birthday.

As a really special treat, we have arranged to have Dr. John Mullan give us a talk.

John Mullan studied for his BA and PhD at the University of Cambridge. He was a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge and a Lecturer at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, before coming to University College London in 1994. He has been Professor of English since 2005, and was appointed Lord Northcliffe Chair of Modern English Literature from 1st October 2016. He was General Editor of the Pickering & Chatto series Lives of the Great Romantics by Their Contemporaries, and Associate Editor for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He is a regular TV and radio broadcaster and a literary journalist; he writes on contemporary fiction for the Guardian and was a judge for the 2009 Man Booker Prize. Research

John is a specialist in eighteenth-century literature and is at present writing the volume of the Oxford English Literary History that will cover the period from 1709 to 1784. He has edited a number of works by Daniel Defoe, and his edition of Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets was published in 2008. In 2007, he published a study of the uses of anonymity in English Literature, from the sixteenth century to the present: Anonymity. A Secret History of English Literature.

Dr. Mullan published What Matters in Jane Austen, a collection of essays on different topics that together provide a remarkably clear analysis of Jane Austen's greatness.

A few of the topics in the book:
How Much Does Age Matter?
What Do the Character Call Each Other?
Which Important Characters Never Speak in the Novels?
What Do Characters Say When The Heroine Is Not There?
Why Do Her Plots Rely on Blunders?

John Mullan is the Harriet Avery Fund speaker for the 2021-2022 season.

This will be an enjoyable and informative meeting, that will have you reading the novels with a new appreciation!

Sunday, March 13, 2022, 2pm

Meeting Venue: ZOOM

Writing the Life of Feelings

Tim Peltason is Professor of English and Class of 1949 Professor in Ethics at Wellesley College, where he has taught since 1977. He teaches nineteenth century English and American literature, twentieth century American literature, and Shakespeare. He has written essays on many different topics in Victorian literature and is most recently the author of essays on Oscar Wilde, on Mark Twain's Huck Finn, and on "Mind and Mindlessness in Jane Austen," published in The Hudson Review. His essay on Persuasion is included in Marcia Folsoms newest book: Approaches to Teaching Austen's Persuasion.

Sunday, May 15th 2022, 2pm

Meeting Venue: Zoom

Dr. Roger Moore

Mansfield Park and the Sacred Landscape

Mansfield Park is usually considered Austen's most overtly religious novel. While previous discussions have focused on such issues as "ordination" and the work's engagement with Evangelicalism, this talk adds a new dimension to the discussion of the novel's religious content by examining the many allusions to medieval ecclesiastical buildings. What does Austen reveal about her religious commitments through her evocation of the past?

Roger E. Moore is associate dean of the College of Arts and Science and Principal Senior Lecturer in English at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, where he has taught for 25 years. The author of Jane Austen and the Reformation: Remembering the Sacred Landscape (Routledge 2016), his scholarship focuses on the religious context of Austen's novels.

Return to Main Page