MA (Otago) PhD (London)
Email jocelyn.harris@otago.ac.nz
Tel +64 21 023 57089
Mail English and Linguistics
University of Otago
PO Box 56
Dunedin 9054
New Zealand
Website http://www.jocelynharris.co.nz/
Expertise
Eighteenth-century literature, Women's literature
Recent Publication
Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen, Bucknell University Press, 2017.
Harris's impressive new book, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen (2017), builds on the work of her pioneering 1989 study, deepening our sense of what Austen may have been up to in crafting her novels.... For readers willing to engage with the possible, and to consider links that do not, at first glance, seem probable, Harris's well-written, deeply researched, and timely book has a great deal to offer.... The tour de force sections of the book are certainly the sections on Sara Baartman (the 'Hottentot Venus'), the Duke of Clarence, issues of race, abolition, and slavery, and Mansfield Park and Sanditon.... For years to come, readers and critics will be weighing the massive number of new insights in this book, troubling through their implications for our future readings of Austen, politics, history, and popular culture.
— Devoney Looser, The Review of English Studies
The book aims to expand our ideas of the nature and bounds of the society Austen knew. The web of acquaintance, coincidence and proximity conjured by Harris is a marvel, and the surprising juxtapositions it produces will certainly inspire fresh thinking about the novels.
— E. J. Clery, Times Literary Supplement
Jocelyn Harris and other Jane Austen scholars and devotees share what they love about Austen and her works in this short video (11:56mins), filmed at the Jane Austen Society of North American 2015 AGM (produced by Gina Heath King, copyright 2015 Curly Tail Productions, LLC).