This course offers you the opportunity to spend a semester studying the works of Jane Austen. We’ll read all six of Austen’s completed novels, selections from her juvenilia and unfinished works, and key pieces of Austen scholarship. We’ll also read selections of works by some of her predecessors and contemporaries—such as Edmund Burke, Fanny Burney, Thomas Clarkson, William Gilpin, Ann Radcliffe, Adam Smith, and Mary Wollstonecraft—in order to understand the literary, intellectual, and historical conditions that enabled Austen to become one of the most important authors in the development of the novel. As we study Austen’s formal innovations and rhetorical techniques (such as free indirect speech and irony), we’ll pay particular attention to how she responds to and registers the social and political issues and events of her time (such as gender inequities and primogeniture, abolitionism and the slave trade, and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars). Since Austen continues to speak to new generations of readers, we’ll also consider what her novels might have to say about the issues and events that define our own contemporary moment. To that end, we’ll examine a few recent film adaptations of her novels as well.

Intended Audience:

Online-only students are welcome!

Class Format:

Exams: Asynchronous and Online

Lectures: Synchronous and Online

Class Discussions: Synchronous/Asynchronous and Online