Audiences for Austen

Social Proof:

There is a pretty large community on Google Plus dedicated to Jane Austen so I'm sure some of my ideas would get feedback if I posted them there. Additionally, I have a large number of friends interested in Austen so even just posting of Facebook would yield some social proof. My creative project would definitely get more attention than my scholarly paper because it's so much more accessible, but if I present my scholarly ideas properly, I should receive some good feedback.

I am also planning on taking my ideas to some professors at BYU who know more about Austen than I do. They should be able to help me fit my argument into the large discussions about Austen.

Conference:

Other than the big national JASNA (Jane Austen Society of North America) conference each year, I have had a hard time finding a conference where I could present my paper. It would be awesome to present as JASNA's conference but I doubt I'd get it, and the theme for next year doesn't fit my paper. So for now I am going to stick with the English Symposium at BYU. I have never submitted a paper to the Symposium so I think this would be a really great experience for me.

Journal:

I will be submitting my paper to JASNA's Persuasion: The Jane Austen Journal. This is a scholarly journal dedicated entirely to Jane Austen scholarship. They have both a print and online edition so I think I would have a good chance of actually getting published by them. They ask for papers that are 2000-3500 words so my paper won't be any longer than 10-11 pages.

Alternative:

There are a ton of blogs about Jane Austen, so I think I'm going to contact some of them about guest posting either my scholarly ideas or my creative project. Examples one, two, and three