Professor Emily Auerbach

Emily Auerbach is a Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Project Director of "The Courage to Write" series of radio documentaries on women writers. She has received numerous teaching and arts awards from the University of Wisconsin and broadcasting awards for "The Courage to Write" series.

Emily Auerbach reaches not only undergraduates through her campus classes on 19th-century literature but also hundreds of thousands of nontraditional students through lectures at public libraries, Elderhostels, prisons, retirement centers, schools, and service clubs. Over 4,000 people attended "Jane Austen in the 21st Century," a 40-event festival she directed for the UW Center for the Humanities (see www.humanities.wisc.edu). This festival was honored with the 2001 Governor's Award in the Humanities.

One new outreach course she directs is called the Odyssey Project, a free humanities course for low-income adults. She also serves as co-host of "University of the Air," a one-hour program broadcast statewide on Wisconsin Public Radio, Sundays 4-5 pm, featuring interviews with faculty in a variety of disciplines (see www.wpr.org for University of the Air broadcast schedule).

She first became interested in the audio medium as a way to spread literature to wider audiences when she was hired in 1985 by the Annenberg/Corporation for Public Broadcasting Foundation to oversee development of 24 radio programs on 19th and 20th century writers that could be used both for broadcast and as material in Independent Learning courses (see LSA Independent Learning, IL English 167-168). With grant funding, she then began "The Courage to Write," a new series of radio programs and written guides about women writers who overcame tremendous obstacles in order to become authors (see LSA Independent Learning, IL English 249). Emily Auerbach serves as project director, scriptwriter, and narrator for this award-winning series. She has just completed a book entitled Searching for Jane Austen for the University of Wisconsin Press (Fall 2004), and has published articles and textbooks on 19th century British and American writers.

She welcomes comments: to contact her directly, e-mail her at eauerbach@dcs.wisc.edu