About:

About this class:

This is a 6-week virtual class using the Zoom platform.

Wednesdays Sept.13, 20, 27. Oct. 4, 11, 18 - 7-9:00pm CT

While many of us are familiar with the novels of Jane Austen, few of us have heard of the women writers who published alongside her, many of whom were far more famous and successful. This six-week course will focus on 10 fascinating women writers who published alongside Austen (1800-1830). Dr. Sarah Faulkner will share the incredible stories from the lives of bestselling novelists and poets including Maria Edgeworth, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Jane Porter, Mary Shelley, Felicia Hemans, Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan), Lady Caroline Lamb, Susan Ferrier, Mary Brunton, Hannah More, and more!

This class will be a mix of literary history and biography. Learn how these women were essential to shaping the National novel and the Courtship novel, new forms of Romantic poetry, and philosophy on human rights. And these women did so much more than write! They had torrid affairs with leading celebrities of the time, influenced politics, invented new genres, were possible poisoned, and more! We’ll read short selections from each writer’s work for each class, and Dr. Faulkner will have an ample further reading list ready for you to peruse.

Instructor bio:

Dr. Sarah Faulkner is an award-winning scholar, teacher, and public humanist. Her research focuses on British women writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; she has taught university courses on Jane Austen and Her World, Witches and Monsters in Fiction, The Romantic Age, Rise of the English Novel, and more. She taught “10 British Women Writers Before Austen” for Public University in Spring 2023 and currently works as the Program Manager for Humanities Washington.

Humanities North Dakota classes and events are funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

HND VALUE STATEMENT

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this {article, book, exhibition, film, program, database, report, Web resource}, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or Humanities North Dakota. However, in an increasingly polarized world, we at Humanities North Dakota believe that being open-minded is necessary to thinking critically and rationally. Therefore our programs and classes reflect our own open-mindedness in the inquiry, seeking, and acquiring of scholars to speak at our events and teach classes for our Public University. To that end, we encourage our participants to join us in stepping outside our comfort zones and considering other perspectives and ideas by being open-minded while attending HND events featuring scholars who hold a variety of opinions, some being opposite of our own held beliefs.