2015 marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen’s great novel, Emma. Our day-long symposium considers the fashions of fiction, fashion in fiction, and fashions of feminism, from the vantage point of this major literary bicentennial. Panelists will discuss Emma in 2015 with regard to the marriage plot, feminist style, empire, and creative adaptations fromClueless to zombies and social media.
Speakers include Juliette Wells, author of Everybody’s Jane: Austen in the Popular Imagination and editor of Austen’s Emma(Penguin, 2015); Elsie B. Michie, author of The Vulgar Question of Money: Heiresses, Materialism, and the Novel of Manners from Austen to Henry James; Talia Schaffer, author of Romance’s Rival and Novel Craft; Mary Jean Corbett, author ofFamily Likeness: Sex, Marriage, and Incest from Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf; Ellen Rooney, author ofSeductive Reasoning; Gina Luria Walker, author of Mary Hays (1759–1843): The Growth of a Woman’s Mind and The Idea of Being Free; Elaine Savory, author of Jean Rhys and Out of the Kumbla; and Elizabeth Kendall, author of Autobiography of a Wardrobe, The Runaway Bride, andBalanchine and the Lost Muse.
The symposium is particularly well-timed, since Austen is slated to appear on the British £10 note, replacing Charles Darwin, as the result of a feminist campaign. Austen’s novel about an heiress who seeks to remain unmarried also merits reconsideration in light of the success of the movement for same-sex marriage equality.
We conclude the day with a screening of the 1995 film adaptation, Clueless.
Saturday, October 24, 2015 at 10:00 a.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Wollman Hall, Eugene Lang College
65 West 11th Street, Room B500, New York, NY 10003
For more information, please see http://writlit.com/emma-at-200-fiction-fashion-feminism.
Sponsored by the Department of Literary Studies at Lang College in partnership the New School Gender Studies Program,Parsons Fashion Studies, and the Jane Austen Society of North America.
Admission to Emma at 200: Fiction, Fashion, Feminism is free. Registration is required by 10/17/15: https://emmafff.eventbrite.com
