Sarah J. Makowski

PhD, English Language and Literature (Cognitive Narratology), RWTH Aachen University, Aachen Center for Cognitive and Empirical Literary Studies.
Dissertation: Jane Austen’s Mean Girls: A Biocultural Approach to Shared Experience Between Literature and Life.
MA, Art History, University of Maryland, College Park.
Thesis: Becoming Someone: Modersohn-Becker’s 1906 Anniversary Self-Portrait.
BA (honors), English Language and Literature, Open University.
BA (honors), Fine Arts, Western Michigan University, Lee Honors College.
Thesis: The Artist as Creator of the New Soviet Society: Malevich’s Suprematism Contrasted with the Constructivism of Tatlin.

PUBLICATIONS

Bitches in Bonnets: Life Lessons from Jane Austen’s Mean Girls, Prometheus Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 9781633888548, 2023.

Jane Austen’s Mean Girls: A Biocultural Approach to Shared Female Experience between Literature and Life, RWTH Aachen University, DOI: 10.18154/RWTH-2021-08123, 2021.

“‘Do you know who I am?’ Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Jane Austen’s Proto-Karen.” Persuasions Online, Jane Austen Society of North America, Winter 2020.

COLLABORATION IN PUBLICATIONS

2006 - 2025
Opinion posts: The New York Times, Women Writers, Saatkorn.de
Corporate magazines: NTT Data Business Solutions, Winkelmann Group AG & Co. KG, Sony Europe GmbH

1999
International Directory of Organizations in Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

1997
Russian Constructivist Roots: Present Concerns, Art Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, ISBN 9780937123355

CONFERENCE PAPERS/PRESENTATIONS

2025
“OG Networking: Regency Printmaking History and Workshop,” Jane Austen Festival, Bath, UK
”Austen’s Continued Relevancy as Seen Through Her Mean Girls,” JASNA PodSquad Podcast.

2024
“Unravelling Identity: Exploring the Enigmatic Past of a Misidentified Grandfather,” Ontario Genealogy Society AGM, Toronto, Canada.

2023
“Austen’s Troublesome Mums: Good and Dead or Bad and Alive?” Jane Austen Festival, Bath, UK.

“We Take No Leave of You, Lady Catherine: The Rocky Realities of Female Aging in the Regency and Today” JASNA AGM, USA.

2022
“Jane Austen’s Mean Girls” JASNA (Pittsburgh Chapter).

2021
“How Box Hill Makes Mean Girls of Us All, “Jane Austen Festival, Bath, UK, and Jane Austen Society, England (Northern Branch).

2017
“Jane Austen’s Alpha Girls: A Sociopsychological Approach to Emma,” Jane Austen in a Global Context Conference, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.

1999
“Exploring Paula Modersohn-Becker’s Anniversary Self-Portrait,” National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.