15/12/2025
Jane Austen Then & Now: A One-Day Symposium on Jane Austen’s Legacy
16 December 2025
Venue: The “Egg” Hall, Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski
Programme
10:00-10:10 – Welcome
10:15-11:30 – Keynote Lecture
Professor Ludmilla Kostova, PhD (St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria)
‘Jane, Kinsfolk, and Friends: Reflections on Jane Austen’s Biofictional Afterlives in the Twenty-First Century’
11:30-12:00 – Coffee Break
12:15-13:10 – Session 1: Pride and Prejudice 1: Interpretations
12:15-12:35 Zlatomira Terzieva (Secondary School Ivan Vazov, Stara Zagora), ‘From Page to Screen: Jane Austen’s Epistolary Legacy in Pride and Prejudice (1813) as Seen through the Film Lens’
12:35-12:55 Vesselin Budakov (Sofia University), ‘Samuel Richardson and the Ending of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813)’
13:10-14:15 – Lunch Break
14:15-15:30 – Keynote Lecture
Associate Professor Vitana Kostadinova, PhD (Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria)
‘The Untranslatable Jane Austen’
15:30-16:00 – Coffee Break
16:00-17:15 – Session 2: Austen’s Novels: Language and Aesthetics
16:00-16:20 Alexandra Bagasheva (Sofia University), ‘I dare say, you know – vagaries of communicative assertiveness and knowledge negotiation in Emma’
16:20-16:40 Emmanouil Aretoulakis (University of Athens), ‘Aesthetics of Attention: Northanger Abbey and the Ethics of the Imagination’
16:40-17:00 Rayna Rosenova (Sofia University), ‘The ‘Un-Poetic’ Austen: The Absence of the Poetess in Novel Writing’
17:20-18:15 – Session 3: Pride and Prejudice 2: Translations
17:20-17:40 Yuka Hiromoto (Institute for Liberal Arts, Institute of Science Tokyo), ‘Jane Austen Encounters Noh Theatre: The First Japanese Translation of Pride and Prejudice (1926)’
17:40-18:00 Mila Stavreva (Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv), ‘Universal Truths, Local Voices and Free Indirect Discourse in Bulgarian translations of Pride and Prejudice’
18:20-18:30 – Closing Remarks