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Archives for May 2018

May 29, 2018 by Pamelia Dailey

Continued praise for Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen by Jocelyn Harris

Jocelyn Harris’s new book, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen, continues to receive high accolades. Read on for praise of the recent Bucknell Press publication.

Please follow this link to a page where you can purchase Jocelyn Harris’s new book:
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781611488395/Satire-Celebrity-and-Politics-in-Jane-Austen

Use the following code for a 30% discount!
UP30AUTH18

In Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen, Jocelyn Harris argues that Jane Austen was a satirist, a celebrity-watcher, and a keen political observer. In Mansfield Park, she appears to base Fanny Price on Fanny Burney, criticize the royal heir as unfit to rule, and expose Susan Burney’s cruel husband through Mr. Price. In Northanger Abbey, she satirizes the young Prince of Wales as the vulgar John Thorpe; in Persuasion, she attacks both the regent’s failure to retrench, and his dangerous desire to become another Sun King. For Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Austen may draw on the actress Dorothy Jordan, mistress of the pro-slavery Duke of Clarence, while her West Indian heiress in Sanditonmay allude to Sara Baartman, who was exhibited in Paris and London as “The Hottentot Venus,” and adopted as a test case by the abolitionists. Thoroughly researched and elegantly written, this new book by Jocelyn Harris contributes significantly to the growing literature about Austen’s worldiness by presenting a highly particularized web of facts, people, texts, and issues vital to her historical moment.

REVIEWS

“Harris is well established as a guide to the wider thought-world of the author…. In her latest book her expertise and questing curiosity are brought to bear on a set of themes that have not generally been associated with Austen.”
—Emma Clery, University of Southampton; Times Literary Supplement (February 2018)

“New Zealand academic Jocelyn Harris’s excellent Satire, Celebrity and Politics in Jane Austen published early this year shows what a keen political observer Austen was, and how her interest in the celebrities of the day, such as actress Dorothea Jordan and Sara Baartman (an African woman with very large buttocks who was exhibited in English freak shows as “the Hottentot Venus”), influenced and inspired characters in Austen’s fiction.”
—Susannah Fullerton; The Australian (July 2017)

“[T]his is a wonderfully rich and convincing presentation of much new material. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above.
—CHOICE

“This book is an enjoyable one for anyone who has read Austen’s novels or watched productions of them on television…. Jocelyn Harris is an excellent writer. For an academic study, the usual jargon and allusions to various post-modern theories are happily absent in this book. It is packed with detail and citations. It’s is valuable for Cook enthusiasts because of its chapter on Molesworth Phillips, and the broader considerations surrounding the death of Captain Cook.”
—Cook’s Log

“Satire, Celebrity, and Politics is unfailingly fascinating in its dissection of Jane Austen, the satirist, and the text is enhanced by a well-chosen selection of contemporary portraits and gloriously scurrilous cartoons. The ‘stories behind the stories’ always make for an interesting read and Harris has produced a book that will be read with great pleasure by academics and devoted readers alike.”
—Jane Austen’s Regency World

“Burney scholars will find Jocelyn Harris’s latest book Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen an enriching read.… [It] responds to, and expands upon, the work of critics who have demonstrated that Austen was so much more than the domestic, apolitical novelist her family portrayed her to be.… Harris reinforces the image of Austen as a well-informed and sharp-minded woman who was seriously engaged with the socio-political issues of the day…. With a keen eye for detail, Harris exposes the subtle connections between the unrestrained, public laughter surrounding such figures and the more restrained, oblique laughter in the novels, thereby deepening our understanding of Austen’s skill for sature in the process.”
—Elles Smallgoor; Burney Newsletter

“Jocelyn Harris’s book, which reflects on the ways in which Jane Austen’s work may have been influenced by what she knew about certain celebrities of her time, is a pleasant and accessible read…. On the whole…I would emphasise the thorough research into the socio-historical context that has gone into this book, and which makes it of interest to anyone who would like to know more of current events during Austen’s lifetime.”
—Rita J. Dashwood, The Jane Austen Society (Spring 2018)

“In Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen, University of Otago Emeritus Professor Jocelyn Harris approaches Austen in terms of the world in which she lived, using what is known of everything from her social networks to contemporary media portrayals of prominent figures, to argue that her novels are much more than mere domestic dramas…. Although primarily an academic text, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics has much of interest here for the lay reader too. The glimpses it offers into regency England and diversions into topics as diverse as the disputed accounts of Cook’s death and the misbehavior of the Prince Regent are as interesting as the primary analysis…. [Harris’s formidable thesis] is standing its ground in the fierce world of Austen scholarship.”
—Cushla McKinney, The Otago Daily Times (July 2018)

“Harris’s impressive new book, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen (2017), builds on the work of her pioneering 1989 study, deepening our sense of what Austen may have been up to in crafting her novels…. Harris’s well-written, deeply researched, and timely book has a great deal to offer…. It is difficult to find any scholarship on these subjects that is simultaneously attentive to Austen’s fiction, to the history of theory and criticism, and to the minutiae of Austen family history and biography. Harris weaves all of these kinds of evidence and arguments together to great effect…. For years to come, readers and critics will be weighing the massive number of new insights in this book, troubling through their implications for our future readings of Austen, politics, history, and popular culture.”
—Devoney Looser, Arizona State University

“Last year’s bicentenary commemoration of the death of Jane Austen has given her readers many reasons for celebration. This book is one of them…. Jocelyn Harris in this careful, enthusiastic and learned book shows how Jane Austen achieves vision through observation and creates a new and distinctive world from a recognisable world.”
—Tony Voss, Jane Austen Society of Australia

“Jocelyn Harris has studied the influences on Jane Austen’s writing for a long time…. [Her] thoroughness and detailed and intriguing analysis are exceptional. The text is dense. Her sleuth work is incredible and includes compelling evidence…. The twenty-first century student of Jane Austen will never read her in the same way after reflecting on Jocelyn Harris’s latest book.”

—Sylvia Kasey Marks, NYU Tandon School of Engineering

“Like most members of JASNA, I think that I know Jane Austen, but after reading Jocelyn Harris’s latest book, I’m not so sure…. For many readers…Jane Austen is isolated, safely removed from controversies of personality or politics. Jocelyn Harris overturns that view of Jane Austen and demonstrates just how connected the author was to her contemporary scene. Harris’s work…will prompt scholars to penetrate deeper into her suggested connections.”

—David Wheeler, JASNA News

“Throughout Satire, Celebrity, and Politics, we are thoroughly persuaded of Harris’s main argument that Austen ‘was a politician, in the former sense of a person keenly interested in practical politics….’ [Harris conducted] capacious research.”

—Melissa Rampelli, Holy Family University

Filed Under: Author profiles, Uncategorized

May 22, 2018 by Alana

From Books to Films: The Stories of the Susquehanna Valley

screen still from the SSV film “The Coopers and Conservation at the Headwaters of the Susquehanna”

The Bucknell University Press Stories of the Susquehanna Valley series, edited by Katherine Faull and Alfred Siewers, has inspired a series of documentary projects funded by Bucknell, with one film produced by WVIA and several others produced by Bucknell students.  The book series itself seeks to develop interdisciplinary and multimedia approaches to the concept of region, place, and ethics in environmental studies. As Faull explains, “The Stories of the Susquehanna Book Series with the Bucknell University Press provides a traditional print format for scholarly research that focuses on the interconnectedness of people and place in the Susquehanna Watershed.”  While including a range of disciplines, from sciences and social sciences to literature and philosophy, the Stories of the Susquehanna Valley book series articulates narratives of an eco-region that played a formative, if often hidden, role in the early American republic, and which today provides potential models for more environmentally sustainable approaches to human community.  The editors of the series are also involved in the Stories of the Susquehanna Valley series of documentary projects.  According to Faull, “Where the documentary projects, both those that are student-produced and the WVIA-Bucknell collaborative undertakings, explore these stories in a public-facing genre, the book series attracts scholarship of the highest caliber on the Susquehanna that further informs and deepens the subject matter of the video productions.”

Faull was involved in the production of a film in the series entitled Peoples of the Susquehanna, which examines the history, culture, and traditions of the Native Americans of the river watershed.  The trailer can be viewed on pbs.org or the full film watched here with a WVIA Passport membership.  According to Siewers, “The recent WVIA-TV hour-length documentary Peoples of the Susquehanna was based on the first book in the [Bucknell University Press] series [Native Americans in the Susquehanna River Valley, Past and Present by David J. Minderhout] and connects with an upcoming volume.”  He explains, “The half-hour documentaries Utopian Dreams and Coopers and Conservation are likewise related to a planned volume.” Three of the documentaries are student-produced under Siewers’ guidance and are entitled Utopian Dreams, The Coopers and Conservation at the Headwaters of the Susquehanna, and The Churches of Coal Country.  The first in the series, Utopian Dreams, focuses on two 18th-century river communities and their diverging visions of society, and can be viewed for free on pbs.org.  The second film, The Coopers and Conservation at the Headwaters of the Susquehanna, examines the literary and conservation legacy of 19th-century authors James Fenimore Cooper and his daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper. Key figures in American nature writing, the Coopers and their work helped to establish an early ethic of environmental stewardship at the Susquehanna River’s headwaters in Cooperstown, NY. This film has just been recently finished and is scheduled to broadcast on Thursday, May 31st at 8pm with encores on Friday, June 1st at 2pm and Sunday, June 3rd at 1pm.  The Churches of Coal Country, the third in the student-produced series, is currently under production and will examine Slavic immigrant communities in Mount Carmel, PA.  It will cover similar themes found in another book from the series called Coal Dust on Your Feet: The Rise, Decline, and Restoration of an Anthracite Mining Town by Janet MacGaffey.

As Siewers explains, “Books and documentaries are two methods of exploring the region and highlighting its cultures in our series.”  Both Siewers and Faull are dedicated to highlighting the historical and cultural significance of the Susquehanna corridor.  According to Siewers, the book and documentary projects are focused on “developing digital story maps and other materials related to the rich landscape layers of culture and natural history in what some geologists consider to be America’s oldest river watershed.”  From books to films, the Stories of the Susquehanna Valley projects convey themes of interconnectedness across communities along the river and celebrate the shared environment through creative and informational perspectives.

Update: The Coopers and Conservation at the Headwaters of the Susquehanna can now be viewed online for free here.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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