The Locations Of Austen
An international conference marking the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, set in Hertfordshire.
About the event
Event type: Conferences
‘The Locations of Austen’ is an international and interdisciplinary conference to be held at The University of Hertfordshire, England from 11-13 July, 2013. This conference will celebrate the bicentenary of the publication of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which is set in Hertfordshire.
Jane Austen’s fiction is situated in a landscape both familiar and unknowable. It manages to evoke a strikingly detailed portrait of contemporary English geography and culture even while it remains, under closer scrutiny, fabricated. The questions that concern us include how Austen’s work is located in its historical moment, and the implications of mapping Austen’s fictional settings onto real topographies of the English landscape.
As part of the conference proceedings, a half-day excursion for all delegates attending will take in a visit, tour and tea at St Paul’s Walden Bury, a Regency-era private estate and gardens and the Hertfordshire seat of the Bowes-Lyon family.
Paper and panel proposals will consider, among other topics:
- How Austen’s works represent social change during the French wars, especially in agricultural communities
- How they seek to reposition the landed elite
- How they use romance as a genre of intervention in the construction of women
- How her work is located in different global and national cultures in the twenty-first century.
Invited speakers include:
- Robert Clark (University of East Anglia)
- Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace (Boston College)
- James Thompson (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
- Emma Clery (University of Southampton)
Read the BBC article about the conference.
For more information and booking
The University of Hertfordshire offers a state-of-the-art campus readily accessible by train, car, and London’s three airports. Excursions to Hertfordshire locations of interest to Austen scholars, in particular places which might have provided models for Pemberley, will form part of the conference itinerary.
Publication of the conference’s proceedings, both in book form and in a special edition of Critical Survey, is also anticipated. Registration is now open for bookings via our online shop.
For other enquiries, please contact Dr Penny Pritchard (p.1.pritchard@herts.ac.uk) or Dr Anna Tripp (a.f.tripp@herts.ac.uk).