Our Team
Inger Brodey
FOUNDING DIRECTOR and
CO-HOST
Inger S.B. Brodey is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Adjunct Professor in the School of Civic Life and Leadership, Affiliate Professor of Asian Studies, and Adjunct Professor of Global Studies. Her primary interest is in the history of the novel in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe and Meiji Japan, and she has published extensively on Jane Austen. Her new book Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness appears in 2024
Eric Bontempo
CO-DIRECTOR and CO-HOST
Eric Bontempo is an Assistant Professor of English at Abilene Christian University. He received a PhD in English & Comparative Literature in 2023 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he began volunteering with the Jane Austen Summer Program. His work has appeared in Essays in Romanticism and the Cambridge Companion to Victorian Women's Writing.
Susan Allen Ford
CO-DIRECTOR and CO-HOST
Recently retired as a professor of English from Delta State University, Susan has served as editor for Persuasions, the leading Austen journal, for more than a decade. She has also faithfully attended and contributed to JASP since its founding in 2012 as a presenter and a discussion leader. She is JASP's context corner coordinator and a member of the Board of Directors, as well as a co-host of Jane Austen & Co.
Sarah Marsh
CO-HOST
Sarah Marsh is an Associate Professor of English at Seton Hill University. Her research and teaching are in the long eighteenth century, with focus on the Atlantic literary history of race, slavery, and antislavery.
Danielle Christmas
CO-HOST
Danielle Christmas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A Delta Delta Delta Fellow in the Humanities, she holds a Ph.D. in English from University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Auschwitz and the Plantation: Labor, Sex, and Death in American Holocaust and Slavery Fiction. Her interests in Southern history includes Confederate monuments, lynching narratives, and visual art.
Kimiyo Ogawa
CO-HOST
Kimiyo Ogawa is Professor of Foreign Studies in the Department of English at Sophia University in Japan. She is the editor of the upcoming volume, Austen and Asia, with Tristanne Connolly. A great lover of Austen, she has published extensively on early English women writers.
Na'dayah Pugh
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR
Na’dayah Pugh is a second-year student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English and Comparative Literature, with minors in Screenwriting and Creative Writing. She contributed to Jane Austen’s Violent Affections: An edition of Henry & Eliza and Jack & Alice, and volunteered at the 2023 Jane Austen Summer Program. She is excited to continue exploring the world of Austen, especially regarding its relevancy to the modern day.
Anne Fertig
CO-FOUNDER and CONSULTANT
Anne Fertig is the Digital Projects Editor at the Center for Digital History at the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington. She received her doctorate in English Literature at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she first began volunteering with the Jane Austen Summer Program. In 2019, she started Jane Austen & Co. at Durham Public Library. She was a Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar at the University of Glasgow in 2013 and the co-editor of A Song of Glasgow Town: The Collected Poems of Marion Bernstein.
Delicia Johnson
BLOG COORDINATOR
Delicia Johnson is a library assistant in Orlando, Florida. She has a general interest in the long-eighteenth century with a focus on women's writing, female education, and Romanticism. Besides her work with JASP, she is also the lead administrator for the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation.
Sarah Hurley
BLOGGER
Sarah Hurley is a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington with University Honors and Honors in English literature. She composed her undergraduate thesis, "'Let Other Pens Dwell': On Austen, Authorship, and the Janeite-Centric Narrative," on a unique genre of fiction placing the quintessential "Austen-fan" herself into the role of heroine. Sarah's academic interests also include Shirley Jackson's fiction, young adult literature, and Emily Dickinson's herbarium.
Maizie Ferguson
BLOGGER
Maizie Ferguson is a third year student at the University of Kansas, pursuing a major in English––with an emphasis on British Literature––and minor in Violin. A passionate Janeite and active member of JASNA, she made a long-awaited pilgrimage to England this past summer to explore Jane Austen's Bath, Steventon, and Chawton. She greatly looks forward to continuing her study of Austen and her contemporaries in academia. She is serving as Registrar for JASP 2025.
Mindy Killgrove-Harris
BLOGGER
Mindy Killgrove-Harris loves sharing the works of Jane Austen with others. While serving as an educator for fifteen years, she brought Austen’s novels into her classrooms. She continues to explore the Regency era through research and by penning several historical fiction books. She is a member of JASNA and contributes to the JASP blog forum regularly.
Olivia Ward
SOCIAL MEDIA ASSISTANT
Olivia Ward is a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pursuing a bachelor's degree in Advertising and Public relations and English and Comparative Literature with a concentration in Film Studies. She is excited to explore the world of Jane Austen.
Our Programs
explores and compares the lives and works of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, Anne, Emily, and Charlotte, fostering appreciation----rather than competition between----these important women authors.
features interviews with scholars and adaptors of Jane Austen's celebrated works, exploring how these classic texts find their place in modern contexts.
offers insight into the science that undergirded everyday tasks in the Regency, such as time telling, home cures, sea bathing, silk production, and maritime travel.
explores authors contemporaneous with Austen and authors that Austen is likely to have read.
offers an oft-neglected perspective on contemporary Asian views of Regency life, Asia in the time of the Regency, and Regency (mis)understandings of Asian literature and culture.
explores the role of race, nationalism, colonialism, and identity in the culture of the long eighteenth century, exploring topics such as slavery, abolition, portraiture, and modern representations of historical people of color.
explores domestic life, labor, and practices during the Regency, including dress, music, embroidery, gardening, and gaming.
offers conversations with authors of modern Austen adaptations, including Ibi Zoboi (author of Pride), Margot Melcon and Lauren Gunderson (co-authors of Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley), and Jo Baker (author of Longbourn).
Upcoming Topics
~ The American Founding and its Reception in England
Got ideas for a new series? Let us know...