ABOUT KATHLEEN
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My love of the arts was born in a home that resounded with classical music and my parents’ poetry recitations and was decked in original paintings. I studied violin and piano and trained for fifteen years to be a professional dancer, performing with Akita City Ballet and Harvard Dance Company.
Living in the Middle East and Japan in my youth intensified my zeal for stories and the languages and cultures that shape them; for discovering the ways human beings connect not merely across but within difference.
I did not know before ... that you were a studier of character. It must be an amusing study.
—Charles Bingley to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice
Ashley Corinne Photography
During my education at Harvard and the University of Iowa and career as a Professor of English at Palm Beach Atlantic University, I became fascinated by nineteenth-century storytellers’ moral aesthetics—the literary craft behind their social criticism. As a writer today, I endeavor to plant my mind in the rich soil of great authors’, heroines’, and friends’ imaginative integrity.
In short, I am a “studier of character.”
In every landscape, it has been a profound privilege to meet people whose benevolence radiates so much light. As Miss Bates would say, “It is such a happiness when good people get together—and they always do.”
I thank all the good people (both real and fictional) who inspire my writing, and hope to be more like them some day. I strive to produce work that reflects one small glimmer of the beauty with which they illuminate others’ lives.
She…submitted quietly to a little more
praise than she deserved.
—Emma
AWARDS AND HONORS
Awards
Research Fellow in the Arts and Humanities, Palm Beach Atlantic University, appointed in 2018 to recognize publication record and 17 years of service as a faculty professional development mentor, and to support ongoing work as author and mentor.
2015-16 Jane Austen Scholar-in-Residence, Goucher College, Baltimore, MD
(in residence in February, 2016)
Peer Reviewer for Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature and Brontë Studies, 2015
Corts Award for Outstanding Teaching, Palm Beach Atlantic University, 2006-2007
2004 Woman of the Year in Communications Education, honored by Atlantic-Florida chapter of the Association for Women in Communication for furthering women's leadership in Communications fields through education and mentorship.
Acknowledgments: Kindly thanked for editorial feedback in the following publications: Imagery from Genesis in Holocaust Memoirs: A Critical Study (by Dr. Lee Prescott, MacFarland, 2010); Theory Into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism (by Ann B. Dobie, 2nd ed., Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2008).
No one…so capable as Anne.
—Captain Wentworth speaks of Anne Elliot in Persuasion
JASNA Leadership
Jane Austen Society
of North America
Member, Board of Directors, JASNA, 2002-2008 (elected to maximum of two terms)
Co-coordinator, JASNA-South Florida (regional chapter of JASNA), 2001-2015
Member, Publications Committee, JASNA, 2003-2005; 2005-2007 (elected to two executive terms)
Judge, Annual Essay Contest, JASNA, 2002-2011
Mary wished to say something
very sensible, but knew not how.
—Pride and Prejudice
Speaking Honors
International Keynote Speaker: “Jane’s Wonder Women: Female Heroism the Austenian Way.” Jane Austen Society of Australia, Sydney, Australia, August, 2006.
Keynote Speaker: “Women and Education.” The Women’s Chamber Foundation “Annual Linking Women to Learning Scholarship Luncheon,” West Palm Beach, Florida, June, 2009.
Keynote Speaker: “Jane’s Wonder Women: Female Heroism the Austenian Way.” Super-regional conference of the Massachusetts and Maine chapters of the Jane Austen Society of North America, Boston, Massachusetts, September, 2003.
Travel Lecturer, East region of North America, Jane Austen Society of North America, 2003, 2004.
Public Lecturer: “Emma as Medieval Queen: Jane Austen’s Glorification of Female Hospitality.” As 2015-16 Jane Austen Scholar-in-Residence, Goucher College, Baltimore, MD, February, 2016.
Exhibition Speaker, “Jane Austen and Romantic Art.” Community event for special exhibit of Constable and Turner. Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, April, 2011.
Regional Speaker: “Pride and Prejudice and the Female Quest to be Pursued.” Meeting of the Florida West Coast Region of the Jane Austen Society of North America, Clearwater, Florida, May, 2007.
Featured Speaker: “Uncorsetting Austen: Passion and Narrative Structure in the Novels.” Jane Austen Day, Tucson, Arizona, November, 2002.