Welcome

Whether you have just discovered Jane Austen or are a lifelong aficionado, you are welcome at the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) and our local region of the society, JASNA Southwest.

Our region is the largest and one of the oldest in the national society. We host four regional meetings annually that feature a wide range of speakers and presentations, offer numerous local reading and game groups, sponsor a Young Filmmakers Contest and maintain a comprehensive guide to Austen Adaptations.

Learn more about the benefits of joining JASNA and JASNA Southwest on our membership page.

We hope you enjoy exploring our site and we hope to see you soon!

Left: Lyme Park stood in for Pemberley in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries.

Upcoming Free Zoom Events

We are pausing our in-person events until it is safe for large groups to meet again in person. In the meantime, join our monthly free Zoom presentations by notable scholars, authors and others with an interest in all things Austen-related! 

Sign up for our mailing list for more information. Or visit our YouTube channel to view past presentations.

Kimberly Alexander, PhD, is on the faculty of the History Department of the University of New Hampshire, where she is director of the museum studies program and a lecturer. She has held curatorial positions at several New England Museums, including the MIT Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum and Strawbery Banke. Her book Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018) traces the history of early Anglo-American footwear from the 1740s through the 1790s. Her forthcoming book, Fashioning the New England Family, will be available in late 2021. She was guest curator of the exhibit “Fashioning the New England Family” at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Her illustrated talk on “The Theatrical Jane Austen” will explore Austen’s early exposure to theatre, what theatre was like in Regency England, what Austen would have seen on stage in London and Bath, the family’s home theatricals, Austen’s favorite playwrights and more!

Finberg’s volume Eighteenth-Century Women Dramatists (Oxford University Press, 2001) is now in its third printing and is taught in colleges and universities across the U.S., Canada and Europe. This anthology opened college classrooms to historical women playwrights by giving teachers and students access to authoritative, annotated editions of plays that had previously been available only in rare books libraries. In addition, she has been instrumental in bringing the plays of these women to professional and university stages, receiving the 2006 Elliot Hayes Award for Achievement in Dramaturgy from the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas for her work on the 2005 Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s critically acclaimed revival of Hannah Cowley’s The Belle’s Stratagem.

Finberg’s scholarly work is widely published and cited in journals, collections of essays and reference books. Her goal is no less than rewriting theatre history by restoring these forgotten geniuses and by establishing their place in our classrooms and on our stages. Without reexamining how minority playwrights have been written out of our history in the past, we will not be able to prevent them from being erased in the future. She also loves to teach production dramaturgy, Shakespeare, Restoration comedy, gender issues in theatre and staging the American experience(s).

Saturday, June 19, 2021
11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Pacific time

Registration information to be posted by April.

Topic: Costuming Regency-era Adaptations (event title forthcoming)

Featured speakers:
Deborah Nadoolman Landis, founding director and chair of the David C. Copley Center for Costume Design at UCLA

Ellen Mirojnick, Emmy Award-winning costume designer, who oversaw creation of 7,500 pieces for 5,000 costumes for Bridgerton

Upcoming In-Person Events

We are pausing our in-person events until it is safe for large groups to meet again in person. We have moved our events that had to be postponed in 2020 to new dates in 2022. Sign up for our mailing list for more information.

Saturday, December 3, 2022

The Grand, Long Beach

We originally planned for our event on Regency fashion and footwear to be held at The Grand, followed by dance lessons and an English country dance. We have shifted our two stellar speakers for that event to a virtual meeting to be held on Saturday, June 19, 2021. See more information above.

Please save the date for our new event at The Grand in December 22. Details on the topic and speakers will be announced at a later date.

Reading, Film and Game Groups

For the upcoming schedule for each of our reading, film and game groups, visit the groups page.

Join other Jane Austen fans from around Southern California by attending one of our regional meetings.

Email jasnasw or visit our contact page to direct your query on a specific topic or to a board member. We look forward to hearing from you.