In Episode IV of Jane Austen and the Future of the Humanities, I talk with writers, scholars, and artists as we discuss how Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility models a vital humanities experience: the messiness of human relationships. We think through how Austen’s first published novel helps us to ask questions about, build connections between, and precisely observe the various messes of our lives, including our family relations, our sexual relations, and the processes of engaging with new relations.

Guests include Soniah Kamal, Dr. Claudia L. Johnson, Francine Mathews, Dr. Olivia Murphy, Maan Jalal, Dr. Mandakini Dubey, and Dr. Meenakshi Bharat.

In this episode, I discuss the first of what I am treating as a series of humanities experiences that Jane Austen’s novels and ideas helps us understand and appreciate: the integral role of ignorance in the knowledge-acquisition process.

I consider Northanger Abbey and explore how Austen’s first completed novel dramatizes various ways in which we learn, come to knowledge, and recognize the limitations of our knowledge. In all these processes, I think through how Austen details ignorance as an important component of our learning processes—i.e. how we come to know if different ways and through different experiences, including painful and shameful experiences. I examine the integral link between knowledge and ignorance, the precarity and danger of knowledge, and some of the ways in which the humanities model this larger and enduring experience that Austen documents.

In this second episode of Jane Austen and the Future of the Humanities, I consider the distinctive cultural status of Jane Austen and reflect on how this distinctive status has allowed Austen to function, operate, and be used in diverse ways and in diverse public communities around the world. I speak with various scholars, writers, and artists, including the first person who taught Austen to me: Dr. Claudia L. Johnson, the Murray Professor of English at Princeton University. I am extremely grateful to all my collaborators who have taught me so very much, including Dr. Patricia A. Matthew (Montclair State University and the Race and Regency Lab), Dr. Jennifer Kloester, author of Jane Austen's Ghost, Laaleen Sukhera, editor of and contributor to Austenistan, Dr. Usha Mudiganti (Ambedkar University), Dr. Mandakini Dubey (Ashoka University), Mahesh Rao, author of Polite Society, Nikki Payne, author of Pride and Protest and Sex, Lies, and Sensibility, Uzma Jalaluddin, author of Ayesha at Last and Much ado About Nada, Dr. Meenakshi Bharat (Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi), and Dr. Javaria Farooqui (COMSTATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus). You can see portions of the interviews I conducted with these individuals and others who have collaborated with me here.

Throughout our discussions, we identify three features of Austen’s distinct cultural status that will be specifically important for my attempt to leverage her stories and ideas to communicate the value of the humanities to diverse public audiences: (1) her versatility, (2) her accessibility, and (3) her ostensible safety. As we consider these features of Austen’s cultural status and deployment, we pay careful attention to how these qualities have been used and how we might re-use them to communicate impactful humanities experiences.