To accommodate international members in China, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific who represent about a third of our region’s members, JASNA Virtual Region is doing this regional meeting on a different date and time to hopefully bridge the time difference and reach more Virtual Region members with the addition of at least 2 or 3 other meetings each year in addition to our regular five scheduled meetings. These meetings will occur in the months in which we do not have our regular USA programming and be held early morning at 8 or am in those areas which will be 8 or 9 pm Central time in the USA. Adjust for your time zone. This will permit our US members to attend without it being too late and for our members in China, Asia, Australia and Pacific areas to attend when it is not too early.

Student Dauting Tao (Tina) and Dr. Po-Yu (Rick) Wei will jointly discuss this topic from their perspectives. Dr Wei, the New Voices Breakout Speaker at the JASNA 2025 AGM, is a lecturer at Wenzhou-Kean University in China, teaching literature and composition. His research interests include eighteenth-century English literature, culture, and society; Regency England; and the study of Jane Austen. Topics of his recent essays include eighteenth-century motherhood and female gamesters, Austen’s dietary philosophy, food and Francophobic sentiment, and Jane Austen's ethics of shyness.