Jane Austen under spotlight at free UQ seminar

The public and media revival of interest in Jane Austin's novels will be discussed at a free public seminar at The University of Queensland on Friday April 27.

Professor Nicholas Rogers will discuss Reel History and Jane Austen Fever at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies seminar from 2pm to 5pm in Forgan Smith Building, room E308, St Lucia.

"In 1995-96 there were six TV and video productions of Jane Austen's novels, one of which won two Oscars as well as best film in Britain and Berlin," Professor Rogers said.

"In Britain Jane Austin sites and film locations were jammed with visitors.

"In North America Jane Austen websites proliferated. Why have these drawing-room dramas had such fin-de-siecle appeal?"

Professor York will offer some speculations in terms of the marketing of heritage and "good taste", the modernization of Austen narratives, and website chat-ins.

Nicholas Rogers is Professor of History at York University, Toronto.

He is the author of Whigs and Cities: Popular Politics in the Age of Walpole and Pitt, (Oxford, 1989) and, more recently, of Crowds, Culture and Politics in Georgian Britain (Oxford, 1998) and co-author (with Douglas Hay) of Eighteenth-Century English Society: Shuttles And Swords (Oxford, 1997). He has also published a small raft of articles treating the issues of popular expression in 18th- and early 19th-century England. His next book is a cultural history of Hallowe'en to be published by Oxford University Press, New York, in 2002.

Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies director Professor Graeme Turner will chair the seminar, which will be followed by light refreshments.

For further information, contact Ms Andrea Mitchell, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, telephone 3365 7182, email: a.mitchell@mailbox.uq.edu.au, website:
http://arts.uq.edu.au/cccs/events/seminars.html#Rogers