Welcome to the Race and Regency Pod. Today we have as our guest Dr. Rae Greiner, who is an Associate Professor of English at Indiana University, author of Sympathetic Realism in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction (2012), and co-editor of Victorian Studies.

Rae edited the 2025 Norton critical edition of Persuasion. In this podcast, we talk about Persuasion, Austen’s ever-present relevance to our world, and Rae’s upcoming projects, including the book Stupidity after Enlightenment.

To learn more about the Race and Regency Lab, visit https://www.raceandregency.org/

The Race and Regency Pod works as a dynamic sonic space to lend an ear to all things Race and Regency. Using the intimacy, accessibility, and fluidity of the medium, this podcast brings together the public, artists, curators, librarians, scholars, and cultural critics who share their passion for questions of race in this period. Unlike ideas and engagements that can often stay confined behind academic paywalls, this podcast facilitates space for community members and connoisseurs of the Regency era to think together and build together.

Listening with and to a range of people who speak in varied accents and tones, The Race and Regency Pod works as a practice in embodied scholarship. We imagine what enthusiasm and engagement sound like when directed towards sharing, community building, resistance, and self-expression. This podcast will house diverse conversations that expand the conception of the Regency era thematically, geographically, and temporally, by considering how we inherit formulations of race from this period and engage with them now.

In this episode, we are joined by Camille Simone Thomas, who is a Playwright, Producer, Performer, Researcher, Educator, Aspiring TV writer, Facilitator, Business Owner, and all-around creative.

Camille Simone Thomas is a 5th-generation Detroiter through her father’s side and a first-generation Jamaican through her mother's. It’s important for her to name this because her work most often interrogates cultural legacies, familial healing, spirituality + ancestral wisdom, and the general kicking and screaming of how Black folks get free despite the oppressive forces of colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy. Her plays have been workshopped and performed at The Connelly Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Sanguine Theatre Company, Blackboard Playwriting series, Lime Arts Theatre company, American Slavery Project, The Obie Award-winning Harlem9 and Detroit Public Theatre Company, Dixon Place, Workshop Theatre, Barter Theatre Company, The National Women’s Theatre Festival, The Brick, and more!

To learn more about Camille’s work, find her website here: https://www.camillesthomas.com/

To learn more about the Race and Regency Lab, visit https://www.raceandregency.org/

The Race and Regency Pod works as a dynamic sonic space to lend an ear to all things Race and Regency. Using the intimacy, accessibility, and fluidity of the medium, this podcast brings together the public, artists, curators, librarians, scholars, and cultural critics who share their passion for questions of race in this period. Unlike ideas and engagements that can often stay confined behind academic paywalls, this podcast facilitates space for community members and connoisseurs of the Regency era to think together and build together.

Listening with and to a range of people who speak in varied accents and tones, The Race and Regency Pod works as a practice in embodied scholarship. We imagine what enthusiasm and engagement sound like when directed towards sharing, community building, resistance, and self-expression. This podcast will house diverse conversations that expand the conception of the Regency era thematically, geographically, and temporally, by considering how we inherit formulations of race from this period and engage with them now.

Welcome to the Race and Regency Pod!

Today, we are joined by Damienne Scott, who is a Professor, scholar, critic, and advocate. She is the founder and moderator of the community Black Girl Loves Jane, a Facebook group devoted to promoting and celebrating diversity within the Austen community. Dami supports an inclusive online environment for readers and lovers of Austen and demonstrates how people with different cultural identities and who come from various backgrounds find meaning and importance in the writings and stories of Austen.

Dami has conducted interviews on her work for various outlets and been spotlighted by the Jane Austen Summer Program on multiple occasions. She has also published “Sanditon and the Pineapple Emoji Craze” in Persuasions Online.

To learn more about the Race and Regency Lab, visit https://www.raceandregency.org/

The Race and Regency Pod works as a dynamic sonic space to lend an ear to all things Race and Regency. Using the intimacy, accessibility, and fluidity of the medium, this podcast brings together the public, artists, curators, librarians, scholars, and cultural critics who share their passion for questions of race in this period. Unlike ideas and engagements that can often stay confined behind academic paywalls, this podcast facilitates space for community members and connoisseurs of the Regency era to think together and build together.

Listening with and to a range of people who speak in varied accents and tones, The Race and Regency Pod works as a practice in embodied scholarship. We imagine what enthusiasm and engagement sound like when directed towards sharing, community building, resistance, and self-expression. This podcast will house diverse conversations that expand the conception of the Regency era thematically, geographically, and temporally, by considering how we inherit formulations of race from this period and engage with them now.