“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, Professor of Literary Studies, is a scholar, teacher, and writer who is passionately committed to helping readers of all backgrounds connect with literature, and who brings her groundbreaking research on Jane Austen to audiences around the world. In summer 2025, The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City will celebrate the year of Austen’s 250th birthday with an exhibition guest co-curated by Dr. Wells. “A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250” will illuminate Austen’s authorship and her American reception by presenting manuscripts from the Morgan in the context of major loans from institutions including Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, England. The show will celebrate, too, the life’s work of the distinguished Austen collector Alberta H. Burke, who made landmark bequests to Goucher, her alma mater, and the Morgan. “A Lively Mind” takes inspiration from Dr. Wells’s trio of books on Austen’s readers and fans, most recently A New Jane Austen: How Americans Brought Us the World’s Greatest Novelist (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). A New Jane Austen 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 world-renowned Jane Austen collection and its creator, alumna Alberta H. Burke. 2025 will see the publication of Dr. Wells’s new reader-friendly edition of Austen’s novel Mansfield Park, which joins her 200th-anniversary editions of Persuasion (2017) and Emma (2015). Dr. Wells’s 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 Austen societies and other reading groups.
Research, Scholarship, Creative Work in Progress
“‘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, 2024)
A New Jane Austen: How Americans Brought Us the World’s Greatest Novelist (Bloomsbury Academic, 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 the Age of Austen (Bucknell University Press, 2023)
“Pride and Prejudice through American Eyes,” Persuasions On-Line 44.1 (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, 2022)
“Austen in Public,” in Teaching Text Technologies and Critical Bibliography Among the Disciplines: Objects of Study (Routledge, forthcoming 2025
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
“‘The first ever held in honor of the great novelist’: The 1951 Frostburg ‘Jane Austen Festival,’” panel on “Access and Accessibility: Jane Austen in Library, Exhibition, and Archive Spaces,” Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing, Reading, UK: July 2024
“Recognizing Oscar Fay Adams as Austen’s First Critical Editor and Biographer,” British Association for Romantic Studies, Glasgow: July 2024
Participant, roundtable on “Reading Communities / Communities of Reading,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Toronto: April 2024
“Pride and Prejudice through American Eyes,” Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) Annual General Meeting (AGM), Denver: Nov. 2023
Invited Talks
“A New Jane Austen: How Americans Brought Us the World’s Greatest Novelist,” lecture in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the museum, Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, England: July 2024
“An Early Reader of Austen in North America: Christian, Countess of Dalhousie,” Jane Austen Society (UK) Scottish Branch, Carnegie Library, Dunfermline, Scotland: July 2024
“Nurturing a Strong Self in Sense and Sensibility,” Jane Austen Day at Manor Mill, Monkton, MD: May 2024
“Setting Boundaries and Self-Care in Persuasion,” Jane Austen Day at Manor Mill, Monkton, MD: June 2023
“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
“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
Academic or Professional Associations
Modern Language Association
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
British Association for Romantic Studies
Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing
Jane Austen Society of North America
Jane Austen Society (UK)
Other Professional or Scholarly Activity
Instructor, “David Copperfield through 21st Century Eyes,” virtual course, Rosenbach Library, Philadelphia: May–June, 2024
Instructor, “Reading Austen’s Emma with Juliette Wells,” virtual course, Rosenbach Library, Philadelphia: April–May, 2023
Member, editorial board, Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal: 2011–present
Member, Jane Austen Society of North America Archives & History Committee: 2019–present