Sydney meeting
Mansfield Park and Education
Dr Heather Neilson

Mansfield Park can be read as a meditation on education, in both the formal and moral senses of the term. In this presentation Heather will be considering the ways in which the various characters of Austen’s novel reveal the results, both pernicious and beneficial, of their education. She will also briefly consider the ways in which Mansfield Park resonates with other texts, both some influences upon Austen and her own other novels.”

Heather Neilson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the UNSW in Canberra. Having taught for many years in the English and Media Studies program, she is now a member of the newly established Indo-Pacific Studies program. She is the author of Political Animal: Gore Vidal on Power, published by Monash University Press in 2014. She is a former editor of the Australasian Journal of American Studies and a past president of the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association.