Jane Austen PhD: From reading passion to reading wisely and well – Dr Ruth Wilson

The title of the talk pays a playful tribute to Jane Austen as the inspiration for so many doctoral dissertations. Ruth Wilson’s PhD thesis was described by Devoney Looser who was one of the examiners as ‘a significant, original contribution [that combines] the methods of criticism, memoir and what the thesis identifies as, following literary critic James Wood, serious noticing’.  In her talk Ruth will discuss the background to her research and her close readings of the three novels that serve as test cases for the recommended reading approach.

Dr Ruth Wilson retired from teaching English in 1979, and from implementing and coordinating oral history projects in the classroom in 2005. She designed, edited, and published a multi-media teaching resource called Say NO to Prejudice in 1996, and a collection of edited interviews, A Big Ask: Interviews with Interviewers, in 2000. She returned to re-reading Jane Austen’s novels in her retirement and in 2020 she completed a thesis called Milestones in a Reading Life: Jane Austen and Lessons in Reading, Learning and the Imagination. Her reading memoir, A Jane Austen Remedy, will be published in April/May 2022.