JASP 2025: Interview with Kathryn Edelstein

In anticipation of JASP 2025 we’ll be interviewing our esteemed staff and speakers. This year’s four-day symposium, JASP 2025: Sensibility and Domesticity, will take place June 19-22, 2025, in historic New Bern, North Carolina. We will be focusing on Austen’s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, and considering the birth of her career as a published author and taking a transatlantic look at the world into which she was born. Program topics include medicine, birth, and domestic arts in Regency England and colonial North Carolina. We’ll be covering the aforementioned topics and celebrating Austen’s 250th birthday through a wide range of activities including workshops, small-group discussions, and workshops. And of course, our Regency Ball is an event not to be missed! We can’t wait to celebrate Austen’s 250th birthday with you! 

Our next interviewee is Kathryn Edelstein, a teacher of AP English Literature and World Literature at East Chapel Hill High School. She was a teacher scholar at the AP Oxford Academy at Oxford University in 2018 and the Duke University Institute for Islamic Studies in 2019. She is the chair of the teacher scholarship committee.

How long have you been involved in JASP?

Since 2017. I have been a presenter most years and have chaired the Teacher Scholarship Committee as well.

Which JASP activity are you most looking forward to and why?

I love the context corners and discussion groups! There are always wonderful tidbits there which I can bring back to my classroom during the school year.

What is your JASP 2025 teacher talk about?

It's titled 'A Matter of Chance: The Illusion of Volition in Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice'. In Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte unapologetically states that "happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance," while the narrator in Sense and Sensibility proclaims that "one's happiness must in some measure be always at the mercy of chance." In both of these novels, self-determination is limited by circumstance for all of the female characters, but that doesn't stop them from having widely divergent views on how much control they actually have over their fates. This talk will look at the various forces impacting the volition of the primary female characters in each novel, and how their reactions to their situations are impacted by privilege. Since this is a talk aimed primarily at teachers, I will be looking closely at the novels' characters and the elements and influences which shape them. Pride and Prejudice is the Austen novel most often taught in the high school classroom, so I am looking at using Sense and Sensibility as a companion piece to dig deeper into character analysis. I have always found it compelling that Elinor and Marianne's situation is exactly what Mrs. Bennet lives in fear of, so that connection is what inspired this exploration.

Film stills from Pride and Prejudice (2005) and Sense and Sensibility (1995)

Why do you think Austen's Sense and Sensibility is important not only to her body of work but the entire literary canon? Why do you believe people should read it?

I have always thought of Sense and Sensibility as a sort of touchstone for all of Austen's canon. The ideas and characters in this novel appear in different forms throughout her other works, so you can always come back to the source and think about how her writing and thinking evolved over time.

What do you love about Jane Austen?

In Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom wrote that "...the representation of character and personality remains always the supreme literary value," and Jane Austen is the master of character. If Shakespeare "invented" the human, then Jane Austen made her more fun and relatable. It doesn't matter her time period, social class, or gender, Austen is writing for all humans and holding up the proverbial mirror up to our absurdities and beauty.

Why should people attend JASP 2025? 

I think what makes JASP so wonderful is that it allows for all guests, academics and uberfans alike, to dive in to Austen and engage in meaningful exploration of her work and its wide-reaching influence. It is the most welcoming and enthusiastic environment, and it has always felt to me like a mini-vacation to another time and place altogether!

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There are only a few places left for JASP 2025! Celebrate Austen's 250th birthday with us in New Bern, NC!

Register for JASP 2025

JASP 2025 is partially supported by a grant from NC Humanities.