ROAD TRIP!

Thanks to all who attended our first event --
join us June 7-8, 2019 for our
2019 event in Holly Springs, MS!

A Joint JASNA Meeting: 

Middle Tennessee Region 
and Mississippi Region

Saturday, June 10, 2017, in Oxford, MS

2017 schedule follows

FRIDAY, JUNE 9

1:30 pm 

Tour of William Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak
(916 Old Taylor Rd, Oxford 38655, just south of the square / 662-234-3284 • RowanOak.com)

$5 House admission; grounds are free

4:30 pm

Tour of the exhibit Lasting Impressions: Restoring Kate Freeman Clark, conducted by Mississippi Regional Coordinator Carolyn J. Brown, author of The Artist’s Sketch: A Biography of Kate Freeman Clark (2017)

The University of Mississippi Museum

(University Avenue and 5th Street, Oxford, MS 38655 • 662-915-7073 • Campus map here)

Free admission. Museum closes at 6:00 pm

6:30 pm

Dutch-treat group dinner in Oxford (location TBD)

SATURDAY, JUNE 10

Burns-Belfry Museum & Multicultural Center • burns-belfry.com

(710 East Jackson Avenue, Oxford 38655 / 662-281-9963 • Directions here)

Burns-Belfry Center

10:30 am

Introductions and light refreshments

Presentation by Susan Allen Ford, professor of English, Delta State University (Cleveland MS)

“Just in a Happy State for a Flounce’: Economies of Alteration in Jane Austen’s Letters and Novels"

Susan examines Austen’s interest in clothing, particularly in terms of buying, making, and altering it, and also considers how clothing defines people, taking on almost human characteristics.

11:30 am: Lunch on your own in the Square downtown (walking distance from Burns-Belfry)

1:30 to 2:30 pm

Presentation by Elvira Casal, professor of English, Middle Tennessee State University (Murfreesboro)

“A Nest of Her Own: Jane Austen’s Personal Space”

Elvira deals not only with Austen’s biography and the tradition of Jane Austen as a miniaturist, but also touches on how the “myth of Aunt Jane” began. In addition to letters and biography, she will consider furniture and rooms in Austen’s time.

Suggestions for accommodations in Oxford: The Graduate, The Inn at Ole Miss, Courtyard Marriott

Suggestions for nearby dining venues: City Grocery, Snack Bar, St. Leo's, Boure, Big Bad Breakfast, Bottletree Bakery

For more ideas, check out

Oxford's tourism site: http://visitoxfordms.com/

LA Times travel article, 2011

Dr. Carolyn J. Brown is a writer, editor, and independent scholar. She attended Duke University and then the University of North Carolina-Greensboro for her Master’s and Ph.D. A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty was her first book. It was selected by the Mississippi Library Commission to represent the state of Mississippi at the National Book Festival in Washington DC in 2012, and won the Mississippi Library Association’s Award for Nonfiction in 2013. She published her second biography, Song of My Life: A Biography of Margaret Walker, in November 2014, which won a special award from the Mississippi Library Association for Juvenile Literature. Brown has published articles in many journals, including Notes on Mississippi Writers, College Language Journal, the Eudora Welty Review, Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal, and The Journal of Mississippi History. Her third book, published in February 2017, is entitled The Artist’s Sketch: A Biography of Painter Kate Freeman Clark.

Susan Allen Ford is Professor of English and Writing Center Coordinator at Delta State University as well as Editor of Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line. She has been a Visiting Fellow at Chawton House Library and  a JASNA Travelling Lecturer. Susan spoke at the 2016 AGM as JASNA’s North American Scholar. She has published essays on Austen and her contemporaries, Shakespeare, the gothic, and detective fiction, and has written an introduction to an edition of Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women published by Chawton House Press. Susan is working (very slowly) on a book about what the characters in Austen’s novels are reading. 

Dr. Elvira Casal teaches courses in 18th and 19th century British literature, ESL, the short story, the novel, and Jane Austen at Middle Tennessee State University. She has published on George Meredith as well as Jane Austen. An alumna of Tulane (BA), the University of Michigan (MA), and Vanderbilt (Ph.D.), she lives in Nashville with her husband and two children.