Bulletin

Issue: January/February 2008

News

Germaine Greer visit for Jane Austen conference

Professor Greer in conversation with Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Johnson at the conference.

About 500 people took part in a two-day international conference on Jane Austen and comedy held recently by La Trobe University's English Program and the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English.

Speakers came from Australia, the UK, India, the USA, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand and Italy. The gathering built bridges between university scholars and teachers of literature in the senior years of secondary schools.

The opening lecture was given by Professor Germaine Greer. Professor Greer said Austen's Mansfield Park demonstrated the strength of young women's passions and dramatised the way nineteenth-century society drove these passions underground.

The resilient vitality of the Austen heroine, Professor Greer said, derived from the way she learned the wisdom of not wearing her heart upon her sleeve. Jane Austen's enduring popularity, she added, may have something to do with the continuing usefulness of reticence and reserve as a female survival strategy.

Social events included a comedy performance by Julia Zemiro, host of RocKwiz, and a gala dinner at Montsalvat Café.