IN PERSON

Reading with Jane Austen, by Elaine Bander

Jane Austen has more readers today than at any time in history. Many of Austen’s legions of fans, however, came to her novels after first seeing films or other adaptations made for twenty-first century audiences. Austen herself conversely spent her literary career undermining romantic clichés and rethinking novel conventions. Confident that she and her contemporaries shared a common reading culture, Austen deliberately constructed her novels to set readerly expectations, only to disrupt or confound those expectations by challenging her readers’ assumptions and values. Read more.
Tuesday
March 10, 2026

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IN PERSON

Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries (Volume 31), edited by Kevin L. Cope

The contributors to volume 31 join with Enlightenment thinkers in charting the outposts of long eighteenth-century culture while discovering new features in seemingly familiar terrain. Essays explore outlandish but often observed activities such as medical quackery, Rosicrucian hermeticism, and the oral antics associated with the twisted “Malaprop” tradition. Read more

May 12, 2026

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IN PERSON

Chateaubriand Across Empires by Fabienne Moore

What happens when the liberty of ancient nobility collides with the revolutionary ideals of equality? This groundbreaking study explores how the American, French, Haitian, and Greek Revolutions redefined freedom—and how French Romantic figure Chateaubriand grappled with that transformation. Tracing his travels across England, North America, and the Mediterranean, this book uncovers Chateaubriand’s seductive visions of “paradises lost,” which were taken up, challenged, and reimagined by Anglophone and Hispanic writers. Read more

June 9, 2026

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