English professor remembers Jane Austen, 200 years later

Fordham Newsroom

Susan Greenfield, Ph.D., professor of English, became taken with novelist Jane Austen as a teenager. And as she went on to become a scholar of 18th Century literature, and Jane Austen in particular, she was recently afforded the opportunity to discuss the author on WBUR, a Boston public radio station and NPR affiliate, on the centennial of Austen’s death.
Susan Greenfield
In the interview, which aired on July 18th, Greenfield talked about what drew her to study Austen.
“As I grew older, I really appreciated her humor and insight. As a scholar, I find myself fascinated by so many things—by her literary technique, her narrative perspective, by her use of irony, and, particularly, her satire of human greed and cruelty and her critique of the abusive power, what we might call the patriarchal power, but not only [that], but class power, colonial power … she’s more relevant than ever at this moment in history.”
As WBUR had just aired a segment on the current healthcare debate prior to the interview about Jane Austen, Greenfield said it was easy to see why the novelist’s work has such contemporary relevance.
“Jane Austen is extremely interested in the difference between people who care about other people’s lives, and those who don’t,” she said.
Listen to the entire interview, which runs about 20 minutes and also includes insight from Whit Stillman, director of Love and Friendship, an adaptation of the Jane Austen novel Lady Susan, here.
Related:
Read about “Homelessness: Literary Representation and Historical Reality,” an undergraduate course Greenfield taught in 2015, using a literary approach to examine the complex issues surrounding homelessness.
In this piece from 2013, Greenfield wrote about the 200th anniversary of one of Austen’s most well-known novels, Pride and Prejudice.







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