JASP 2026: Interview with Juliette Wells, Plenary Speaker
- Delicia Johnson
- 29 minutes ago
- 3 min read
In anticipation of JASP 2026 we’re interviewing our esteemed staff and speakers. This year’s four-day symposium, JASP 2026: Pride, Prejudice, and the Pursuit of Happiness will take place June 11-14, 2026, in historic Greensburg, PA, the new JASP location for the foreseeable future. We will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by exploring topics that connect Austen's Pride and Prejudice to the revolutionary context in which it was written. Activities include workshops, small-group discussions, and lectures from renowned Austen scholars. And of course, our Regency Ball is an event not to be missed!
Our next interviewee is Juliette Wells, one of our plenary speakers. She is Professor of Literary Studies at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, and was guest curator of the 2025 exhibition A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 for the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. She is the author of three histories of Austen’s readers and fans, all published by Bloomsbury Academic: A New Jane Austen: How Americans Brought Us the World’s Greatest Novelist (2023), Reading Austen in America (2017), and Everybody’s Jane: Austen in the Popular Imagination (2011). For Penguin Classics, she created reader-friendly annotated editions of Mansfield Park (2025), Emma (2015), and Persuasion (2017). This will be her first time attending JASP!
What will your lecture be about?
"Lively Minds: Pride and Prejudice and Its Legacy" will place this novel in the context of Austen's career as an author as well as in her reception, especially in America.
What inspired this topic?
My lecture draws on the exhibition about Austen that I curated for the Morgan Library & Museum last summer, which was titled 'A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250'.
Which JASP 2026 activities are you most looking forward to?
I love Regency dancing, so I'm definitely looking forward to the ball! I'm also looking forward to sharing with attendees some early editions of Austen from my own teaching collection.
What do you enjoy most about Pride and Prejudice?
Film stills from Pride and Prejudice (2005); dir. Joe Wright
I appreciate how Austen engrosses us in the story and characters so that even when we've read the novel many times, it's still impossible to put down.
Do you have any favorite scenes from Pride and Prejudice?
So many! The opening chapter, Elizabeth's rejection of Mr. Collins's proposal, Elizabeth's rejection of Darcy's first proposal, all the conversations between Elizabeth and Jane, all the passages where Elizabeth realizes that she's been mistaken, the final conversations between Elizabeth and Darcy where they fill each other in on what they were thinking and feeling . . .
Film stills from Pride and Prejudice (1995); dir. Simon Langton
What do you love about Jane Austen and her works?
I greatly admire Austen's ambition and persistence as an author, from her teenage years till her publications in her 30s, and for creating novels that still speak to readers across the centuries and around the world.
Why should people attend JASP 2026?
To gain a greater appreciation of Austen's most beloved novel, and to enjoy the company of other like-minded readers!
There is limited space for JASP 2026. Only two spots remain! Don't miss the opportunity to discuss Austen with fellow Janeites from all walks of life.
Pride, Prejudice, and the Pursuit of Happiness will mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence through a four-day public humanities program exploring the Enlightenment roots of American democracy and the transatlantic exchange of political ideas. To honor this milestone, JASP is relocating from UNC Chapel Hill to Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania, a state closely associated with the American founding.