Recent Keynote & Plenary Lectures
North American Scholar Plenary address: “Making Sense of Sensibility,” Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America (Louisville, KY; October 2015; by invitation).
“An Introduction to the Culture of Sensibility,” Fall Meeting, North Carolina division of the Jane Austen Society of North America (Raleigh Public Library, NC; October 2015; by invitation).
Annual Bastian Lecture: “Caring for ‘Our brother on the rack’: Jane Austen and the Limits of Sympathy” (Centre College; Danville, KY; April 2015; by Invitation).
Plenary address: “Making Sense of Sensibility” at The Jane Austen Summer Program, (June 12, 2014; Chapel Hill, NC).
Keynote address: "Papas and Hahas in Mansfield Park" at Jane Austen in June event (Tryon Palace, New Bern, NC; June 6, 2014; by invitation).
Keynote address: "Women, Wildness, and Gardens: Jane Austen's Picturesque" at Jane Austen in June event (Tryon Palace, New Bern, NC; June 8, 2013; by invitation).
Plenary Panelist in honor of visiting Nobel laureate Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio: “Literary Linearity, East and West” (April 17, 2013; Chapel Hill, NC; by invitation).
Keynote address: “The Entertainment Value of Suffering: Jane Austen and the ‘Luxuries of Distress’,” Jane Austen Day, North Carolina Chapter of the Jane Austen Society of North America (Raleigh, NC; October, 2012; by invitation).
“Cowboys, Samurai, and the Crisis of Leadership,” Johnston Lecture, Program in Politics and Government, Washington and Lee University (February 2011, by invitation).
Invited Public Lecture: “Issues in Translating Austen from Text to Film,” Jane Austen Society of North Carolina (Raleigh, NC: October 2010).
Plenary Roundtable: “Austen’s Legacy,” Annual Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America (Chicago, IL: November 2008).
Invited Public Lecture: “Jane Austen in India: Bollywood Interpretations of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility,” Jane Austen Society of North Carolina (Raleigh, NC: June 2006).
Invited Public Lecture: “‘Hastening Together to Perfect Felicity’: the Problem of Jane Austen’s Endings,” Quarterly meeting of the North Carolina chapter of the Jane Austen Society of North America (Raleigh, N.C.; November 2003; by invitation).
Plenary address: “The Architecture of Distress: Jane Austen, Follies, and the Cult of Sensibility,” 2003 Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation Lecture in the Liberal Arts, Simon-Frasier University (Vancouver, B.C., Canada; April 2003; by invitation; endowed lecture).
Plenary address: “Entertaining Grief: Jane Austen and the ‘Luxury of Distress’,” Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America (Seattle, WA; October 2001; by invitation; endowed lecture).
Keynote address: “‘Who can be in doubt of what followed’: Jane Austen’s Artful (and Precipitous) Endings,” Jane Austen Day, Vancouver Chapter of the Jane Austen Society of North America (Vancouver, BC; May 2001; by invitation).
Keynote address: “‘Hastening Together to Perfect Felicity’: Comedy, Closure, and the Price of Happiness in Jane Austen’s Endings,” Annual Meeting, Victoria Chapter of the Jane Austen Society of North America (Victoria, BC; September 2000; by invitation; endowed lecture)
Other Invited Lectures (including engaged scholarship)
“The Dangerous Attractions of ‘Virtue in ‘Distress’ in the English and German Novel,” Public Humanities Lecture (UNC Friday Center; November 2017; by invitation).
Program for Humanities, “Dangers of Sensibility” (Durham; November 2017).
Speaker at PlayMakers Performance of Sense and Sensibility (October 2017).
Invited Panelist for Chapel Hill Library: “Why is Jane Austen So Popular?” (May 2017).
Program for Humanities, “Madame Butterfly in Literature,” (Durham; October 2015).
Program for Humanities, "Great Books series" inaugural speaker on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (Chapel Hill, Flyleaf Bookstore, 2015).
Main speaker at annual ‘Jane Austen in June’ event at Tryon Palace. The event brings Regency Era to Life with Tea tours, dancing, craft workshop, and a lecture. (June 2013, June 2014).
Guest lecturer for Duke University “Freedom & Authority” First-Year honors program (September 2013; Durham, NC; by invitation): “Liberty and the Law in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”
“Modern Japanese Poetry and the ‘Elegance and Extravagance’ Exhibit,” Art and Literature in the Galleries Series, Ackland Museum (October 2012; by invitation).
“Bollywood and Beyond: Adapting Austen Visually and Globally,” for the Program in the Humanities and Human Values’ Adventures in Ideas Seminar entitled “Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen Then and Now” (April 2009).
“Mishima: Body to Text,” Comparative Literature International Film Series (September 2009).
“Global Jane Austen: Film, Fiction, and Fantasy,” for the Program in the Humanities and Human Values’ Adventures in Ideas Seminar entitled “From Book to Screen: Literature and Film” (July 2008).
“Bashô and the Visual Arts,” Art and Literature in the Galleries Series, Ackland Museum (June 2008).
Lecture: “Entertaining Grief,” Furst Forum in Comparative Literature (UNC-CH; February 2008).
Panel Presentation: “Mozart and the Cult of Sensibility” for “Mesmerism, Love, & Sensibility in the Eighteenth Century,” James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence, a panel to accompany the performance of Cosi Fan Tutte at Memorial Hall (September 2006).
Plenary Panel Response Paper: “‘Beautiful Absurdity’: Equality, Intellect, and Quality in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground,” Fourth Annual Conference of the Gerst Program in Political, Economic, and Humanistic Studies at Duke University (Durham, NC; April 2003; by invitation).
Plenary Panel Paper: “Noble Savages and Distant Edens: Encounters with the West in Natsume Sôseki’s Sanshirô,” Southern Japan Seminar sponsored by South Florida Consortium for Asian Arts and Culture (Miami, FL; November 2002; by invitation).
“Jane Austen and the Art of the Unspoken,” Regional Gala of Jane Austen Society (Chicago, IL; March 1993; by invitation).
“The Art of Flattery: Narrative Strategies in Emma,” Jane Austen Society Conference (Chicago; September 1991; by invitation).
Guest lecturer at Chicago high schools (program sponsored by Jane Austen Society), 1990-92.