“I love introducing new readers to the great English novels and hearing their responses and interpretations. I teach through discussion — collaborative analysis — which makes the most of the varied perspectives that Goucher students bring.”
Juliette Wells
ProfessorLiterary Studies
Juliette Wells is Professor of Literary Studies in the Department of Visual, Literary, and Material Culture at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. The author of three histories of Austen’s readers, all published by Bloomsbury Academic, and the editor of two Penguin Classics editions of Austen, she will guest co-curate a major, international Austen exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York in 2025. Forthcoming in 2023 is A New Jane Austen: How Americans Brought Us the World’s Greatest Novelist, which centers on visionary writers and collectors who, from the 1880s to the 1980s, advocated for Austen’s literary significance, broadened her readership, and preserved artifacts vital to her legacy. Reading Austen in America (2017) offers a vivid account of how an appreciative audience for Austen’s novels originated and developed in America, and how American readers contributed to the rise of Austen’s international fame. Everybody's Jane: Austen in the Popular Imagination (2011) explores the importance of Austen to readers and fans today. All these books highlight Goucher’s exceptional Jane Austen collection and its creator, alumna Alberta H. Burke. For Penguin Classics.
Dr. Wells created reader-friendly 200th-anniversary editions of Austen’s novels Persuasion (2017) and Emma (2015). Her more than thirty-five articles and book chapters include examinations of Austen’s novels and adaptations, as well as essays on Austen pedagogy. An acclaimed speaker to popular and scholarly audiences, she was a guest on Jane Austen & Co.’s spring 2021 “Race and the Regency” series and regularly gives lectures to national and regional meetings of the Jane Austen Society of North America.
Research, Scholarship, Creative Work in Progress
A New Jane Austen: How Americans Brought Us the World’s Greatest Novelist (Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming 2023)
“Afterword: Sex, Romance, and Representation in Uzma Jalaluddin’s Ayesha at Last,” in Jane Austen, Sex, and Romance: Engaging with Desire in the Novels and Beyond (University of Rochester Press, forthcoming 2022)
“‘He has great pleasure in seeing the performances of other people’: Austen’s Men and the Arts,” in The Edinburgh Companion to Jane Austen and the Arts (University of Edinburgh, forthcoming 2023)
“‘Here’s harmony!’: Music and Gender in Kirke Mechem’s Pride and Prejudice (2019) and Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park (2011),” in Women and Music in Georgian Britain (Bucknell University Press, forthcoming 2023)
“Austen in Public,” in Objects of Study: Teaching Book History and Bibliography Among the Disciplines (forthcoming)
Publications
“Race, Privilege, and Relatability: A Practical Guide for College and Secondary Instructors,” in The Routledge Companion to Jane Austen (Routledge, 2021)
“The Artist and the Austen Collector,” Persuasions On-Line 42:1 (winter 2021)
“Pride and Prejudice, Here and Now: Reflecting on a First-Year College Seminar,” Persuasions On-Line 41:2 (summer 2021), special issue, “Beyond the Bit of Ivory: Jane Austen and Diversity”
“Intimate Portraiture and the Accomplished Woman Artist in Emma,” in Art and Artifact in Austen (University of Delaware Press, 2020)
“‘Dear Aunt Jane’: Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and Jane Austen,” in After Austen: Reinventions, Rewritings, Revisitings (Palgrave, 2018)
External Awards, Honors, Grants
Jane Austen Society of North America Traveling Lecturer, Eastern Region: 2019–2022
Conference Papers & Panel Participation
“Books I Have Read: The Extraordinary Journals of Charles Beecher Hogan, Austen Collector and Scholar,” Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing, Amsterdam: July 2022
“The Artist and the Austen Collector,” Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) Annual General Meeting (AGM), Chicago: Oct. 2021
“The Determined Young Author Then and Now: Connections and Reflections,” co-presented with Avery Yoder-Wells, JASNA AGM (virtual): Oct. 2020
Invited Talks
“Lady Dalhousie and Jane Austen,” lecture, Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) – Halifax, NS region, Halifax Central Library: Oct. 2022
“A New Jane Austen: How Americans Brought Us the World’s Greatest Novelist,” Lorraine Hanaway Memorial Lecture, JASNA – Eastern PA region, Free Library of Philadelphia: Sept. 2022
“New Discoveries about the Topaz Crosses and their American Owner, Charles Beecher Hogan,” JASNA – Central Virginia Region (virtual): Aug. 2022
“Why You Should Read Oscar Fay Adams,” JASNA – Southwest region (virtual): Jan. 2022
“Austen in Translation,” keynote, “Jane Austen in the Pan Pacific” symposium (virtual): Nov. 2021
“Looking at Emma Woodhouse with 21st Century Eyes,” keynote, JASNA – Capital Region Annual Jane Austen Retreat, Lake George, NY: June 2021
“A Labor of Love and Friendship: Alberta H. Burke, Averil Hassall, and the Building of a Transatlantic Austen Collection,” Washington Area Group for Print Culture Studies, Library of Congress, Washington, DC: March 2020
Academic or Professional Associations
Modern Language Association
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing
Jane Austen Society of North America
Other Professional or Scholarly Activity
Member, editorial board, Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal: 2011–present
Member, Jane Austen Society of North America Archives & History Committee: 2019–present