Jane Austen the Influencer: 250 Years & Still Going Strong – A Virtual Conference – March 21, 2026
On December 16, 1775, Jane Austen was born at Steventon Rectory in Hampshire, England. Two hundred fifty years later she’s known around the world and her influence knows no bounds.
Join the North Carolina region of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) for a virtual conference celebrating this extraordinary author.
On Saturday, March 21, 2026, we’ll gather on Zoom to explore Austen’s cultural presence, literary power, and enduring reach—from her own time to today. With four sessions, five speakers, and lots of fun, Austen fans won’t want to miss this event!
All the details are below, and registration is open. We hope to see you there!
The summary
What: Jane Austen the Influencer: 250 Years & Still Going Strong – A Virtual Conference
When: Saturday, March 21, 2026, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Where: In the comfort of your home (or library or coffeeshop) via Zoom.
Cost: Free/Donations welcome (Read about our philosophy below.)
RSVP: All are welcome! This event is open to the public. REGISTER NOW. Last day to register is March 18.
Accessibility: We have auto-captions available in Zoom. Some presentations have slides with text and images; they will be as clear and as high-contrast as possible. If you have accessibility needs we have not addressed here, please let us know.
Are you in?
Make sure you’ve registered, then consider an optional donation (truly—it’s optional!).
Last day to register is March 18.
The Schedule
- 9:00 a.m. – Zoom opens
- 9:15 a.m. – Welcome
- 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. – Session 1: Jane the Cultural Icon – Sonali Dev and Nikki Payne – A Conversation with Two Best-Selling Austen Adapters
- 10:30 to 10:45 a.m. – Break
- 10:45 to 11:45 a.m. – Session 2: Jane the Celebrity – Devoney Looser – Wild for Jane Austen’s Celebrity
- 11:45 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Lunch with entertainment
- 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. – Session 3: Jane the Literary Trailblazer – Jason Solinger – Catching Austen in the Act of Greatness: What Virginia Woolf Saw in Jane Austen
- 2:00 to 2:15 p.m. – Break
- 2:15 to 3:15 p.m. – Session 4: Jane the Social Commentator – Patricia Matthew – The Politics, Silent and Otherwise, of Mansfield Park
- 3:15 to 3:30 p.m. – Closing comments
- 3:30 to 4:00 p.m. – Zoom stays open for chatting; closes at 4 p.m.
- Post-conference – Local meetups for members of JASNA-NC
Member Meetups
If you are a member of JASNA North Carolina, there will be post-conference meetups for dinner, tea, or just hanging out in select locations across the state. Watch for more information in your email.
And if you are not yet a JASNA member, consider joining us! Visit our About page to learn more.
The Speakers & Sessions
Sonali Dev
USA Today bestselling author Sonali Dev writes hilarious and heartwarming stories about families without boundaries. Her novels have been named Best Books of the Year by Library Journal, NPR, The Washington Post, and Kirkus. She has won the American Library Association’s award for best in genre, the RT Reviewer Choice Award, multiple RT Seals of Excellence, has been a RITA® finalist, and has been listed for the Dublin Literary Award. Shelf Awareness calls her “Not only one of the best but one of the bravest romance novelists working today.”
She lives in Chicagoland with her husband, two visiting adult children, and the world’s most perfect dog.
Nikki Payne
By day, Nikki Payne is a curious tech anthropologist asking the right questions to deliver better digital services. By night, she dreams of ways to subvert canon literature. She’s a member of Smut U, a premium feminist writing collective, and is a cat lady with no cats. She is the author of Pride and Protest, Sex, Lies and Sensibility, and The Princess and the P.I. (Photo © Frank W Images)
Jane the Cultural Icon: A Conversation with Two Best-Selling Austen Adapters
Jane Austen is two and a half centuries old, yet she and her work are somehow everywhere—films, novels, TikTok, memes. She’s not just literature but culture. This conversation with two bestselling romance authors and Austen adapters will explore Austen’s global reach, her fandom, and what makes her work so adaptable across time, place, and culture.
Devoney Looser
Devoney Looser, Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, is a USA Today Bestselling author who has written or edited twelve books, most recently Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane (St. Martin’s Press). Her previous titles include Sister Novelists (2022), The Making of Jane Austen (2017), and The Daily Jane Austen (2019). Looser—a Guggenheim Fellow and a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar—has published essays in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Salon, Slate, The TLS, and The Washington Post, and her lectures on Austen are available through The Great Courses and Audible. In addition to being a quirky Janeite book nerd, Looser has previously played roller derby under the name Stone Cold Jane Austen. (Photo by Marilyn Roos)
Jane the Celebrity: Wild for Jane Austen’s Celebrity
How did Jane Austen’s iconic status and popular celebrity take root? It actually happened long before Colin Firth’s wet white shirt. In this image-rich talk, Devoney Looser will share stories of Austen’s early appearances in popular culture, drawn from her recent book, Wild for Austen, as well as some new research, not included in its pages.
Jason D. Solinger
Jason D. Solinger is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Mississippi, where he also serves as Director of English Graduate Studies and faculty advisor to the UM Hillel. He is the author of Becoming the Gentleman: British Literature and the Invention of Modern Masculinity as well as essays on Austen and 18th-century literature and culture. His current book project examines the ways conversations about Austen have shaped our ideas about literature. Jason is the Coordinator for the Mississippi Region of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) as well as one of two traveling lecturers for JASNA through 2026. (Photo by Hunt Mercier/Ole Miss Digital Imaging Services)
Jane the Literary Trailblazer: Catching Austen in the Act of Greatness: What Virginia Woolf Saw in Jane Austen
Austen superfan novelist Virginia Woolf famously wrote of Jane Austen, “of all great artists she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness.” This talk examines just what Woolf had in mind, focusing on her disagreements with the male literary establishment and her pioneering insight into Austen’s world-historical literary achievement.
Patricia A. Matthew
Patricia A. Matthew is Associate Professor of English at Montclair State University, where she teaches courses on the History of the Novel and Romantic abolitionist culture. She writes about Regency-era literature and culture for scholars and the public in journals and publications, including Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Women’s Writing, Lapham’s Quarterly, The Times Literary Supplement, and Slate. In addition to editing special journal issues of English Romantic Review and Studies in Romanticism, she co-edits the Oxford University Press book series Race in Nineteenth-Century Literatures and Cultures. She is the director of the Race and Regency Lab and is editor of Penguin Random House’s 250th anniversary editions of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey. Winner of fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the British Association for Romanticism Studies, and The Folger Institute, she is currently editing Austen’s Mansfield Park for Norton Library and writing a book about abolitionist literary and material culture and gender for Princeton University Press.
Jane the Social Commentator: The Politics, Silent and Otherwise, of Mansfield Park
Of all of Jane Austen’s novels, Mansfield Park requires the most care in how we understand what is at work underneath its heroine’s journey. We may quibble about preferring Elinor in Sense and Sensibility to Anne in Persuasion or wish for more compassion for Pride and Prejudice’s Mrs. Bennet and her poor nerves. But the cultural moment the novel reflects, our understanding of its silences, the critical treatment of its themes, and a decided lack of enthusiasm for its heroine require us to pause to see what the novel signified to Austen’s readership and to those of us who pick it up today. This illustrated talk will be drawn from the introduction to Patricia’s Norton Library edition of the novel.
More about jasna-north carolina
JASNA-NC Membership
The North Carolina region of JASNA was established in 1985 and has almost 200 members. We meet on a monthly basis via Zoom (typically at 2:00 p.m. on a Sunday) with periodic in-person meetings and events. This approach helps us reach people across the state. Meetings are free for members but do require registration. We are also happy to have guests who are interested in seeing if JASNA is right for them. Additionally, we send a monthly newsletter that includes information about our events, events that may be of interest from other groups, and a variety of bits and pieces. You can subscribe to our newsletter in the sidebar at right. And for more info about JASNA and JASNA-NC, visit our About page.
About our free event philosophy
JASNA-North Carolina is a volunteer-run, nonprofit membership group. As such, we are here to spread appreciation for Jane to anyone who is interested, not to make money. We want Austen and her works to be available to as many people as possible, and making the conference free is one way to do that.
If you would like to help defray the costs of this conference, we welcome you to make a contribution of any amount via PayPal, Venmo, or a credit/debit card.
But when we say the conference is free, we mean it. Come enjoy Jane. JOIN US BY REGISTERING NOW. Last day to register is March 18.
To make a donation, use the button or the QR code to reach our donation page.
Questions?
For questions or more information about JASNA-North Carolina, contact our Co-Regional Coordinators, Sara Tavela and Linda Darden, at jasna.ncarolina@gmail.com.
For questions about the virtual conference, contact the conference planning team lead, Karin Wiberg, at JasnaNCconference@gmail.com.