In advance of the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth in 2025, join Dr. Evelyne Ender, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature, for a presentation of the author's fiction in terms of its brilliant and touching humanity. The lecture will illuminate Austen’s portrait of human relations, a world shaped by live dialogue, but also staged and modulated by the circulation of letters.
The preparatory materials for this presentation will direct you to scenes from her novels that highlight the significance of letters and literacy in Austen's world. These moments enable us to reflect on the historical and cultural significance of that old fashioned gesture that consists in putting pen to paper.
Dr. Ender's many articles and book chapters, published in English and in French, are indeed driven by one conviction, namely that an ever-renewed attentiveness to what words and language(s) can tell us is key to our humanity. Holding a pen or pencil to generate script may seem quaint, but in a world enthralled by electronic communications and devices, it may be salutary at times not only to slow down but to be reminded of the weight that words carry -- for good and for evil.
Should one wish to delve deeper, a curated list of short readings and film scenes from Prof. Ender will be provided to registrants prior to the event. This is purely optional, of course, but certain to delight those in search of additional insights!
Dr. Evelyne Ender is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature at Johns Hopkins University. She earned her doctorate ès lettres at the University of Geneva with the publication of Sexing the Mind: Nineteenth-Century Fictions of Hysteria in 1995. Her second book, ArchiTexts of Memory: Literature, Science, and Autobiography (2005) won the Aldo Scaglione Prize for best book in Comparative studies.
Invited to teach a course in May 2020 for a broad audience of readers, she presented five lectures under the rubric of "Austen for our Times." These were informed also by her extensive research on the meaning and the science of reading and her book-in-progress on handwriting and creativity titled HandWriting: an Inner History.
Event DateMonday, December 16, 2024Start Time: 4:00pm ESTEnd Time: 5:00pm EST
Hopkins at HomeLivestream
ContactOffice of Alumni RelationsJoe LetourneauHopkins at Home(800) JHU-JHU1hopkinsathome@jhu.edu
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