Breakout and Special Session Speakers - 2026 JASNA AGM: Jane Austen's Bath Novels: Northanger Abbey and Persuasion

Breakout Sessions are presentations by JASNA members on topics that directly focus on the AGM theme. Several speakers present concurrently, enabling attendees to choose topics and speakers of greatest interest to them. Attendees choose one speaker in each timeslot, A, B, C, and D.

Special Sessions are presentations or discussions on a broad range of topics of interest to JASNA members, not necessarily on the conference theme. With the exception of the special dining events listed below, all special sessions (like Plenary and Breakout Sessions) are included in the Attendee and Attendee Plus registration fees.

Each year, JASNA honors one breakout speaker as the New Voices Breakout Speaker. This year’s New Voices speaker is Nada Saadaoui, a doctoral researcher in English Literature at the University of Cumbria in the UK. As a feminist literary scholar of North African heritage based in the UK, she approaches Austen’s work through an intersectional lens attentive to gender, mobility, and spatial politics.

Her research interprets walking in Austen’s fiction as a radical form of female autonomy, centering embodiment, class, and agency. Nada contributes a global perspective shaped by her lived experience and scholarly commitment to amplifying women’s voices across cultures, in keeping with JASNA’s values of inclusion, dialogue, and dynamic re-readings of Austen’s legacy.

A1. The Sublime, the Beautiful & the Picturesque: Northanger Abbey and Persuasion

Alice Davenport JASNA Virtual Region

Regency-era readers were very familiar with the terms sublime, beautiful, and picturesque.These terms appeared in philosophy books, “how to” gardening manuals, guidebooks, and drawing room conversations. But what exactly did these terms mean? And how did Austen draw on these landscape aesthetics in her novels? In this presentation, we’ll define each term (with plentiful illustrations) and examine how Austen employed the then-ubiquitous aesthetic system to develop her characters and plots. We’ll focus on her “Bath novels” and examine how Austen’s use of this landscape aesthetic reflected her growth as a writer.

Alice Davenport is a retired foreign service officer. She has given online presentations on Jane Austen and 18th-century landscape aesthetics to Austen groups in the US and in Latin America. She also published “An Adaptable Aesthetic: Eighteenth-century Landscape…and Jane Austen” in Jane Austen and the Arts (2013); and “ ‘Beauty Sleeping in the Lap of Horror’: Landscape Aesthetics…” in 'Gothic Landscapes: Changing Eras (2016).

A2. Seeing Clearly in Bath: Mystery and Moral Vision in Jane Austen

Kenneth L. Brewer
Montclair State University

This presentation argues that Austen treats mystery not as genre, but as a moral and epistemological condition rooted in human fallibility. Mystery arises from limited self‑knowledge and pervasive self‑deception, making moral discernment depend on recognizing what remains obscure in others. Catherine Morland’s misreadings in Northanger Abbey show the novice stages of this virtue, while Anne Elliot in Persuasion exemplifies mature penetration, discerning Mr. Elliot’s motives and Wentworth’s concealed feelings. Across both novels, Austen reframes mystery as an ethical principle: to live well is to see rightly, acknowledging the irreducible opacity of human character.

Kenneth L. Brewer is a Professor of Writing Studies and English at Montclair State University. His work on Austen has appeared in The CEA Critic, and his essay from the 2025 JASNA AGM in Baltimore, "The Genius of Misdirection: Jane Austen’s Narrative Sleight of Hand in Emma" was published in Persuasions.

A3. On Not Cooperating in Northanger Abbey

Andrew Elfenbein
University of Minnesota—Twin Cities

In Northanger Abbey, one of Catherine's most frequent responses to those around her is the word "no." This session will examine why this word matters so much both to Catherine and to Austen. It will explore the meaning of female refusals in the novel. It will also discuss Austen's refusals of major trends in novels of her period, especially the generic uniformity of the Gothic.

Andrew Elfenbein is Professor of English at the University of Minnesota, where he has taught since 1991. He has published Byron and the Victorians, Romantic Genius: The Prehistory of a Homosexual Role, Romanticism and the Rise of English, and The Gist of Reading. He has also edited Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Stoker's Dracula. His debut novel is The Quyre.

A4. Jane Austen and the Forgotten Genre of the Bath Satire

Ben Wiebracht
Greta LaFemina
Kate Snyder
Stanford Online High School

When Austen took playful aim at the city of Bath in Northanger Abbey, she was joining a literary tradition that stretched back decades. It all began with Christopher Anstey’s 1766 New Bath Guide, a lively roast of the posh spa town that inspired a host of imitators. By Austen’s time, the genre of the “Bath satire” had cemented Bath’s reputation as the national center of fashionable folly. We’ll explore how Austen draws on that tradition in her “Bath novels” and how she challenges it. Along the way, we’ll discover likely models for Isabella Thorpe and Sir Walter Elliot, while also gaining a fresh appreciation for the sheer originality of Catherine Morland.

Ben Wiebracht teaches English at Stanford Online High School. Together with his students, he edits the Forgotten Contemporaries of Jane Austen series, composed of neglected works from Austen’s time. He and his students were the New Voices Speakers at the 2024 AGM, and he has co-written articles with students for Persuasions On-Line. His most recent collaboration, a critical edition of The Tour of Doctor Syntax, won the Modern Language Association Prize for a Scholarly Edition.

Greta LaFemina is a senior taking classes at Stanford Online High School, College of Marin, and UC Scout. Her academic interests include literature (especially, of course, the novels of Jane Austen), foreign languages, and climate solutions, particularly as they relate to food and housing. Her favorite Austen novels are Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice—she especially loves Austen's sharp social satire.

Kate Snyder is a recent graduate of Mount Holyoke College, where she studied English and philosophy, concentrating in mid-Victorian literature. Her interest in Jane Austen began while researching Georgian Bath for a critical edition of Bath: An Adumbration in Rhyme. She also wrote about this project in an article published in Persuasions On-Line, and presented these experiences to the JASNA NorCal Region.

A5. Mr. Elliot's Unpersuasiveness

Rachel Gevlin
Virginia Commonwealth University

Each of Austen’s six major novels famously places the heroine between two suitors, often paving the way for the heroine to gain self-understanding and to learn important lessons about love, society, and proper female comportment. Strikingly, however, the character of Mr. Elliot presents readers with a less compelling and less realistic portrait of masculinity than the gentlemanly foils of Austen’s earlier works. This talk explores the relative flatness of Mr. Elliot and its narrative consequences for the development of the heroine, suggesting that the “unpersuasiveness” of Mr. Elliot marks an important turn in Austen’s handling of masculinity.

Rachel Gevlin is a Teaching Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she teaches courses on 18th-century literature, literary theory, and women writers. Her book project explores representations of marital breakdown in the 18th-century novel, and her writing on Austen has appeared or is forthcoming in English Literary History, Persuasions, Persuasions On-Line, and Pedagogy. She has presented at several AGMs and to regional JASNA groups. In 2025, she received the JASNA IVP Fellowship to conduct research at Chawton, and she is currently serving as a JASNA Traveling Lecturer through the end of 2026.

A6. Jane Austen and the Art of Travel

Inger S. B. Brodey
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

A heroine on a journey, meeting adventures, experiencing difficulty, gaining maturity, and eventually marrying, is a common plotline for narratives long before Austen. In Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland’s travel to Bath epitomizes this traditional travel/coming-of-age story. Yet Austen adapts the traveling heroine to her own innovative purposes. In Persuasion, Austen poignantly creates a traveling heroine unlike all the rest. There is an argument to be made that Anne is a gender-switched Odysseus—as much a traveling hero as the globetrotting naval officers around her. Austen presents us with a new way of traveling in this novel, accessible even to women with few options for actual physical travel.

Inger S. B. Brodey is an Austen scholar and public humanist. Her newest book, An A-Z Guide to Jane Austen's World, provides an illustrated journey through Austen's world in 26 essays. Her recent Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness is the first book-length treatment of Austen's endings. She is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she teaches a range of Austen classes. She founded the Jane Austen Summer Program and co-founded the Jane Austen and Company web series. She is also founder and President of Jane Austen Collaborative, Inc. and co-creator of the "Jane Austen's Desk" web portal. Prof. Brodey is a long-time JASNA member, whose positions with JASNA have included board member, book review editor, AGM speaker, and traveling lecturer.

B1. Unhappy Wives, or Virtue Not Rewarded: The Tragedies of Mrs. Tilney and Lady Elliot

Delicia Johnson
JASNA Orlando Region

Mrs. Tilney and Lady Elliot are the paragons of the virtuous 18th-century wife. What are modern readers to make of their unfortunate marriages and early demise? Why does Austen choose not to reward them with deserving men as she does with her other novels’ heroines? This session will examine how Austen challenges the widely accepted 18th-century definition of the virtuous woman and will explore her portrayal of the maternal authority figure as a neutralizer of patriarchal tyranny. We will also look at how Austen’s definition of the virtuous woman and the maternal authority figure matures from Northanger Abbey to Persuasion.

Delicia Johnson is a self-educated Jane Austen scholar serving as the Head of Publicity for the Jane Austen Summer Program. Her research interests include the cultural history of Georgian and Regency Bath, women's social history with a focus on femininity and domesticity, and representations of women in literature of the long 18th century.

B2. Navigating Space and Time in Austen's Bath

Toby Benis
Saint Louis University

This session will explore the maturation of Austen's two Bath heroines, Catherine Morland and Anne Elliot, in terms of their development of what we might call “spatial competencies,” which refers to the awareness needed to evaluate and respond appropriately to one's diverse physical surroundings and social situations. This presentation will include a sampling of archival materials used by visitors—road books, visitor registries, and dancing manuals—to contextualize the town's storied spaces. Like Catherine, Anne's happiness hinges on her ability to separate individual merit from masquerade to navigate fraught social spaces with integrity.

Toby Benis is Professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies at Saint Louis University. She has taught Austen's works in a variety of contexts to both graduate and undergraduate students. She has presented at the 2024 and 2021 AGMs and to the Missouri Region. Her publications include articles in Studies in Romanticism, The Wordsworth Circle, and Persuasions. Her current book-in-progress, Jane Austen's Neighborhood, explores connections between space, gender, and community.

B3. The Titles of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion: Henry Thomas Austen's Intervention and Invention

Laura White University of Nebraska-Lincoln

This presentation explores the likely reasons Henry Austen re-titled his sister's works Catherine and The Elliots, with titles that were in keeping with Henry's new identity as an Anglican priest after his 1816 bank failure and personal bankruptcy. Henry's lectures as a chaplain confirm his highly nationalistic Anglicanism and the parochial national cause of “Englishness.” This session argues that Henry renamed Catherine as Northanger Abbey to focus on the ironies of the Abbey as a ruined, rebuilt, and modernized private home. Similarly, Henry re-titled The Elliots as Persuasion to enlarge the field of the novel to a theme that is central to his preaching. This presentation shows how Henry's re-titling points to history and rhetoric, expanding their "novel-world."

Laura White is the John E. Weaver Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and author of many scholarly works on Jane Austen, including Romance, Language, and Education in Jane Austen's Novels and Jane Austen's Anglicanism. Her most recent monographs are The Alice Books and the Contested Ground of the Natural World and The Play of Belief in Nineteenth Century Fairy Tales and Fairy Narratives.

B4. Anne Elliot, Gothic Feminist? Tracing Gothic Tropes in Jane Austen's Persuasion

Lynda A. Hall
Chapman University

Jane Austen famously parodies the gothic novel in Northanger Abbey, but what about Persuasion? Though we will not find overt gothic tropes in Persuasion, Austen presents obstacles for her heroine that might be as terrifying. This session will trace gothic elements in Persuasion, exposing the fearful realities that women faced in a world where they had little power. Anne Elliot may not have read the “horrid novels” listed in Northanger Abbey, but she must exert herself as a gothic feminist in order to take ownership of her life.

Lynda A. Hall is Associate Professor and Chair of the English Department at Chapman University. She has been a Traveling Lecturer for JASNA, and has spoken at several AGMs. Her publications include Women and ‘Value’ in Jane Austen’s Novels and essays in Persuasion, Persuasions On-Line, MLA’s Teaching Austen’s Persuasion, Jane Austen and William Shakespeare, and the Texas Studies in Literature and Language special edition “What’s Next for Jane Austen?”.

B5. "...every pore of one's skin, and every feeling of one's mind": Bath and the Mind-Body Connection in Persuasion

Maria Frawley
The George Washington University

This session will probe Jane Austen’s letters from Bath to rethink the influence of those years on her fiction, most especially Persuasion. Scholars often note the lull in writing that characterizes the Bath years, but they deeply shaped Austen’s interest in social rules and rhythms. They also reveal an author keenly attentive to physical, bodily experience. This presentation explores just how Austen’s experiences in Bath shaped her understanding of the mind/body relationship and how Persuasion, in turn, utilizes a language of pleasure and pain in the service of its nuanced exploration of the passage of time.

Maria Frawley is Professor of English at the George Washington University, where she teaches courses in 19th-century British literature and the novel. She has published books on authors such as Anne Brontẽ and Harriet Martineau, and topics such as Victorian women’s travel writing and the culture of invalidism in 19th-century Britain. She co-edited the Routledge Companion to Jane Austen and recently published Jane Austen in 50 Words.

B6. What the Admiral Saw: Naval Images and Popular History in Persuasion

Linda Zionkowski
Ohio University

On a morning walk up Milsom Street in Bath, Anne Elliot happens to meet Admiral Croft, who “was standing by himself, at a printshop window . . . in earnest contemplation of some print.” Prof. Zionkowski’s talk will examine the prints that intrigue the admiral. Mostly consisting of patriotic caricatures, these images illustrate the courage of seamen aboard ship, their (mis)adventures on land, and their plight after demobilization. Viewing a broad selection of prints from 1800-1817, we will discuss how they resonate within the characters and plot of Persuasion, as the novel reflects upon these popular portrayals of the wartime navy.

Linda Zionkowski is Professor of English at Ohio University, where she teaches literature of the long 18th century. Most recently, she has edited a collection of essays, Women and Music in the Age of Austen, which received the Ruth A. Solie Award from the American Musicological Society. Her latest project, Narratives of Displacement in the Anglosphere, is a forthcoming co-edited volume of studies on migration, exile, and enslavement.

B7. Jane Austen's Men from Henry to Frederick: Tutors or Pupils?

Juliet McMaster
University of Alberta

In her deeply thoughtful characterizations, Jane Austen is fascinated with the impress of one mind upon another. Some pedagogic relations can go wildly wrong, as Emma's does with Harriet. Ian Watt took the Emma/Knightley relation (older, wiser man guides thoughtless heroine) as the model for Austen's courtship plots. But it is much more complicated than that! Does Henry Tilney play Pygmalion to Catherine's Galatea? Does Wentworth have as much to teach Anne as she has to teach him? Which is the tutor? Which the pupil?

Juliet McMaster of the University of Alberta is a founding member of JASNA and a frequent speaker at its AGMs. She is the author of books on Thackeray, Trollope, and Dickens, and of Jane Austen on Love, Jane Austen the Novelist, and Jane Austen, Young Author, and co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. She is also the founder of the Juvenilia Press, which has produced scholarly editions of Austen's early writings.

C1. Walking through Bath: Female Mobility, Urban Space, and Social Expectation in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion

Nada Saadaoui
2026 JASNA New Voices Speaker
University of Cumbria

This session explores how walking shapes women’s experiences of urban space in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. Bath’s promenades, pump rooms, and crescents regulate visibility, sociability, and reputation, yet also offer fleeting moments of independence. Catherine Morland’s socially orchestrated walks reveal the pressures of display, chaperonage, and youthful expectation, while Anne Elliot’s quieter movements through the city foreground reflection, memory, and emotional renewal. A comparison of these contrasting pedestrian experiences shows how Austen uses walking to critique gendered social conventions and to illuminate the possibilities for agency and self-knowledge within the highly structured environment of Regency Bath.

Nada Saadaoui is a doctoral researcher in English Literature at the University of Cumbria in the UK, specializing in women’s mobility and spatial agency in Jane Austen’s fiction. Her work situates Austen within Romantic-era pedestrianism, examining how walking negotiates gender, class, and social constraint. She has published public scholarship on Austen’s landscapes and mobility and has presented at international conferences on literary geography and female walking in Regency contexts.

C2. Making the Good Wise: Northanger Abbey and the Moral Comedy of Henry Fielding

Kirsten Hall Herlin
University of Austin

Northanger Abbey shares with Henry Fielding's novels a central moral preoccupation and purpose. Fielding writes that his aim is to "recommend goodness and innocence" by attempting to make "good men wise." Like Fielding, Austen undertakes this education of her protagonist's judgment using comedy, particularly her characteristic technique of irony, to sharpen her heroine’s and readers' powers of observation, teaching them how to discern the difference between what people say and do, between real and feigned merit, and to see that real vice and wickedness rarely present themselves as such. To understand Fielding as another of Austen's many literary inspirations in Northanger Abbey is to appreciate Austen's remarkable ability to bring together diverse literary inspirations and shape them into a coherent moral and artistic whole "entirely new."

Kirsten Hall Herlin is Assistant Professor of Literature at the University of Austin and has taught at Ave Maria University. Her specialty is 18th-century British literature, and she teaches undergraduate classes on Austen. She is in the early stages of a book project called Jane Austen's Moral Imagination. In 2010, she won the JASNA essay contest in the high school division, and she attended the Portland AGM that year.

C3. Bath as Depicted in Northanger Abbey: City of Rhetorical Confusion

Susanna Kelly Engbers
Ferris State University's Kendall College of Art & Design

With a city center only a half-mile long, Bath invited frequent meetings and chance encounters, furthering its reputation in Austen’s fiction as the place to find a mate. In the Bath of Northanger Abbey, the Thorpes scheme for companions, and Catherine and Henry meet. In a city famous for its “meet cutes,” one perhaps expects characters to communicate effectively. In fact, however, the novel highlights the city's abundant rhetorical confusions. Whether from a lack of savvy, the limitations of polite discourse, or deceit, characters communicate poorly while in Bath, and rhetorical challenges deeply shape Catherine’s—and even Henry’s—coming-of-age plot.

Susanna Kelly Engbers, Professor of English at Ferris State University’s Kendall College of Art and Design, teaches rhetoric, writing, and literature. Her research considers material culture; intersections between rhetoric and design; and 19th-century women’s rhetoric, especially its connections with quilting and quilting bees. She has published articles in Blanket Statements; The CEA Critic; Dialectic; and Rhetoric Society Quarterly; among others. Her article, “Deplored and Deployed: Gossip in Jane Austen’s Novels," appeared recently in Persuasions.

C4. A Kaleidoscope of Persuasion and Constancy

Jenny Rebecca Rytting
Northwest Missouri State University

Despite their differences in age, situation, and attitude towards Bath, Anne Elliot and Catherine Morland share an innate sense of constancy and a developing understanding of persuasion. These two concepts form the basis of recurring patterns that shift as if through a kaleidoscope when viewed from various angles and show Austen’s ongoing engagement with them throughout her writing career. This session will look at the protagonists of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in relationship to secondary characters, such as Lousia and Henrietta Musgrove, Captains Harville and Benwick, and Isabella and John Thorpe, focusing on these twin concepts of persuasion and constancy.

Jenny Rebecca Rytting is a Professor at Northwest Missouri State University, specializing in British Literature from Beowulf to Austen. She has published in Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line and presented at several AGMs and JASNA Regional meetings, and at global conferences celebrating Austen’s 250th year in Southampton and São Paulo. She was delighted to visit Bath for the first time this summer.

C5. Brothers, Wives, and Warriors: A Look at Women Afloat in the Regency Royal Navy

Christopher Empett
Rio Hondo College/Stanton University

In Persuasion, Mrs. Croft's enthusiasm for life afloat conflicts with Captain Wentworth’s adamant stance (and Royal Navy regulations) that ships are no place for women. We will explore the nuanced reality of the Regency Royal Navy and the unexpected and multi-faceted roles women served within it. What did Austen’s brothers think about women at sea? From Fanny Austen’s experience to the lives of women “before the mast,” this session demonstrates how Jane Austen’s assertion that not all women “expect to be in smooth waters” all their lives mapped to the reality of women’s experiences in the Royal Navy.

Christopher Empett is an historian and educator whose research spans the shared trans-Atlantic history of Britain, Canada, and the United States. His research focuses on themes of gender and the social constructions of class, hierarchy, and community. He finds that Jane Austen’s work resonates with these ideas because her books both critique and provide escape from the boundaries of gender and class during the Regency era. He has presented previously to the JASNA Southwest Region.

C6. Coming of Age in a Spa Town

Celia Easton State University of New York College at Geneseo

Can examining our own “coming-of-age” stories enrich our readings of Northanger Abbey? In this audience-participation session, we will share personal insights and analyze key texts that help us understand Catherine Morland’s development. We will think together about why sending a young girl off to Bath is a useful literary device for the author of a coming-of-age novel, noting similar “leaving home” structures in Richardson’s Grandison and Burney’s Evelina. In Bath, Catherine accelerates her maturation by trading her knowledge of a safe rural world for a series of urban surprises that awaken her to a more realistic and critical view of adults and adulthood.

Celia Easton is Professor Emerita of English Literature at the State University of New York College at Geneseo. A former RC of the Central & Western NY Region of JASNA, she currently serves JASNA as Vice President for Publications. She has published several essays in Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line as well as essays on Jane Austen and other 17th and 18th-century authors in other collections and journals.

D1. Home, Holiday, and Exile: Bath as Cure and Curse in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion

Charlotte Fiehn
Yeshiva University

In Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, Jane Austen represents the city of Bath as a paradoxical space. Reading the city through the intertwined lenses of mobility, health, and belonging, Charlotte argues that Austen uses Bath to test her heroines’ capacity for perception, resilience, and moral growth. By juxtaposing Austen’s portrayals of Bath as an urban space, Dr. Fiehn will trace her use of different aspects of the same environment to explore opposing affective registers and develop Bath as a moral landscape, shaping and distorting possibilities for freedom, judgment, and renewal.

Charlotte Fiehn is Assistant Professor of English at Yeshiva University’s Stern College. She specializes in 19th-century and early 20th-century British, American, and post-colonial literature. She has published articles on Shakespeare, George Eliot, and Charlotte Brontë and contributed chapters on Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and George Eliot. In 2019, she won the George Eliot Fellowship Essay Prize for her essay on water symbolism in Romola. She is the author of George Eliot and Her Women.

D2. Beginning at the End: Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in the Spanish-Speaking World

Cinthia García Soria
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Persuasión (1919) and La Abadía de Northanger (1921) were the first Austen novels translated into Spanish, after more than a century of delay. During most of the 20th century, both novels were widely published in Spanish-speaking countries, with retranslations and editions available on both sides of the Atlantic. However, in the 21st century, fewer new translations of both novels have been published than Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice, perhaps because the screen adaptations of the former have not been as widely available. Which editions of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in Spanish are worthwhile? The discussion will include annotations, illustrations, introductions, and covers.

Cinthia García Soria is a translator with an M.A. in Applied Linguistics for the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. In 1999, with Constanza Galarza, she co-founded JAcastellano, the oldest Janeite online community in Spanish. She is part of the team seeking to create a Jane Austen Society in Mexico.

D3. "The sacrifices that ennoble us most": The Sources of Human Dignity in Jane Austen's Persuasion

Sarah Marsh
Seton Hill University

In a world of algorithms, influencers, skin care, and social media, we inhabit an order shaped by the careful display of surfaces. So, too, in Austen’s Persuasion—especially in Bath—where reputation and beauty serve as important social currencies. Sir Walter Elliot exemplifies this culture of display, treating the Baronetage and unweathered complexions as sure signs of human worth. This session explores how Jane Austen locates human dignity elsewhere: in places much more difficult to see. In Anne Elliot’s friendship with Mrs. Smith, one person's suffering—beyond public view—becomes an occasion for moral action. Austen’s account of human dignity in Persuasion offers profound guidance for the way that we live now.

Sarah Marsh is Associate Professor of English at Seton Hill University, where she studies the 18th-century Atlantic world and directs the Jane Austen Summer Program. Her forthcoming book is Novel Constitutions and the Making of Race: A Literary and Legal History of Slavery in the Anglophone Atlantic, 1688–1818. This study’s fifth chapter uses new archival evidence to make a case for Jane Austen’s abolitionism.

D4. Resilience and Transformation: Austen's Early Psychology of Human Flourishing in the Bath Novels

Angelea Panos
Utah Valley University

Jane Austen's heroines as pioneers of positive psychology? This talk reveals how Anne Elliot and Catherine Morland embody cutting-edge resilience science centuries before its formal discovery. Discover how Anne ”bounces forward” from family toxicity using the PERMA model, transforming adversity into flourishing through psychological flexibility. Watch Catherine overcome Gothic catastrophizing by learning optimistic thinking. Austen’s Bath novels aren't just romance, they’re blueprints for human thriving. Learn how these timeless characters demonstrate that true resilience means evolving through hardship while staying anchored to one’s values, offering surprisingly modern insights into navigating hostile social landscapes with grace and growth.

Dr. Angelea Panos is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in resilience and post-traumatic growth. Her work examines how individuals and communities adapt following trauma, with particular attention to meaning-making, moral injury, and relational repair. As an Austen enthusiast, she applies Jane Austen’s psychological insight and social observation to contemporary understandings of resilience, relationships, and human flourishing.

D5. He's a "bit of a rattle": John Thorpe and the Boorish Young Man in the Sentimental Novel

Lona Manning
JASNA Vancouver Region

Northanger Abbey is full of references and parodic allusions to the novels of Austen’s time. This includes her portrait of Catherine Morland’s unwanted suitor, John Thorpe. Thorpe is a vulgar boor who loves talking about horses but doesn’t know how to talk to women. This talk will explore some forgotten novels of Austen’s era that also featured a comic John Thorpe-like character. An examination of John Thorpe in context reveals how Austen took the established literary forms and stereotypes of the novels of her day and breathed new life into them.

Lona Manning studies the forgotten novels that Jane Austen read, reformed, and sometimes parodied. Her research discoveries have been published in Persuasions and the journal Notes & Queries. She is the author of four novels based on Mansfield Park and has written Austenesque short stories for the Quill Ink Collective. She recently obtained a Masters (by Research) from the University of York. She maintains a blog called “Clutching My Pearls” about Austen’s beliefs and ideas.

D6. Getting Into Hot Water: Austen and Bath's Literary Tradition

Linda Troost
Washington & Jefferson College
Sayre Greenfield
University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg

Austen’s Bath is a place where people come and go, introductions are easily made, young ladies may walk without servants or chaperones, and willing hearts can find true love. It was also a popular literary setting. How do earlier comic and satiric writers like Anstey, Smollett, Sheridan, Hobhouse, and Anon use the city compared with her? Is the way that Austen references specific buildings, streets, and activities in Bath following a longstanding literary tradition? To explore these questions, we will look at works in many genres—poetry, drama, fiction—that Austen may well have read.

Linda Troost is Professor of English at Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania and has lectured on Austen around the world. She coedited Jane Austen in Hollywood, the book that established the field of Austen adaptation studies, and is a former Chawton House Library fellow. She is a past judge of the Young Filmmaker’s Contest, and a frequent speaker at AGMs.

Sayre Greenfield is Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. He coedited Jane Austen in Hollywood, the book that established the field of Austen adaptation studies, and Birds in Eighteenth-Century Literature: Reason, Emotion, and Ornithology, 1700-1840. He has lectured around the world on Austen, been a Chawton House Library fellow, and is a past judge of the Young Filmmaker’s Contest, and a frequent speaker at AGMs.

D7. “Such an Excellent Correspondent”: Reading and Writing Letters in Persuasion

Peter Sabor McGill University

Austen inserted letters into her novels as a way of revealing the strengths and weaknesses, the follies and the fantasies, of both the correspondents and their readers. The letters, whether given in full or summarized, allowed her to retain the immediacy of epistolary fiction without foregoing the exquisite irony of her third-person narration. There are eleven correspondents in Persuasion, with three letters given in full: Mary Musgrove’s letter to Anne, including her priceless remark on sore throats; William Walter Elliot’s letter to Charles Smith, belatedly revealing his character to Anne; and Captain Wentworth’s letter, which succeeds in repairing past damages.

Peter Sabor is Distinguished James McGill Professor Emeritus at McGill University. He was coordinator of the 1998 AGM in Quebec City and has been a Traveling Lecturer, plenary, and frequent breakout speaker. His publications on Jane Austen include two editions, Juvenilia (2006), and Manuscript Works (co-edited, 2013), and The Cambridge Companion to Emma (2015). He is also Principal Investigator for “Reading with Austen,” a digital recreation of Godmersham Park Library.

PARTICIPATORY OPPORTUNITIES

AGM attendees are invited to share their ideas and talents. These sessions are included with AGM registration.

Open Mic Night

What’s your take on Austen? Open Mic is your chance to have your say, on whatever Austen-related topic and in whatever mode of expression you choose. Give a lightning lecture, sing a song, share your favorite Austen passage, do a dramatic monologue—it’s up to you. There are only two rules: 1. You have 4 minutes only. 2. No staging, setup, fancy AV, or slides: it’s just you and a microphone on stage. This will be a fast-paced and fun session for participants and spectators alike.

Guidelines and sign-up sheets are here; please sign up by August 31. We’ll accept as many participants as possible in the order of signing up, though preference will be given to attendees not otherwise on the AGM program. We ask you to describe what you plan to do so we can vary the order of appearances and produce a lively session.

Janeite Arts and Crafts Show and Tell

Jane Austen quilted, embroidered, and did paper crafts. Her novels mention many additional creative pastimes, including painting and drawing, netting purses, quilling, and more. Whether you practice a classic art or craft, or one Austen wouldn’t recognize (origami, digital die cutting, or book transformation, anyone?), we want to see your Janeite creations! You can sign up to talk about your project from the stage or share it informally from a display table.
Guidelines and sign-up sheets are here; please sign up by August 31.

Young Filmmakers Contest Awards

JASNA’s Young Filmmakers Contest celebrates its 10th year! The Young Filmmakers Contest is a creative competition to encourage the study, interpretation, and appreciation of Jane Austen among new generations by inviting amateurs to create five-minute films. We invite all AGM attendees to join us at the Awards Gala: enjoy the premiere showing of all the film finalists and vote for your favorite for the “People’s Choice” award.

JASNA All Members’ Meeting

Before the days of online conferencing, the JASNA AGM was the one opportunity for JASNA members to come together to consider the business of the Society. The All Members’ meeting at the AGM continues this tradition, providing members an opportunity to hear reports from JASNA’s officers. A brief Q&A period is planned.

The JASNA Ofrenda

An ofrenda is a dedicated space, most often in a home, to remember and honor those who have passed on—part of the customs surrounding the Día de Muertos (which occurs during our AGM weekend). The offerings are often celebratory or lighthearted, reflecting things that were enjoyed by the person being honored. Gabriela Montero (who will speak about Día de Muertos customs; see session description below) will curate the ofrenda. AGM attendees are welcome to bring a photo or remembrance of a special JASNA member or other person to place on the ofrenda.

SPECIAL SESSIONS - TALKS AND PERFORMANCE

Fashion in Focus #1: Ann Wass, Alison Woo, Lena Yasutake

Masquerades and Fancy Dress Balls

Ann Wass
JASNA Maryland Region

Masquerades were popular entertainments in the United Kingdom throughout the Regency period. Public venues in London and seaside resorts had ticketed events. Famous hostesses had private parties. The Prince Regent himself gave a Grand Fancy Dress Ball at Carlton House on July 15, 1819. This was the last formal event of his Regency, as King George III died the next January. While Austen may not have attended a masquerade, she read about one in Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda. This novel, newspapers, eyewitness accounts, and contemporaneous illustrations offer a glimpse of the attendees, the costumes they wore, and how they behaved at masquerades.

Dress historian Ann Wass has been studying Regency/Federal era dress for three decades. She has spoken or led workshops at four AGMs and was on the planning committees for the 2016 DC and 2025 Baltimore AGMs. She has also presented at JASNA Maryland events. After retiring from Riversdale, an early 19th-century house museum, she continues to research, write, and speak as an independent scholar and makes period clothing for her husband and herself.

Baubles and Beads: Jewelry Shopping in Austen's Regency World

Alison Woo
JASNA Greater Philadelphia Region

Step back to 1800 and stroll down Milsom Street to discover the glittering treasures of the Regency era. From diamonds and pearls to sentimental remembrance jewelry, this session explores the "must-have" accessories of Jane Austen's world, revealing Regency trends (the rise of daring rivieres and the classical influences of French couture); the power of parures (a look at the 16-piece matching suites worn by Bath's elite); and museum masterpieces (stunning examples from the V&A and the Met). Discover how these timeless designs continue to inspire and the stories behind the sparkle!

Alison Woo is a jewelry designer (Alison Woo Designs) and collector, who believes the timeless beauty and simplicity of Regency-era jewelry translates well into contemporary tastes and sensibilities. When not thinking of jewelry, Woo is an award-winning communications consultant with expertise in the use of social media.

The Meaning of Muslin: More Than Mere Material

Lena Ruth Yasutake
JASNA Connecticut Region

Explore this popular Regency-era fabric and its narrative importance in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. Through the exploration of muslin's social, cultural, and economic significance, this talk translates what would have been understood by Austen's contemporaries for modern readers. We will examine surviving muslin gowns, their beautiful construction, and learn about grades of quality and the classes that would have been able to afford them. This talk will take a global perspective on the diaphanous grade of muslin produced in the Dhaka region of India during the time of England's imperial domination, from the destruction of the weaving industry, through the Industrial Revolution, to the contemporary resurgence of traditional weaving techniques.

Lena Ruth Yasutake develops engaging, interactive programs as Director of Lena Loves Austen. She is a historical costumer, costume designer, educator, performer, and director with a deep passion for Regency fashion and Jane Austen. She has designed and created costumes for multiple Austen stage adaptations, including her own adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. Lena collaborated with Black American designer Trenell Mooring, producing a line of Regency-inspired gowns and accessories featuring African print fabrics. She has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Janeite Spotlight, and The Queen’s Chronicle. Lena has spoken at several AGMs, discussing the power of adaptations to reach new audiences and strategies for fostering a diverse, welcoming Austen community.

Fashion in Focus #2: Ros Ballaster and Kristen Miller Zohn

Belles and Bath: The Designs of Fashion in Jane Austen and Mary Ann Bell
Ros Ballaster
University of Oxford

Novelist Jane Austen and modiste Mary Ann Bell both debuted in print in October 1811. What designs did they have on their readers and the fashionable world? We will explore the treatment of Bath as a place of fashion in both women’s works. Mary Ann Bell prided herself especially on the invention of corsets, headwear, and costumes for leisure and for special-occasion balls, theatre and opera, which she energetically promoted in her father-in-law’s stylish journal, La Belle Assemblée. Clothing and accessories are touchstones for discoveries of character and tests of true elegance of mind in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

Ros Ballaster is Professor of 18th-Century Studies in the Faculty of English, Oxford University, and a Fellow of the British Academy. She is the editor of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Jane Austen’s Fashion Bible (2025), a gift book which illustrates extracts from Austen’s writing with color fashion plates from the Regency magazine La Belle Assemblée. She is a trustee of Chawton House Library. Her books and articles discuss women’s writing, oriental fiction, and theater.

The Power of Pockets

Kristen Miller Zohn
Georgia Region

It is a truth universally acknowledged that with the arrival of the reticule, women abandoned the use of pockets, but Austen’s own writings suggest otherwise. In Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland has her brother’s letter “one moment in her hand, then in her lap, and then in her pocket.” The presentation will explain that between the late 17th and 19th centuries, women wore detachable pockets that held practical and valuable objects and offered agency at a time when their right to hold property was legally constrained. The presentation will also explore Austen’s use of pockets to illuminate her characters.

Kristen Miller Zohn is Executive Director of the Costume Society of America and Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art (LRMA). She has served JASNA as a Regional Coordinator, Board member, Traveling Lecturer, and Co-coordinator of the 2021 AGM. She is author of The Currency of Taste, a study of LRMA’s Georgian silver collection, and a contributor to The Edinburgh Companion to Jane Austen and the Arts.

Libraries and Book Printing: Claire Bellanti and Melissa Straw

The Heart of Bath: Libraries in Jane Austen's Fiction and Letters

Claire Bellanti
JASNA Southwest Region

Libraries were an important part of Jane Austen's life, especially once she lost access to her father's books at Steventon. Circulating libraries and other forms of shared book collections were available to her in most of the places she lived, but especially in Bath. In her letters and novels, we have clues about those libraries, and several are described or named in both of these sources. Charts tracing the extent of the use of libraries in both her life and her fiction will illuminate the meaningful role that they play in the life of the author.

Claire Bellanti is retired from a 35-year career in the UCLA Library. A JASNA member since 1984, she has served in a variety of JASNA offices in her Region, and as JASNA Vice President for Regions and JASNA President. She presided over four AGMs and delivered her presidential talk on 18th- and 19th-century circulating libraries, "You Can Get a Parasol at Whitby’s," to two dozen Regions during her tenure.

Printing History of the Regency Era

Melissa Straw
Goucher College Library

This session will explore the differences among early British and American editions of Jane Austen’s works published in the early to mid-1800s. It will provide historical context on how books were published, printed, and bound in Austen’s era in both England and America. The presentation will feature examples from the Goucher College Library—home to one of the world’s largest Jane Austen collections and the JASNA institutional archives. Topics will include period binding practices, how volumes were matched in a gentleman’s library, and binder’s tickets.

Melissa Straw is a trained librarian and book conservator who currently works as the Director of Library Conservation at Goucher College Library, which holds one of the largest collections of Jane Austen and Regency-era materials in the world. Melissa is involved in the cataloging, preservation, and digitization of all library materials to make them accessible to the world while also preserving them for posterity.

Jane Austen's Purse: History in Coinage

David Brandreth
Jane Austen Society - UK

The Great Recoinage of February 1817, which occurred shortly before Jane Austen died, saw Britain replace its poor, worn, and often counterfeit currency, some of it dating back to the late 1600s. If Jane had emptied her purse at any time before this, what history would she have seen in the coins it contained? This presentation will explore that lost history: the monarchs, titles and events, and the official and unofficial remedies employed to combat shortages. It will look at the roles of the Royal Mint, the Bank of England, and those responsible for coin production, such as Isaac Newton and Matthew Boulton.

David Brandreth is retired, having taught subjects across the curriculum in the secondary and tertiary sectors of the English education system. He has always had an interest in history, especially events in Jane Austen’s period, the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He is an enthusiastic amateur, having presented talks to historical groups and Jane Austen Society branches in the UK.

Mrs. Tring Invites You to Take ‘The Flounce’: A Performance

Cheryl Butler
Winchester University

Mrs. Tring Invites You to Take ‘The Flounce’ is an original performance piece developed from research into health tourism and the experience of female visitors targeted by promotional material produced by spas and watering places. The desire of women to experience sea-bathing created opportunities for female entrepreneurs. Mrs. Tring was a servant at the Bathing House of Mrs. Martin, who, alongside her husband, had created a leisure complex at the seaside. Mrs. Tring will take her customers through the benefits of sea-bathing, taking the waters, use of the correct attire, the etiquette of being dipped, and how to attract an eligible bachelor.

Dr. Cheryl Butler is an Honorary Fellow of Winchester University, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She has written and lectured extensively on Jane Austen, particularly about her time in the spa town of Southampton. With degrees in history and drama, she used her research to create theater and performances for the Jane Austen 250 celebrations. Her latest book is First Impressions: Jane Austen’s Southampton Circle 1780-1820.

Who’s Talking About Health, in Bath?

Jossalyn Turner Emslie, MD
JASNA Southwest Region

Jane Austen uses the words heath, ill-health, sickness, doctor, unwell, and other health-related words more than 1,050 times in her novels. Who is talking about health so much? Does the interest in health lie more with female or male characters? The old or the young? The characters—and which ones—or the narrator? What kinds of ailments get the most air-time? Is health-talk serious or funny? We are accustomed to Jane being funny, but a deep dive into her language can be full of surprises as well. Bath is the “health” destination!

Dr. Jossalyn Turner Emslie is a practicing physician. She has written on gender dimensions and aspects of health in Jane Austen's fiction and the Regency era. She presented her talk, “Fainting is a Dangerous Venture,” at the 2025 JASNA Southwest Gala.

“Formed for [an] Elegant and Rational Society”: The History of Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line

Susan Allen Ford
Mississippi Region

How did Persuasions develop from a 32-page newsletter designed to serve a fledgling organization to a 256-page printed journal and a vibrant online journal accessible worldwide? The story of Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line is part of JASNA's history that helps us see the genius, the excitement, and the growing pains of the organization and its members.

Susan Allen Ford has been Editor of Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line since 2006 and is Professor of English Emerita at Delta State University. She has written on Austen and her contemporaries, the gothic, detective fiction, and Shakespeare. Her book, What Jane Austen’s Characters Read (and Why), was published in 2024. She is working on a history of JASNA.

Comparing the Film Adaptations of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey

Syrie James
JASNA Southwest Region

Many Jane Austen fans say they first fell in love with her work through the adaptations of her novels, and for those who started with the books, the movies and TV series are often an adored spectacle with sumptuous visuals, costumes, and locations, and iconic performances by actors who’ve become indelibly linked to the characters they portrayed. But how many of those films are faithful representations of Austen’s novels and intent? This lively, illustrated session will compare film adaptations of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, discussing what the filmmakers got thrillingly right, and where some may have gone perilously wrong.

Syrie James is the author of 16 novels of historical fiction, mystery, and romance translated into 21 languages, including The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen, and Jane Austen’s First Love. She is a Writers’ Guild of America member with 20 sold screenplays, and a published playwright, whose play Jane Austen in 89 Minutes has been produced across the U.S. from California to New York and in Australia. She has presented at many AGMs.

The Day of the Dead

Gabriela Montero
JASNA Virtual Region

Join us to understand the history, customs, and enduring cultural heartbeat of Mexico’s most iconic celebration, Día de Muertos, signs and celebrations of which will be very evident in Tucson. Explore the vibrant tapestry, journeying from ancient Aztec roots to the modern ofrenda, uncovering the cultural merging that defines this UNESCO-recognized tradition. We will decode the symbolism of cempasúchil, sugar skulls, and the satirical Catrina while discussing the philosophy of death as a celebration of life. Discover how ritual and memory bridge the gap between worlds, keeping the spirits of the departed alive.

Gabriela Montero is a non-profit professional currently serving as the President of JASMX (the Jane Austen Society of Mexico) and a Board Member of JASNA. She leads female writers' book clubs and discussion groups that often include screen adaptations, book presentations, and events dedicated to Jane Austen and other female authors.

Caroline Herschel: A Pioneer "Lady Astronomer"

Jill Ottman
Wyoming Region

Respectable professional opportunities for women of status in the Georgian and Regency periods were limited to being a governess, writing novels, running a girls’ school, and the like. Caroline Herschel was one of the few lucky women to break out and defy this societal norm. Follow her extraordinary life as she moved from disfiguring childhood illness to becoming the first paid British female scientist. Of special interest to Austen fans is that this celebrated “lady astronomer,” now largely forgotten, achieved professional success after a stint in Bath.

Jill Ottman is a geographer employed by the Wyoming State Geological Survey. She has published works on Regency-era sidesaddle riding, the 1815 eruption of Tambora, and the first white women to make the overland journey to Oregon. She has been a speaker at the Louisville and Cleveland AGMs and has given Zoom talks to several JASNA Regions and groups of Jane Austen enthusiasts.

Jane Austen and the University of Calcutta, 1887-1947

Sabarno Sinha
The University of Texas at Austin

Within thirty years of the establishment of the University of Calcutta in 1857, Jane Austen had become a part of the English curriculum there, far before she had been accorded this status anywhere else, and she continues to remain an inseparable part. This session explores through material (not examined before) from the university’s archives to show the shifts and patterns in how Austen was taught to, and read by, Indian students, during the period from the Victorian era to Independence (1887-1947).

Sabarno Sinha is a first-year PhD student in the Department of English at the University of Texas at Austin. He works on British Literature of the 19th Century, Book History, and Romanticism in India, and is also interested in film adaptations of 19th-century British fiction.

Jane Austen and the Jews

Jason Solinger
University of Mississippi

Beginning with the Bath novels’ critique of intolerance, this talk examines Austen’s appeal to postwar 20th-century Jewish readers. What made Austen a favorite of such Austen fans, readers, and writers as JASNA founders Alberta and Henry Burke, New York intellectual Lionel Trilling, critic Marvin Mudrick, novelist and Janeite G.B. Stern, memoirist Ruth Wilson, and filmmaker Amy Heckerling? The reasons for Jewish devotion to Austen are complex and contradictory, with roots in Jewish humor, liberalism, and Anglophilia. This investigation of Jewish love of Austen will take us from academia to Hollywood and showcase the role of Jewish readers in Austen’s canonization.

Jason Solinger is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Mississippi, where he also serves as Director of English Graduate Studies,and faculty advisor to the UM Hillel. He is the author of Becoming the Gentleman: British Literature and the Invention of Modern Masculinity, as well as essays on Austen and 18th-century literature and culture. His current book project examines the ways conversations about Austen have shaped our ideas about literature.

SPECIAL DINING EVENT IN THE HOTEL

For dining opportunities away from the hotel, see the Activities and Tours pages.

Lunch and Learn (and Taste): Meet Me at Molland's $

Friday, October 30 Lunch buffet with program and tastings On-site at AGM hotel; time, price, and menu to be added later. Speaker: Julienne Gehrer, Metropolitan Kansas City Region

Jane Austen immortalized Molland's in Persuasion, but the storied pastry cook had competition from other eateries in Georgian Bath. Where might Austen or her characters grab a nibble or dine out on the town? Learn which establishments might cater to the Leigh Perrots or admit the unpolished John Thorpe and gossipy Nurse Rooke. Take a sweet and savory stroll through Bath's food scene, enjoying selected recipe recreations during a luncheon buffet, followed by an illustrated talk with a food historian. Discover which comestibles fulfilled Bath's reputation as a healthful spa retreat and which enticed society seekers like Sir Walter Elliot.

Julienne Gehrer is an author, journalist, and food historian. Her speaking engagements include several with Jane Austen’s House, and co-presentations with chefs at “A Jane Austen Literary Dinner” and “A Cheese Tour of Jane Austen’s England.” Her articles have appeared in Persuasions, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, and LitHub. Recent 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).