JASP 2022 Speakers
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Stephen Alltop
Stephen Alltop serves as music director of the Apollo Chorus of Chicago, the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, and the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra. A specialist in oratorio and historical performance practice, he has been a member of the conducting and keyboard faculties at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University since 1994.
Maria Biajoli
Maria Biajoli is a professor of English literature at the Federal University of Alfenas, Brazil. She wrote a dissertation on the Jane Austen fan fiction phenomenon and is expanding her research to the global Austen and diversity topics. She is currently working on a Portuguese translation of Pride and Prejudice and a textbook about Austen for Brazilian students.
Barbara M. Benedict
Barbara M. Benedict holds the Charles A. Dana Chair of English at Trinity College, CT, where she has taught since 1984. Her books include Making the Modern Reader: Cultural Mediation in Early Modern Literary Anthologies and Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry. She has also published on the literature, popular culture, material culture, and book history of the long 18th century, and co-edited (with Deidre LeFaye) Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (2006) for Cambridge University Press.
Pamela Bond
Pamela A. Bond received a B.A. in Theatre, a B.S. in Textiles & Apparel and a M.A. in Textiles & Apparel from North Carolina Central University (NCCU). She serves as artistic production assistant for NCCU and assistant professor of dramatic art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her theatrical credits include costume designs for “House of George” by Howard Craft, “Dreamgirls” by Tom Eyen, “WHITE” by James Ijames and “Black Nativity” for Justice Theatre Project.
Georgie Castilla
Georgie Castilla is a Broadway Records published musical theater Lyricist, and a Production Designer for film and theater in NYC, as well as a freelance Comic Artist and Illustrator, and the founder of Duniath Comics.
Troy Coleman
Troy Coleman is both a theater scholar and practitioner with 20 years of professional stage and screen experience. He is pursuing an MA at the University of Colorado Boulder, and his research focuses on playing villains safely. He holds a BFA from Colorado State University and is currently performing in the 2022 Colorado Shakespeare Festival.
Lori Mulligan Davis
Lori Mulligan Davis is a book coach, freelance editor, and fiction writer. She helped organize a 16-event town-wide celebration of Pride and Prejudice, and, as publicity director, helped rework JASNA-Greater Chicago Region's website. She coordinated the workshops and ball for JASNA's 2021 AGM and is dramaturg for Harper College's Sense and Sensibility. A lifelong Shakespeare fan, she has studied Shakespeare at the undergrad and graduate levels, and attended 145+ Shakespeare performances.
Mary Floyd-Wilson
Mary Floyd-Wilson is the Mann Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her area of study is early modern literature, especially Shakespeare. She is the author of English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama and Occult Knowledge, Science, and Gender on the Shakespearean Stage. She is currently writing The Tempter or the Tempted: Demonic Causality on the Shakespearean Stage. She is also a lifelong fan of Jane Austen.
Susan Allen Ford
Susan Allen Ford has been editor of Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line since 2006. She is professor of English emerita at Delta State University and has published essays on Jane Austen and her contemporaries, the gothic, detective fiction, and Shakespeare. She is slowly working on a book on what Austen’s characters are reading, Jane Austen’s ‘Great Readers’: When Characters Read Books.
Hope Greenberg
Hope Greenberg (MA history) studies and re-creates historical clothing, focusing on the evolution of fashion during Jane Austen’s lifetime. She has presented on the topic for JASP, the Vermont region of the Jane Austen Society of North America, history and literature courses, libraries, and other groups. Recently retired from the University of Vermont, she looks forward to creating more online resources to aid and encourage others who wish to explore Austen-era clothing.
Sarah Rose Kearns
Sarah Rose Kearns is a writer, performer, and lifelong Jane Austen enthusiast. She holds a bachelor's degree in creative writing from Columbia University. Her stage adaptation of “Persuasion” debuted off-Broadway last year. In summer 2022, Rose will travel to Chawton as the JASNA International Visitor; there, she will conduct research for another biographical play about the Austen sisters. To learn more about Kearns, visit janeaustenspersuasion.com and find her on Twitter: @Persuasion_JA.
Dan Macey
Dan Macey is president of the Historic Foodways Society of the Delaware Valley in Philadelphia and has presented a variety of food history programs, including the re-creation of a Regency era banquet to benefit Chawton House Library. He was nominated for a national food writing award for a piece about mutton in Emma and works as a commercial food stylist. He is a life member of JASNA and is working with food historian Becky Diamond on The Gilded Age Cookbook, which is scheduled to be released in 2023.
Deborah C. Payne
Deborah C. Payne is a professor of literature at American University. She was humanities research consultant at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, 2000 – 2009. Publications include: The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre (CUP, 2000); Four Restoration Libertine Plays (OUP, 2005); Revisiting Shakespeare’s Lost Play (Palgrave, 2016); and The Commodiluxe Stage: A Cultural and Economic History of Restoration Theatre (under review at CUP). Currently, she is co-authoring with Drew Lichtenberg, The Shakespeare Theatre Company, 1986 – 2021, for the Bloomsbury series, “Shakespeare in the Theatre.”
Lesley Peterson
Lesley Peterson has taught high school English and creative writing and was a professor of English at the University of North Alabama before retiring to Winnipeg, Canada. She is presently the editor of the Journal of Juvenilia Studies and also teaches Shakespeare to children (or did, before the pandemic). Besides Jane Austen, she has published on Elizabeth Tanfield Cary, Margaret Cavendish, and Virginia Cary Hudson, among others.
Alex Siskin
Alex Siskin (The Equalizer, Troop Zero, Old Henry) was a long-time producer at Sony Pictures and Out of the Blue Entertainment, where he worked on the Adam Sandler films Big Daddy and Mr. Deeds. He began his film business career at Amblin Entertainment, after he was a PhD candidate in English Literature at UC Berkeley.
Josefien Stoppelenburg
Josefien Stoppelenburg is a soprano best known for her dazzling vocal agility and her passionate and insightful interpretations. She has performed all over the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America as a Baroque music and oratorio specialist, and as a concert singer. Stoppelenburg has performed most major oratorio works by Handel, Haydn, Bach and Mozart. This Fall Navona Records released her CD, “Modern Muses, Contemporary Treasures for Soprano and Cello.” The album won a Bronze Medal in the 2022 Global Music Awards.