Into the COLAverse – Episode 9: Janine Barchas

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Into the Colaverse, a podcast that takes us on the unique journeys of faculty in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Join me your host, Frederick Luis Aldama as we learn of the many ways that our faculty and their cutting edge work is transforming the world today.

[00:00:22] Frederick: It is my absolute delight and honor and pleasure to be with Janine Barchas, Regents Council Centennial Professor in the book Arts Award-winning author of numerous books, including the lost books of Jane Austen and Matter of Facts in Jane Austen, as well as Creator of the Digital Project, What Jane Saw. Welcome, Jan.

[00:00:45] Janine: Thank you Frederick. It’s a pleasure to be with you today.

[00:00:48] Frederick: So what a journey you’ve had. I know we’re gonna talk about your books, book history, Think you know, all of these matters. But born in Netherlands, uh, Stanford, pba, Chicago, PhD, UT you’ve, University of Texas, Austin with a, a little bit of time, well, actually quite a bit of time in Auckland, New Zealand.

[00:01:08] Frederick: Um, Wow. How did all of this add up to or lead to? This tremendous interest, um, in book history and also just very basically, what is this thing? Book history.

[00:01:25] Janine: Um, uh, the journey doesn’t make sense to me either. Dutch born American educated, uh, taught in New Zealand for five years, teaching, uh, 18 Century book history.

[00:01:37] Janine: Um, go figure, uh, what can you do? Um, but as for what book history is, um, it is for me a kind of materialist way of looking at the physical artifact of the book and the way that that physical artifact before the. Invention. So between Gutenberg’s, uh, early book, early printing, and even a little bit of manuscript culture before that, cuz books existed in manuscript of course, too.

[00:02:09] Janine: Um, and all the way to the modern eReader, uh, my. I’m fascinated with how graphic design, layout, uh, and different features of a book as we’re familiar with it now in multiple formats, how they influence the way we read and the way we interpret stories and the way we tell stories, knowing it’s going to be packaged in a certain way.

[00:02:33] Janine: Um, and that is what I teach, sort of the book of literary texts, uh, inside an English.

[00:02:42] Frederick: Someone like Jane Austen obviously is very front and center in your work. Could you give me and our listeners a sense of how book history works with an author like Jane Austen?

[00:02:57] Janine: Jane Austen, of course, comes late to the party.

[00:02:59] Janine: She’s born in 1775, uh, and there’s already a, uh, quite a lively Grub Street print, uh, mechanism in place. And she enters as a published author into, uh, a functioning print culture. And, uh, then. The world kind of change changes its opinion about Jane Austen and changes her reputation in the 19th century when stereotype plates, um, PU paper and new distribution channels like railways, make books really cheap.

[00:03:39] Janine: And Jane Austen is out of copyright just when that happens. And she is grabbed by publishers as, uh, an author that’s still very current, feels very current, but is out of copyright. And those cheap books make her canonical. Um, and so every author has a different history in terms of their relationship to print.

[00:04:00] Janine: Both, you know, during their lifetime perhaps, uh, as well as, um, afterwards. And, um, I am interested in both how authors interact specifically in the 18th century. That’s my specialty, how authors interact with publishers and printers. Uh, how some authors function does their own editors, publishers, printers and others had to navigate certain kinds of conventions.

[00:04:27] Janine: Um, Try to look at what it is that is the norm, and then how at that particular moment in time when authors published and how they navigate it to maybe defy those norms where their own stylistic interests emerge in the shape of a, of a book, someone’s use of punctuations, someone’s use of title, page, conventions, indexes, Um, Perhaps even their manipulation of, of illustration if they had control over that.

[00:04:55] Janine: Sort of where does or authorial intention lie when we know authors today kind of hand things off to a publisher and lots of things, including book covers get determined by other people. So what is the history of that relationship between the author and the reader? There are now a lot of different specialties that kind of, um, mediate that relationship between the author and the reader and, um, that mediation was different at different points in time.

[00:05:23] Frederick: It’s fun, really exciting. And your book, you’ve lost books of Jane Austen. My goodness. How in the world, I mean, finding these long, neglected reprinting that, and that were affordable to working class readers. That must have been quite a journey in and of itself for you.

[00:05:45] Janine: Yeah. See the, the word journey. Which you’re fond of suggests that I had that end point in mind, but I didn’t really know where I was going with this at all.

[00:05:54] Janine: So I just, out of pure curiosity, most of my projects seemed to start that way, or out of pure curiosity or sort of defiance. I. Uh, of some sort of authority, I think. Ooh, that’s really interesting cuz no one happens to be looking at it. And um, in the case of the project of the lost books of Jane Austi\en, um, it was a book that grew out of my obsession with unwanted books.

[00:06:17] Janine: Books that weren’t being collected, weren’t cataloged, weren’t included in the bibliography of Jane Austen. That list of sort of one must have books from first edition onwards. That Bibliographers book historians composed for major authors. Jane Austen had a bibliographer named David Gilson, who did an incredible job creating a mammoth inventory of when she first enters print in 1811.

[00:06:43] Janine: With sense and sensibility until sort of the modern posh additions and contemporary things now, and in that list, this seemingly exhaustive elephantine list that he creates, this bibliography, there were a whole bunch of books that were missing that I couldn’t find in that, that I would come across on eBay.

[00:07:06] Janine: Junk shops or what have you. And I became fascinated by these throwaways. These are books that were maybe giveaways. Lever soap company in the 1890s gave away copies of Jane Austen and lots of other novel novelists as well, uh, for soap rappers. Uh, these were book prizes. The cheap additions that were made to look really nice on the outside.

[00:07:29] Janine: Sort of lots of bling that were given as book prizes to kids. Lots of working class kids in England, especially in, again, the late 19th century, early 20th century, and these kinds of additions that are not authoritative and not scholarly, and they don’t have footnotes and they may have even some spelling errors and they get sort of.

[00:07:48] Janine: Printed from plates that get handed down from publisher to publisher to publisher around this sort of pecking order of, um, of, of publishing houses. And those were the books that I began to be kind of crazy about and found. The, the evidence that readers left inside the books, their names, their book prize plates, uh, their sort of, this book is given to such and such On the occasion of, um, I found those.

[00:08:20] Janine: Those traces of readers that had also not been taken into account in thinking about Austen’s reputation or thinking about readership because these were cheap books that were just owned by ordinary people. And so I became interested in the stories, uh, of those ordinary people and the books they left behind and why we collect certain books, but not others why we’re so, we so fetishize the first edition when the print runs are often quite.

[00:08:49] Janine: For a new author and that their impact has really felt once they become popular. And, uh, collecting practices don’t always match either popularity or even kind of, um, scholarly importance. Uh, the collecting practices match what’s in the inventory, what’s on that? List of, of important books, but not necessarily measure the impact of, you know, a cheap run of something that was printed in the tens of thousands as opposed to, uh, a rare addition that is considered, um, uh, important because it’s so very, very rare and therefore didn’t have that kind of impact.

[00:09:30] Janine: How do you calculate what’s important as a scholar?

[00:09:34] Frederick: You mentioned Popularities. Janine, what is your sense or even thinking about our working class readers, what is the fascination attraction to, you know, heroines who are dealing with things that, at least from my side of the table, might not? Relatable, um, Gente poverty, uh, inheritance law issues, um, et cetera.

[00:10:01] Frederick: And then maybe you can speak to the continued fascination with Jane Austen. Today? Yeah. This,

[00:10:08] Janine: this, you asked the right question. This is the question I ask my students in these overprescribed, um, classes that I teach from Jane Austen. There’s always a waiting list. I do not understand. Why is this the case?

[00:10:21] Janine: I teach Jane Austen at 8:00 AM so she will not cannibalize Shakespeare or Chaucer or Milton, you know, God forbid. Uh, and uh, To try and keep these classes small and they’re just waiting lists and predominantly women. Um, so Austen still has a reputation or has lately a reputation as Chiclet as opposed to the reputation she had at the turn of the 20th century, uh, when, um, her readers were equally divided between men and women.

[00:10:51] Janine: So we’re, I’m trying to claw my way back to. But meanwhile, I asked the question, Why are you here to my students? You know, here is another class over-prescribed to a dead wide author who writes about a world in which women cannot hold a job, cannot inherit, uh, land, and are just sitting for Mr. D uh, sitting around waiting for Mr.

[00:11:15] Janine: Darcy to show up. Seriously, Why are. People here, What is the possible attraction? Uh, because I don’t see it. And invariably these students all come back with some version of, obviously I’m playing devil’s advocate. I love Jane Austen, so don’t get me wrong. You know, whoever’s listening to this podcast, please don’t send me emails about how wrong I am about Jane Austen, cuz I’ve dedicated the last, you know, decade and a half of my life to this girl.

[00:11:43] Janine: Um, Playing devil’s advocate invariably. Solicits a response from students that then kind of articulates a sense of, um, loss regret at, uh, a life lived more simply than theirs, or that they perceive it as such, uh, a life in which a word, a touch, a glance could count and be. Real and have an impact. Whereas now you can be on four social media channels and not know whether someone liking, uh, your image that you shared or your quote or whatever it is that, that you’ve launched into the world and you have so many.

[00:12:30] Janine: What does it mean, uh, as one student. Uh, a young man in class one said, he said, Nowadays you go to a gathering and there are no rules. Do you shake the person’s hand? Do you hug them? Do you kiss them? Do you kiss them on one cheek, two cheeks? You know, all these things have now changed with Covid. Um, and there are new, but there’s.

[00:12:50] Janine: We’re in, We live in America and there are a lot of things that, uh, in polite conversation and social exchanges are possible and you have to navigate without those kinds of narrow rules. And some of us are really grateful that those rules are gone. And others, apparently some of my students, Feel a little bit at sea in a world in which there’s so many ways to communicate and because of that individual communications.

[00:13:24] Janine: To them apparently don’t feel they matter quite as much. And so they find that world restful and it’s, it’s strange, it’s ironic. It’s almost criminal to want to go back to, uh, and turn the clock back 200 years. Uh, but. It’s also understandable and, uh, it’s, uh, yeah, it, they’re, they’re savoring the choices they make today by going back and looking at a world in which, uh, those choices were more prescribed.

[00:13:59] Frederick: Yeah, really fascinating. Um, just on a personal note, my daughter at a certain point in her development, um, was she couldn’t get enough. I mean, bride and prejudice, uh, clueless. You, That’s a good one. You name, name it, she. And rep would watch these over and over and over again.

[00:14:23] Janine: Like part of the, That’s part of the joy.

[00:14:24] Janine: Yep.

[00:14:25] Frederick: Um, but, uh, before we get into, uh, your course page and the on the page and screen, Jane Austen, I’d like to ask you, you’ve, you’ve dialed in on things Jane Austen and Thanks, pianos, eyeglasses, donkey, carriage, Um, uh, tell me. What Jane Austen and things are things beyond her novels. Anyway,

[00:14:48] Janine: um, I’m a material girl.

[00:14:50] Janine: What can I say? Um, the, the way that I look at history is kind of a curatorial material, uh, kind of perspective. Um, my, my work always has a material turn to it and, um, I can’t seem to shake that. That, that sense of the physical objects inside her stories. What um, for example, you know, Jane Austen is not an author of upholstered descriptions like Dickens.

[00:15:24] Janine: She doesn’t fill her rooms with stuff. Uh, she’s more like a pincher play. Uh, and, and yet there are enough small objects that she mentions in the case in, in the course of a story. That because her objects are so few and far between, she must intend to have a significance to that candle that someone likes.

[00:15:51] Janine: What kind of candle is it? Or, uh, that piece of fruit. What kind of. Piece of fruit, Is it, Why is it a more park apricot, uh, or why is it an apple pie as opposed to something else? Why this flower? Why, uh, a reference to, uh, Sir Joshua Reynolds as opposed to, uh, a reference to another, So, so that these small, um, These small mentions of things be loo much larger.

[00:16:22] Janine: Uh, not because they’re symbolic. I try to ask my students not to use the word symbol or even the word relatable, which you used earlier. It’s like, I don’t, you know, there are certain things that, that have become, uh, English major triggers where we use them too often and, um, and so they, they, they empty themselves of meaning, but not because these are.

[00:16:45] Janine: Objects of symbolic significance, but because they are concrete objects out of her world that she has imported into the fictional world of her stories that she is building. And, um, I enjoy tracing those back to historical context and trying to figure out what the thing that she mentions looks like or the thing that she saw.

[00:17:06] Janine: The what Jane saw website you mentioned earlier was a way of, of thinking about what she had seen in person. Blockbuster art show she saw on the walls of the British Institute in 1813 when she said she was going to see and going to hunt for Mrs. D. Uh, and her portrait was Mrs. Darcy, somewhere on the walls in this exhibit, um, that I was trying to figure out, well, what, what pictures had she seen?

[00:17:36] Janine: What people, did she know what object said she touched? And how do. Return into her stories. So, yeah, I, I, I too, and sometimes, uh, amazed that I end up, you know, uh, during Covid I ended up going to, uh, an archive, uh, first uh, piano archive in England, uh, via, had the internet, so I couldn’t go anywhere. Um, but at curators on the other side of the Broadwood piano archive, helping me to trace, um, some pianos that Jane Austen’s brother had rented, uh, and she mentions.

[00:18:16] Janine: Uh, uh, Broadwood as a brand of high end pianos in the story of Emma because Frank Churchill sends, um, uh, a character Jane Fairfax, a piano as a gift, and it arrives on Valentine’s Day, and it’s a secret gift. He doesn’t declare that it’s from him. Uh, and the story also doesn’t say outright that it’s a rental, but that’s what I became obsessed with is that so many people in the Broadwood archive had, uh, rented pianos in, uh, Jane Austen’s time, including her brother had for the family piano had.

[00:18:51] Janine: He’d rented, uh, a posh piano before deciding whether or not his, his fa, his motherless brewed of young children were, uh, ready for such an instrument, uh, in their home in Cton, which was down the street from the cottage where Austen was writing. Her story, uh, at the same time that her brother had a rental, she was imagining, I argue, that one character rents a piano for another character, the same brand.

[00:19:19] Janine: So she could show off her posh knowledge of this high end brand that she herself was probably undoubtedly not playing in the cottage herself. Uh, and yeah, it. That’s how my work evolves. I go to an archive, I find something interesting, I trace it back, and then it, it offers up a new insight to jayten because I suddenly realized something I learned, uh, along, you know, from the data that something that I thought was.

[00:19:50] Janine: In this case a, a gift of a piano cuz it says it’s a gift. Uh, but you can give a rental and it makes a lot more sense. Um, that, uh, in this case, the character sends, uh, his future wife, uh, to whom he is already betrothed, secretly, um, a piano at her tiny aunt’s house. Uh, The fact that it’s a rental makes perfect sense, but it changes the nature of the relationship.

[00:20:18] Janine: And so, yeah, Austen was just so unbelievably clever that I am, uh, constantly in awe of the little nuggets that she’s put in there for us to discover and unpack and unwrap.

[00:20:33] Frederick: Beautiful. Yeah, it’s interesting. I was thinking, uh, Janine, that it’s less this idea or sense that you and I, um, know some theorists, scholars have talked about the kind of aura of the object.

[00:20:46] Frederick: And more for it seems a, uh, an entry way for us to understand better the material conditions of life, um, everyday life. Um, and then there’s, I think you also write about the Marie, uh, con condo, uh, and Jane Austen, which brought me to your sense of the kind of minimalism of object. You know, placement in her stories, in her story worlds.

[00:21:14] Frederick: Um, so yeah, lots to learn here. Oh gosh. So tell me a little bit about this Jane Austen, on page and screen. This must be, again, another one where this students are lining about the door.

[00:21:29] Janine: Um, yeah, that one’s is ever so slightly different because I teach it for ugs. Undergraduate studies, uh, program here at ut and, and so, uh, students do choose.

[00:21:45] Janine: Classes, but sometimes I get groups of students and these are my favorite groups that don’t actually wanna be in Jane Austen. You know, their class on how things work in the engineering department was canceled. And at the last minute all I get, you know, sort of 24 little engineers that really, really did wanna to start their undergraduate career being engineers with a UGS class.

[00:22:07] Janine: And instead they get Jane Austen. . Um, and then it is my delight, my privilege, my honor, to show them that Jane Austen is just as difficult as the engineering department, uh, just as demanding and just as exacting as any measurements that they could offer, uh, in an engineering problem. And. That is really fun.

[00:22:29] Janine: And so I, I, I enjoy teaching that class because it is not to the converted, it is not to those who have already drunk the Kool-Aid that you and I serve. It’s for those who there, for whom this might be their last, uh, Their their last moment, uh, drinking from literature before they do other things. And I wanna make sure it’s difficult and exciting and challenging, uh, for them.

[00:22:56] Janine: So, um, yeah, that, it’s one of my favorite classes. The Jane Os on page and screen suggests that where you just watch a bunch of movies, but we don’t, um, it, the screen is as much the digital screen and the ability to access. Historical resources through databases and all the things to which, you know, when you’re a student at ut, you suddenly have access to the scalpel.

[00:23:20] Janine: You can put away the kiddy scissors of Google and. Use the actual professional tools that you and I use and students have access to that. And suddenly the, you know, you know when you Google something, you can get 70% of the answer in 10 minutes of whatever you ask via Google. That’s a C minus Frederick that is just not gonna cut it.

[00:23:44] Janine: Uh, and so trying to figure out, well, how do you turn to. Tools that have a greater refinement that get you the other 30%. Uh, that’s what that class is about. And so, yeah, I teach students how to use, um, you know, tracing those objects again, uh, that Austen mentions how to use, um, pop popular and open databases like British Museum, Victorian Albert Museum.

[00:24:09] Janine: How do you learn real solid things about. An object through a curated museum site or museum at Greenwich as opposed to just sort of whatever Google spits at you from the latest blog. Uh, and um, It’s about, yeah, using those databases. Some databases give you access to Jane Austen’s manuscripts. Some databases give you access to the books, to the actual pages.

[00:24:36] Janine: Visually, you can see them on the screen, the actual pages of the books, because they’ve been digitized, first through microfilm and then digitization. Um, 18th century books at Austen might have pulled from a shelf, so we have something called, Early English books online, uh, for really early books and 18th century collections online.

[00:24:56] Janine: And those are databases where, yeah, the students are so jaded, they’re so used to having everything at their fingertips. But I, it still thrills me that you can pull. You know, almost any book in the 18th century off the shelf in a digital way, and it becomes infinitely searchable and you can see the page and the long SSEs and all the graphic design that can comes with these particular texts.

[00:25:20] Janine: So that’s. It’s about, you know, what books did Jane Austen read? What if she mentions a town? What is the Travel Guide that was published during her lifetime that she might have grabbed off the shelf to navigate her characters through certain settings that. To which, yeah, she may have been there once, but she might not have had perfect recall of what street turns into what other street.

[00:25:44] Janine: And to be able to use those maps and those guidebooks is, um, yeah, is the sort of the thrilling sleuth thing of being an active and, uh, inquisitive reader of Austen as opposed to sort of a passive recipient of her plot. Uh, I tried to ask my students to repeat after. We are not reading for plot. And then I ask them to do it again with feeling this time.

[00:26:11] Janine: And maybe one more time just for, for kicks, um, to indicate that. Austen writes a good yarn. These are great stories, but that’s not why we read them. Um, we read them because they’re, they’re durable and they resist interpretive pressure. And we can ask questions of these particular stories, questions about the human conditions as well, about literature, and the kind of maturity of the novel that, uh, require us to be unbelievably attentive and have, when Naba of, you know, refers to as memory between what you read on page three.

[00:26:46] Janine: And what you encounter on page 133, and it’s, it’s that that interpretive payoff of remembering that you’ve seen that character before or that umbrella or whatever it is, and that that memory, you know, can be, you know, helped with all these aids and online texts and online resources, but it ultimately yeah, makes you feel smarter when you get one of her.

[00:27:15] Janine: That’s what we live for.

[00:27:17] Frederick: Amazing. Yeah. I was also thinking about even just, um, in the dialogue or the representation of dialogue in Austen and the levels of nesting. Right. Um, he said, she said et cetera, and the kind of the dazzling, um, and even, um, awe, literally, um, Inspiring moments we have by allowing our brains to puzzle solve, right?

[00:27:46] Frederick: Even in those instances.

[00:27:48] Janine: O Austen has a letter in which she talks about the publisher having to put in the, he said, she said, and that she doesn’t always do that. And, uh, she doesn’t write for Dell elves. Uh, and I was just working on a piece with a colleague about Austen in translation and that, um, Her, her first French translations, uh, did put in sort of the, the print conventions of the French and that he said, she said in French when they translated her.

[00:28:17] Janine: Uh, and of course, Austen’s great innovation as a writer, as a novelist is something we call free and direct discourse, which is this sly borrowing of a character, a fictional character’s vocabulary or point of view, uh, and. But relating it as though it’s an omni mission narration. Um, as in, you know, the first, um, sentence of pride and prejudice, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that a young man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

[00:28:52] Janine: Well, that’s not a truth universally acknowledged, but it is a truth universally acknowledged by Mrs. Bennett. Uh, that is her world and it’s her worldview. And, and once we meet Mrs. Bennett, we realize we’re not confused that this is not meant to be. Told to us as, uh, as a reader that we’re supposed to believe in this.

[00:29:13] Janine: No, this is Mrs. Bennett’s worldview, and it’s being borrowed as, as and presented as objectively true. And Austen does that all the time, sort of slip into the shoes or the slippers of a character and used that point of view without the, he said, without the she. And yet the reader, I think is never truly confused about how they’re supposed to feel about this, that, that irony comes through and, uh, it’s like watching Saturday Night Live.

[00:29:46] Janine: It’s, as one of my students said when we performed that first, uh, chapter of Pride and Prejudice. You know, there were some crazy hats. There were some TAs there, there, there was a usual, um, sort of, uh, role playing and he piped up and he said, That was really fun. I didn’t realize Jane Austen was so funny.

[00:30:06] Janine: And I think we often don’t allow ourselves in the classroom, you know, here’s this serious text. Uh, and here are my, are the students taking serious courses in serious research? One university and. They’re not allowing themselves to have fun and laugh. Another thing I tell my students a lot is sort of, this is supposed to be fun, dammit.

[00:30:30] Janine: And that, um, somebody tried to get it on the class T-shirt once, but that didn’t think that was appropriate. Um, but basically that is sort of the mantra of. There’s literature, when you get it, when you’re on the in crowd is really fun and. It is that sense of fun, that sense of sporting with words, playing that sense of play, that makes for a great writer, uh, even a great writer that can talk about very serious subjects.

[00:31:04] Janine: And, uh, you know, the status of women in Austen’s culture was a serious subject. And so does she talk about slavery in Mansfield Park if obliquely, to the extent that her culture allows. These are, she touches upon a huge number of serious subjects and relationships, but does so with a sense of humor that, um, yeah, that makes a, she called Pride and prejudice a little bit light bright, and perhaps too sparkling.

[00:31:35] Frederick: Jane Austen as the creator inventor of one of the most powerful and generative story technologies. We know of planetary literature, right? Global literature, the free and reces course. Pretty amazing. Um, tell me as we start to wind this down here, I am really curious about another course of yours called Early Celebrity Culture.

[00:32:04] Frederick: What if, Tell me what I would, um, some of my takeaways from a course like that.

[00:32:10] Janine: Um, yeah. Well, you know, celebrity is, is your thing as well. Um, The, the question is when, you know, some people say, Well, certain Romans were so famous that celebrity emerges during, uh, the Roman Empire, or, you know, the cult of celebrity.

[00:32:29] Janine: The idea of an individual, uh, amassing is a certain kind of, uh, of power over others, even from far away. These, these interesting people. , uh, as, uh, certain critics call them with which we are so fascinated that we call them celebrities. Print culture in a way enabled that kind of cult of personality to emerge, for people to have pinups, let’s say, of their, uh, of famous names.

[00:32:59] Janine: Uh, pictures of, uh, Laura Byron, pictures of Nel Gwen, the actress. Print culture enabled that in the 18th century. And I’m of the point of view that in the 18th century, this cult of personality, uh, our obsession with authors, our obsession with celebrities emerges out of that ability to, from a distance, be able to partake in someone’s life through newspapers, through gossip, you know, through, um, the, those physical things that I like so much.

[00:33:35] Janine: Uh, the, the kind of chaka, uh, the swag of celebrity culture, uh, figurines of Shakespeare’s, uh, famous characters emerge in the 18th century as a commodity. Um, and celebrity culture builds itself around Shakespeare at that point too, 200 years into his afterlife. And so, um, yeah, that particular class is about sort of thinking about life in the 18th century and how.

[00:34:03] Janine: What we then recognize as a modern celebrity culture and sort of looking at the 18th century versions of Lady Gaga and the recognizing today’s celebrities from Marilyn Monroe and what have you onwards and. Comparing them two figures in, in the 18th century. And so students usually end up researching somebody who, at this moment in time, in our time today, ha no longer has any brand recognition, No longer has any, They must research at least one person whose celebrity has died out, whose star, uh, no longer shines.

[00:34:43] Janine: And, uh, also someone, uh, who, you know, whose celebrity kind of reaches, uh, that far forward, like Lord Byron and. Uh, kind of compare them to, to sort of see the ephemeral nature of celebrity as well as its potential to last. And so it’s, it’s a fun class where I’m, we’re looking not so much as can at canonical texts as at certain, as a different kind of candidacy, if you will, that the sense of brand recognition being a type of, uh, of canonical, uh, signal and.

[00:35:24] Janine: Yeah, the sometimes people’s names continue on and are still infamous or famous now. Uh, and sometimes they just die on the vine. And yet those people look very much like celebrities that whose stars flare and then die out today. So that’s the kind of class it is where we’re, we’re looking at how to research, how to do research on people who, uh, who would’ve been recorded in newspapers at the time.

[00:35:56] Janine: And, um, and figurines in, uh, books, in poem I immortalized and poems, uh, that are perhaps even no longer. Sign

[00:36:08] Frederick: me up. I’m, I’m, I’m first on the list here.

[00:36:12] Janine: Be honored to have you in that class, Rederick teaching it again next spring.

[00:36:15] Frederick: Oh, awesome. Um, you as this is, this will be, um, our last little kind of moment together.

[00:36:24] Frederick: Um, I know that you’ve translated your father’s Dutch memoirs, um, remarkable. Um, Maybe you can say a little something about that, but also as a kind of way to get us to what you are working on now and some things we might look forward to.

[00:36:45] Janine: Um, uh, my father, um, so I grew up in the Netherlands. As I alluded to earlier, um, and I grew up with the stories, uh, that my father told, uh, along with my brother and sister.

[00:36:59] Janine: Um, we listened to stories about the German occupation of the Netherlands, uh, from 1940 to 1945, uh, in World War II when my father was ages nine to 14. So those were his formative years. And as kids, those were the stories that that stuck and um, Uh, yeah. To, to sum up, he wrote them down when my daughter was born, uh, at my request.

[00:37:24] Janine: And it took him 10 years to write all those stories down. And, um, and then I translated them. And then just before his death, I found a publisher who wanted to, uh, Um, Yeah. To publish them and give them an even wider audience, and that was enormously gratifying as a family project, especially to be able to carry that out after the death of my father, um, was a, yeah.

[00:37:50] Janine: Was very gratifying and in a real honor and, and a way to process that loss as. So, um, yeah, those are, those are, are, yes, in a way, sort of family stories. You know, sometimes we have an opportunity as a professional to who, who kind of judge narrative to, uh, to use stories closer to home. And, uh, this was one such, such opportunity.

[00:38:19] Janine: Um, but yeah, you never know. Where the next winding of the road will take you. And great thing about having tenure at a research one university is you can reinvent yourself or reinvent the next project as a, a friend who works in tech, uh, in Austen once said to me, he said, Wait, let me get this straight so you have an idea about a project and then you can just pursue it in your research.

[00:38:49] Janine: He’s. That sounds so great. And it is, and it’s where the energy comes from in terms of, uh, my classroom is being able to, um, yeah, in the moment of that infectious enthusiasm about a new topic in that moment, be able to convey that infectious enthusiasm for, for the students, not just about a passage. Uh, that still excites, you know, because you’ve.

[00:39:21] Janine: 15 times and each time students react ever so slightly differently to it. Um, and that’s its own thrill of teaching a text you’ve taught before, but also teaching a subject where you’re learning at the same time the students are learning or you’ve just learned something and you’re sharing that new knowledge, uh, with students.

[00:39:39] Janine: And so, yeah, it sometimes work in different media, you know, tried my hand at, uh, websites and um, uh, you. Um, yeah, books about, uh, books that nobody wanted, um, to, to constantly try to, to energize and recapture that feeling of discovery that that is. The, at the core of a research one university, that that feeling of newness and, um, trying, and I do it with the past.

[00:40:13] Janine: I try to find new things in the past and connectivity between our own time and the past. And it’s that, um, that yeah. Lends excitement to the job.

[00:40:27] Frederick: Absolutely. Um, My goodness. Books, the materiality of things. Swag, ity at the margins, discovering and understanding of life yesterday and today. Wow. Thank you, Janine.

[00:40:43] Frederick: Thank you. It’s

[00:40:44] Janine: been a pleasure. Thanks for letting me ramble.

[00:40:49] Outro: Into The Colaverse is produced by the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Liberal Arts Sound Engineering by the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services. You can find Into the Colaverse Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. Thanks for listening and see you next time.