JASNA NorCal

Teaching Jane Austen
2020-11-10 19:00 (America/Chicago) | Online: Zoom
Professor Tim Spurgeon from Lawrence University will share his experiences on “Teaching Jane Austen.” From Professor Spurgeon: From Professor Spurgin: “What’s it like to read Jane Austen — all of Jane Austen — for the first time? What stands out? Which books and characters emerge as favorites? What seems to be the larger shape and direction of Austen’s career? My talk will address these questions, drawing on my recent experience teaching a course devoted exclusively to Austen’s works. I’ll share responses from students, and also pass along some personal reflections. Having known and loved the books for so long, I found it fascinating to see how Austen looked — and what she meant — to first-time readers. I hope you will, too.”

Register here.

Tea Time: "Emma" (2020) vs "Clueless"
2020-11-07 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Online: Zoom
JASNA members: check email for an invitation to this casual get-together.

Virual Jane Austen Mini-Fest
2020-11-07 12:00 - 18:00 (America/Phoenix) | Online: Zoom
The Glendale (AZ) Public Library is proud to present a virtual lineup of over 25 Jane Austen experts and enthusiasts from around the world, from critically acclaimed authors to a Tony-award-nominated composer. Come laugh and learn with us! (Register for each program separately.)

Austen Con
2020-11-07 08:00 - 17:00 (Australia/Melbourne)
24 Carrot Productions, a theatre company based in Melbourne, Australia, is planning a whole day of Jane Austen and Regency-era related events and activities, to celebrate lots of different aspects of Jane Austen’s work and our appreciation of it. This year, the event will be run entirely online. Check the web site for a description of each program session.

Great Books Forum: Pride and Prejudice
2020-11-05 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Online: Zoom
Topie: Pride and Prejudice, led by Professor Jina Lee

The Great Books Forum offers an opportunity to encounter classic and modern literature in company with interested readers from the college and the community. Along with the works themselves, discussions focus on issues of context and interpretation. The theme for Fall 2020 is The Novels of Jane Austen. Email james.werner@sunywcc.edu for access information.

History Happy Hour: Life, Death, and Locks of Hair
2020-11-05 17:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
During the nineteenth century, people across the United States collected, exchanged, and displayed locks of hair. Jewelry made from human hair is the most familiar form of hair collecting, in part because many of these pieces have been preserved in archives and historic homes like the Camron-Stanford House. Yet nineteenth-century Americans kept locks of hair in a wide variety of ways. Severed braids, curls, and strands were tucked in letters and sent through the mail, saved in specialized albums, and thrust into the hands of loved ones just before death. Although this practice is often associated with white, middle-class men and women, the emotional meanings carried by locks of hair were broadly shared by Americans from different regions, class backgrounds, racial groups, and religious traditions.

Gardening with Jane Austen
2020-11-05 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York)
Kim Wilson (author of In the Garden with Jane Austen) will speak about gardens and growing in the Regency period.

Tales of Terror! Gothic Tales by the Virtual Fireside
2020-10-31 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/London) | Online
The final night is a dramatic reading of Mary Shelley’s little-known novella Mathilda. Although written between August 1819 and February 1820, the subject matter was so controversial that it was not published until 1959. It tells the story of Mathilda, a young woman desperately in love with a gifted young poet, Woodville, from whom she hides the shameful secret of her father’s incestuous love.

Elections in Jane Austen's Time
2020-10-31 13:00 (America/New_York)
Talk by James F. Nagle, JASNA Puget Sound region. As we approach our 2020 national election, we should consider what elections were like in Jane Austen’s time: who could vote, who they could vote for, how campaigns were conducted, how the voting actually happened, what the major parties, issues, and personalities were that Jane would have been aware of. If you think our electoral process is confusing and complicated, just see what it was like in Regency England! Email JasnaSWF@gmail.com for an invitation.

Tales of Terror! Gothic Stories by the Virtual Fireside
2020-10-30 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/London)
Night two is dedicated to Anne Radcliffe, the most significant Gothic writer of the eighteenth century. Far from being a horror writer, Radcliffe wished to terrify her readers and make them feel alive through her words. Her most famous work, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) takes place in the sixteenth century in Southern France and tells the tale of orphaned Emily St Aubert, imprisoned in a castle by her villainous uncle Montoni.

Tales of Terror! Gothic Stories by the Virtual Fireside
2020-10-29 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/London)
We begin our Gothic retellings with Hannah More’s poem Bishop Bonner’s Ghost whose ghoulish apparition passes judgment beyond the grave. The night continues with The Midnight Bell, described as one of Jane Austen’s ‘horrid novels’ in Northanger Abbey. Each night a mysterious bell rings in the St Francis Abbey, where a terrible murder took place years before…

Frankenstein: A Life Zoom Performance
2020-10-27 19:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | Online: Zoom
Right in time for Halloween, join Kentucky Shakespeare as they bring Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to life in a live Zoom reading of this classic tale. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote and published Frankenstein during the Croghan’s occupancy of Locust Grove, making this a perfect melding of worlds to mark the season.

Pride & Pre-Existing Conditions: The Lamplighters Annual Champagne Gala
2020-10-25 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
This year, Lamplighters brings our original musical directly to you! What happens when the Lamplighters’ Gala Committee takes a little bit of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a bit more of The Good Place, adds the machinations of Pride and Prejudice, then inserts Gilbert’s characters singing new lyrics to Sullivan’s music?

Tea Time: "Northanger Abbey" Adaptations
2020-10-24 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Online: Zoom

Mary Bennet's Surprising New Friend
2020-10-24 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Online: Zoom
Just in time for the spooky season, share in a book discussion of Pride and Prometheus by John Kessel. RC Jeanne Talbot of the JASNA San Diego region will lead the discussion about this book, which blends aspects of Pride and Prejudice with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Twelve years after the end of Austen’s tale, Mary Bennet meets Victor Frankenstein and finds him strangely compelling. Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club, calls it “dark and gripping.” You have been warned!This free event is for members only. To register, please email your full name, email address, and Region to ashorago@gmail.com. Please note: the time listed is Pacific Time.

Reading with Jane Austen
2020-10-20 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York)
Susan Allen Ford (Delta State University) will talk to us about the books that Jane read and loved, as well as reading practices in the Regency period. A Q&A will follow.

Is Piano Your Forte?
2020-10-18 14:00 (America/New_York)
Why did Austen make music, especially when played upon the pianoforte, a star in so many scenes? Think of Jane Fairfax receiving an expensive instrument from a secret admirer, or Mary Bennet trying to gain some importance by applying herself more assiduously than her prettier sisters. Join discussion leaders Elizabeth Paquette and Patti Woodall to explore this fascinating topic. Austen never wasted a word–those keyboards are in there for a reason! For information and to request the event code and password, please contact etpaquette@att.net.

Discussion: "The Jane Austen Society" by Natalie Jenner
2020-10-17 13:00 (Pacific/Honolulu)
JASNA Hawai’i invites members from other JASNA regions to join this Zoom discussion of Jenner’s recent novel. Contact the organizers for more details.

Play: Jane Austen at Prinny's Palace (Part 2)
2020-10-10 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York)
Please join us for an original play reading as part of the “Hearthside Reading Series” with Theater 20/20!

Jane Austen at Prinny’s Palace is a comic exploration of the day Jane Austen was invited to the Royal Palace by Prince Regent for tour hosted by his overly admiring Royal Librarian, James Stanier Clarke. Despite her distaste for the dissipated lifestyle of England’s soon to be Monarch, this event marked the highest public distinction her work received during her lifetime.

This event will be shown in two parts, each approximately 40 minutes in length. The first part will be shown on October 3rd at 2pm. This presentation will be hosted through Zoom. Registered participants will receive meeting details the day before the event. Please register for both events separately.

The Regency Revival: From Deco Greco to Hollywood Glam
2020-10-10 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Online: Zoom
The classical elegance of the Regency period in England is considered one of the most sophisticated and refined moments in design history. Throughout the twentieth century, designers took elements of the Regency vocabulary and restyled them to meld with the reigning aesthetic of the day. The effects proved extraordinary. Ms. Eerdmans will begin with an overview of the original Regency period, which built its sophisticated aesthetic on the example of the Neoclassical style of Napoleon’s time, then continue with the exemplary Art Deco designs of Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann and Süe et Mare in France. By the 1930s, the Vogue Regency had returned home to England. There, Sibyl Colefax and Syrie Maugham created stylized classical interiors whose novelty and theatricality influenced fashion and helped shape the design aesthetic of such contemporary fashion photographers as Cecil Beaton and Horst B. Horst. In America, the Regency Revival took hold in Hollywood with the lavish film sets of the 1930s and 1940s created by great studio art directors such as Cedric Gibbons (MGM) and Van Nest Polglase (RKO). The popularity of films like Pride and Prejudice and The Scarlet Pimpernel further popularized the style. Designers and architects to the stars Billy Haines, John Woolf and T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings made their marks with work for the Hollywood elite. Our presentation will include interiors of the 1930s and 1940s, when “Lady decorators” Dorothy Draper and Elsie de Wolfe set the trends and cut a stylish Regency-infused swath from coast to coast. Rounding out these vintage interiors will be the Regency inspired work of acclaimed contemporary designers Albert Hadley, Jacques Grange, William Diamond, Anthony Baratta, and Kelly Wearstler. Join us as we revel in this fascinating topic enlivened with a rich selection of images depicting period interiors, film sets, and furniture.

JASNA 2020 Virtual AGM
2020-10-09 19:00 - 2020-10-11 17:00 (America/New_York)
Jane Austen’s Juvenilia: Reason, Romanticism, and Revolution

Join us in our virtual conference center, where top Austen scholars and your JASNA friends will be waiting for you! This year’s Annual General Meeting will be a long-overdue exploration and celebration of Jane Austen’s youthful writings, including her epistolary novel Lady Susan. Complementing the juvenilia content will be new takes on favorite AGM activities, such as the Social Hour and Promenade, and new features that take advantage of the capabilities of an online format.

Play: Jane Austen at Prinny's Palace (Part 1)
2020-10-03 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York)
Please join us for an original play reading as part of the “Heathside Reading Series” with Theater 20/20!

Jane Austen at Prinny’s Palace is a comic exploration of the day Jane Austen was invited to the Royal Palace by Prince Regent for tour hosted by his overly admiring Royal Librarian, James Stanier Clarke. Despite her distaste for the dissipated lifestyle of England’s soon to be Monarch, this event marked the highest public distinction her work received during her lifetime.

This event will be shown in two parts, each approximately 40 minutes in length. The second part will be shown on October 10th at 2pm. This presentation will be hosted through Zoom. Registered participants will receive meeting details the day before the event. Please register for both events separately.

Country Dance Lore with Beverly Francis
2020-10-01 19:30 - 21:00 (America/New_York)
Beverly shares her considerable knowledge on the must-know customs of English country dancing in Austen’s time, along with a few choice reflections on dancing in the film adaptations.

Austen Wednesdays
2020-09-30 20:00 (Europe/London)
Introducing a new monthly series to programs on the Austen House Youtube channel, this event features author Rachel Cohen (Austen Years, A Memoir in Five Novels) in conversation with Jane Austen’s House Director, Lizzie Dunford.

Rediscovering Jane Austen at the BRLSI
2020-09-28 19:30 - 2020-10-04 21:00 (Europe/London)
An online celebration sponsored by the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, exploring the world of Jane Austen and her Writing in a Week of Live Talks, Videos, Music, Dance, Readings and Even a Quiz!

Summer Regency Sew-A-Long Show and Tell
2020-09-27 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Did you make an outfit or accessory this summer? Did you get started and not have time to finish? Maybe you just finally mended something. Whatever it may be, please join us for a “sew-and-tell.” JASNA members: check your email for an invitation.

For the Love of Austen
2020-09-26 16:00 - 17:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
Replay of the July 25th program, a pre-recorded chat with four JAFF authors. Email jasna.grsac@gmail.com for an invitation to this Zoom event.

Who wore what, where, and when
2020-09-26 14:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York)
Speaker: Alden O’Brien,DAR Museum Curator of Costumes and Textiles

Americans copied European fashion to different degrees. Fashionable urban elites had the means to imitate the styles of London and Paris, but how were more extreme styles received? Fashion news reached small towns and rural areas, but were women there able and ambitious to follow it closely? What if your religion distrusted the vanity of fashion? How far behind the times, and how dependent on “homespun,” were those on the frontier? Who wore what, where, and when?

Gender Rebels: Author Talk with Anneka Harry
2020-09-24 19:00 - 19:30 (Europe/London)
Anneka Harry, author of the brilliant new non-fiction book Gender Rebels, is recording a special talk exclusively for Chawton House, premiering on our Youtube channel. With chapters on the female soldier Hannah Snell, pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, French novelist George Sand and the Bronte sisters (all of whom feature in our 2020 exhibition, Man Up!) there’s plenty to get excited about. If you have any questions for Anneka you want to ask beforehand, please send them to info@chawtonhouse.

£5

Jane Austen's Juvenalia: "Wicked Funny"
2020-09-20 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Come experience the drama and humor of Jane Austen’s Juvenilia as we read “Wicked Funny”, an original play adapted by Michele Larrow from three of the stories in the Juvenilia. The play lasts about 30 minutes and highlights the genius and most humorous aspects of each story, while maintaining the narrative. After the reading we will have a discussion of the three works: “The Three Sisters,” “Jack and Alice,” and “Love and Freindship” using breakout sessions depending on the size of the audience.
