Janeite Metaphysics: JASNA-NYM Birthday Meeting

The December meeting is our annual birthday party for Jane Austen, who turns 249 this winter. There will be cake! Also: a giveaway table, where attendees can leave, take, or exchange Austen-related books and other items from their collections.

This year's special guest speaker is Dr. Wendy Anne Lee of New York University, who will be joining us for an interactive talk on the complex, highly-personal relationship between Austen's novels and their readers.

Dr. Lee writes: "Can we posit a Janeite metaphysics? This talk investigates the nature of a reality that is rooted in our idiosyncratic practice of re-reading. What objects are, how we experience them, and what it adds up to — are questions taken up through the way of the Janeite, whose existence happens between the book and the body."

The meeting will take place at Marymount Manhattan College, 221 East 71st Street.