Day conference
Mr Collins’ Profession: Jane Austen and the Church
JASA is delighted to invite members and other Jane Austen fans to our 2024 Day Conference, in which we will have a range of presentations looking at different aspects of the clergy and the church in relation to Jane Austen.
We have some fabulous speakers coming to instruct and enlighten us.
- Brenda Cox has been researching the church in Jane Austen’s England for more than ten years. Her book, Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen’s England, explores the church in Austen’s novels and in her world. Last year, Brenda was interviewed on the AustenChat podcast. Brenda will be talking about the character of Mr Collins (his words, actions and character, including his marriage proposal), and about the lives of clergymen’s wives.
- Scott Stephens is Editor of the ABC’s Religion and Ethics website, and specialist commentator on religion and ethics for ABC radio and television. He also presents The Minefield with Waleed Aly, where in 2022 they had a episode about Jane Austen’s Emma. Scott’s talk is entitled ‘‘How could you be so unfeeling?’: Moral encounter and its counterfeits in the late fiction of Jane Austen’.
- Anne Harbers is an art historian hand has been a member of JASA for over 30 years. She will be talking about images of real and imagined clergy in Jane Austen’s time, both formal portraits and satirical cartoons – clergy to be respected, ridiculed and sometimes admired.
- Dr Roslyn Russell is is a historian and museum consultant, and has been a Jane Austen fan since her undergraduate years at the University of Sydney. Roslyn’s talk will consider Jane Austen’s portrayal of clergymen, and the extent to which we see them sermonising and engaging with devotional literature. She will contrast Austen’s treatment of this subject with works by Anthony Trollope and Barbara Pym.
The cost is $120 for members, and $130 for non-members.
Go to the Conference page for information about bookings and payment.