This course explores the novels of Jane Austen and the
writers with whom she was in conversation in the eighteenth century.
Although we have an image of Austen as domestic and unworldly, she was
very engaged with her era’s politics, media, and literary culture, and
she incorporated these aspects into her novels. Reading her works
alongside those of her contemporaries will offer insight into the
period’s roiling debates around slavery, sexuality, colonialism, and
labor–in addition to the pleasures of reading Austen’s consummate
prose style.