Beyond Pride and Prejudice: A Professor's Podcast Makes the Case for Jane Austen—and the Humanities

As the world marks the 250th anniversary of Austen's birth, Michael Kramp shows why her accessible, versatile stories offer more than just happily-ever-afters

Lehigh English Professor Michael Kramp remembers the first time he read one of Jane Austen’s novels. It was Pride and Prejudice -- required reading in a college English class. 

“Ever since I first read Jane Austen at age 18, I have been pretty much enamored of her narratives, her characters, and her ideas,” Kramp says. It’s a statement he makes introducing each episode of his podcast, “Jane Austen and the Future of the Humanities.”  The podcast can be found on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other platforms. The podcast is one part of a larger public-facing project that includes a YouTube channel where videos of his ongoing interviews with artists, scholars, and writers from around the world can be viewed. Kramp is also writing a monograph about Austen’s work and its relationship to the humanities.

The podcast coincides with the 250^th anniversary of the novelist’s birth in 2025. Austen, Kramp notes, was the first woman to earn a place in the canon of English literature and her popularity endures. “Each time I teach Austen… I ask my students to think about this with me,” says Kramp, who specializes in 19^th-Century British Literature. “I ask them, ‘Who else, like Austen, has enduring wide-standing popular culture appeal and is also clearly respected within academic circles? It’s a pretty short list: Shakespeare, right?’

Read the full story on the College of Arts and Sciences News.