Building 'Jane Austen's Desk': A Digital and Public Humanities Webspace

FAIN: MD-277118-21

Jane Austen Summer Program, Inc. (Chapel Hill, NC 27514-2134)
Inger S. B. Brodey (Project Director: June 2020 to October 2022)

Development of an interactive website to put Jane Austen’s life and works in historical context.

We are requesting funding to lay the groundwork for “Jane Austen’s Desk” (JAD), a public-facing website that will provide users with a window into Austen’s world and become a space for general readers and scholars around the world to explore and learn, as well as connect and collaborate. An easily accessible, attractive digital space dedicated to a widely popular author may have the best chance of reaching the widest audience and of engaging those audiences with the historical past, no longer routinely taught in high school English classes. This digital humanities project is cross-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary, integrating sources hosted by a variety of institutions around the world. JAD will be designed by a team of prominent Austen scholars and digital humanities experts and will simulate Jane Austen’s historical workspace circa January 1813, from a first-person perspective, in order to generate new understanding of her place in that historical moment.