Janeite Spotlight: Introducing Renata Dennis
- Sarah Hurley
- 9 hours ago
- 4 min read
Welcome back to the Janeite Spotlight series, dear readers! As most of you know by now, the Janeite Spotlight project is dedicated to showcasing and connecting Austen fans around the globe, without whom Jane Austen’s legacy might have disappeared in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This Spotlight highlights Renata Dennis, world-traveling Janeite and JASNA Regional Coordinator.
Meet Renata Lynn Dennis, a sixty-six-year-old newly retired nurse, “peony-obsessed” gardener, frequent patron of art museums around the world, Star Trek enthusiast, and ardent Janeite. With a career-Army father, Renata grew up moving around the East Coast and American South. She graduated from an American high school in Germany and speaks the German language fluently. After attending college in Illinois, Renata pursued an additional undergraduate nursing degree and master’s degree in public health in Atlanta, Georgia, where she has now resided for over forty years—barring a brief period of hiatus spent in Germany and Austria.
One thing Renata has carried with her through all her years and travels, however, is her love of Jane Austen. In tenth grade, she read several classic novels for class, including Pride and Prejudice. “I remember thinking it was an interesting story,” she says, but she didn’t revisit it in any serious capacity until decades later.
In her mid-20's, Renata had the opportunity to tour the South of England, at which time she spent half a day in Winchester. Wandering through Winchester Cathedral, she eventually found herself standing by Jane's grave. Overcome with emotion, Renata recalls praying for Jane’s memory, as well as the infamous written works she left behind. In the 1990s, she watched the film and television adaptations of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and Pride and Prejudice. While Persuasion is her favorite of Austen’s novels, she was struck by Elizabeth Bennet’s on-screen spunk and charisma, calling her a real “twenty-first-century woman.”
“Where did she come from?” Renata muses. “How did this pastor's daughter [Jane Austen] who never made it out of England come up with such a character ... unless there is a little bit of herself in Miss Bennet!”
Fueled by her interest in the adaptations, Renata soon read Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Persuasion, but thought little more of Austen until 2008 when PBS released series on all six Jane Austen novels, spurring Renata to read Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Mansfield Park as well. Around this time, she also discovered an online PBS Program Guide for Teachers with a blurb about JASNA. “I thought, what? There’s a group?” she laughs. She quickly located Atlanta’s local JASNA branch, “and the rest is history.”
Flash forward to the present: Renata is a JASNA Regional Coordinator and member of the Board of Directors. She has attended several AGMs and planned regional events in Georgia for the last couple of years. Renata loves the stimulating conversations that abound in their local JASNA region, facilitated by self-made and professional Austen scholars alike. A few years ago, she attended a wedding in Oxford, England “and used everything but a donkey cart to get to the Chawton College Jane Austen [House Museum]! I could have stayed all day, but I had to catch the bus back to Winchester.”
As an amateur scholar, Renata has presented regionally and on the JASNA Austen Chat about Dido Belle, who was likely the inspiration for Sanditon’s Miss Lambe, and her connection to Jane Austen. She also presented on hats and bonnets worn by women in Regency England at a recent AGM. Currently, Renata is in the process of researching headpieces in the Regency Caribbean, including those worn by White, Black, biracial, free, and enslaved women, “because for some of them, there were RULES.” She loves connecting with Janeite friends who are costume experts, and while she “would give [her own] seamstress skills a B-,” she learns something new with each costume she sews.
Left and right: Renata's Brunias-inspired costumes. Middle: Agostino Brunias's A West Indian Flower Girl and Two Other Free Women of Color (1769). Image source: Yale Center for British Art.
In the photos above, Renata has donned outfits she designed based upon paintings of Agostino Brunias which depict women of color in the Caribbean in the early Regency period. Although his paintings are now controversial due to his romanticization of the clothing and presentation of enslaved women, they offer some of the only depictions of these women available today. The dress Renata is wearing here is a re-creation of what a free woman of color wore in the Regency Caribbean.
Going forward, Renata is excited to foster space in the Austen community to make fandom accessible to all, regardless of their particular interest. “Not everyone wants to discuss the books, letters, or biographies... But what are they interested in? While not all Austen groups can meet the needs of all people, they should be welcomed, nonetheless, and let's help people find a good fit for their ‘Austen fix.’”
Excerpted from email correspondence with Renata Dennis, January 24, 2025.
Meet other passionate Janeites at JASP 2025: Sensibility and Domesticity, taking place at Tryon Palace in New Bern, NC June 19-22. Register here today!
JASP 2025 is partially supported by a grant from North Carolina Humanities.
I loved reading about this Janeite!