The Global Jane Austen: Celebrating and Commemorating 250 years of Jane Austen Event

Black silhouette of Jane Austin’s head, with an old circular device behind

Time:
Date:: 2025-07-10 00:00:00 2025-07-12 00:00:00
Venue:: University of Southampton

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Event details

Call for papers

The conference is co-organised by the Universities of Southampton and Stirling.

We are grateful for the support of:

The British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS)

The Society of the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP)

Austen scholars and enthusiasts are invited to the University of Southampton, Hampshire, for a conference commemorating Austen’s birth in the year 1775.

In 1976, Juliet McMaster introduced an edited collection of essays resulting from a bicentenary birthday celebration for Austen in the following terms:

To celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth in October, in Western Canada, is no doubt to be guilty of a comic incongruity. But as though to compensate for the misdemeanor, the papers delivered at the conference have a common and exact focus on period and locale.

50 years after the bicentenary conference at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, the scholarly landscape of Austen studies has changed. Where many monographs and edited collections of essays still maintain an ‘exact focus on period and locale’, research informed by book history, the material, archival and linguistic turns in literary criticism, postcolonial studies and adaptation theory (among others) has flourished in the intervening decades. The ever-expanding corpus of adaptations, sequels and prequels has proven fruitful territory for a consideration of Austen’s reception, in its broadest sense. Austen’s transformations into other languages and into other cultures make her a Global author.

We invite the international community to the port city that was Jane Austen’s home from 1806-1809 for a consideration of the Global Jane Austen. We encourage the broadest possible interpretation of the conference theme , and welcome papers on all aspects of Austen’s writing and life, her posthumous reception, her influences, and her writing alongside that of her contemporaries. We particularly welcome papers on adaptations, translations and creative responses to Austen’s work (written and/or performed in all languages), material and textual transmission of her works, and her reception and reputation in countries outside the Anglophone world. Discussion of the Global within her works (and those of her contemporaries) is equally acceptable.

We have a small amount of funding available to support postgraduate, Early Career Scholars, scholars with no institutional support, and scholars from outside the Anglophone world. Please note on your abstract if you fall into one of these categories, and would like to be considered for such funding.

Submission

Please submit abstracts for individual papers of 250 words, or proposals for 3-person panels of 1000 words, to the conference organisers, Gillian Dow and Katie Halsey. Please submit as Word or PDF documents by email to both [email protected] and [email protected] by 1 October 2024 .

Confirmed Speakers Include:

Susan Allen Ford; Serena Baiesi, Janine Barchas; Jennie Batchelor; Annika Bautz; Isabelle Bour; Joe Bray; Linda Bree; Inger Brodey; Valérie Cossy; Richard Cronin; Carlotta Farese; Susannah Fullerton; Sayre Greenfield; Isobel Grundy; Christine Kenyon Jones; Freya Johnston; Michael Kramp; Devoney Looser; Deidre Lynch; Anthony Mandal; Juliet McMaster; Marie Nedregotten Sørbø; Peter Sabor; Diego Saglia; Rebecca Smith; Jane Stabler; Kathryn Sutherland; Bharat Tandon; Janet Todd; Anne Toner; Linda Troost; Juliette Wells

Accommodation

Links provided by colleagues at GO! Southampton .

Premier Inn

There are 3 Premier Inns in the city and one at Southampon Airport. They do not use online booking agencies so book directly on their site .

Accor Hotels

There are three brands from the Accor group located in Southampton at the bottom of the town area. These are Ibis, Ibis Budget and Novotel. All have plenty of parking, and are very close to Southampton Central Railway station

To book go to the Accor site and search for Southampton

Leonardo Group Hotels

There are two hotels in the city from the group.

Leonardo Jurys Inn is located in Charlotte Place and the nearest to the conference venue on Highfield Campus. The Leonardo Royal Grand Hotel is located at the bottom of the city near to the Westquay Shopping Centre.

To book go to the Leonardo site and search for Southampton.

Holiday Inn Southampton

This hotel is located on the waterfront and popular with cruise passengers. To book go to Holiday Inn Southampton .

Moxy Hotel Southampton (a Mariott hotel)

Located at the bottom of the city on West Quay Road and next door to Carnival HQ. To book go to Moxy Hotel Southampton .

Independent Hotels

The Star Hotel in the Old Town, High Street

The White Star Hotel in Oxford Street

Elizabeth House Hotel on The Avenue

Homtel option

Room 2 next to Queensway Park and near to Oxford Street

Self-catering options

Charles Hope Apartments in the city

Air BnB - A search for Southampton search brings up lots of options, including yachts in Ocean village

Other booking sites that can refine searches depending on requirements include:
Booking.com
Expedia.co.uk
Hotels.com

Transport

Links provided by colleagues at GO! Southampton .

By air

By taxi

You can find taxi ranks across the city, including at the railway station and the airport. You can also book a car via Uber.

Southampton taxi rank locations

Find out about Uber taxis in Southampton.

Useful Downloads

The Global Jane Austen

Image: A 1765 de l'Isle globe, showing top view. Collection of the Minnesota Historical Society, with silhouette of 'L'Aimable Jane' (NPG 3181) superimposed. Both images reproduced under the Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 4.0.