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Juliette Wells, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

WellsJuliette 130x150 jpgJuliette Wells is associate professor of English and chair of the English department.  She joined the Manhattanville faculty in 2003 upon receiving her PhD from Yale University; she also holds master’s degrees from Yale and Johns Hopkins.  Her undergraduate work at Hopkins was in English, women’s studies, and music performance.

Prof. Wells’s courses at Manhattanville involve Victorian literature, women’s writing, the novel, and contemporary literature.  Teaching her seminar “Jane Austen and Popular Culture” led her to research Austen adaptations, including films, and to develop a First-Year Seminar on “Pride and Prejudice: Text and Variations.”  Her articles on Austen’s cultural legacy have appeared in the journals Persuasions, Shakespeare, and Transnational Literature, as well as in several book collections, notably Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction (2006).  She served as the Features Editor for Penguin Classics’ Enhanced E-book edition of Pride and Prejudice (2008).

With support from the Jane Austen Society of North America’s International Visitor Program, Prof. Wells spent July 2009 in residence at Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, England, surveying visitors and staff about their responses to Austen and the house where she wrote.  In February 2010, Prof. Wells was the Jane Austen Scholar in Residence at Goucher College in Baltimore, which holds the correspondence of Alberta H. Burke, a passionate “Janeite” and bibliophile.  As part of her residence at Goucher, Prof. Wells presented a public lecture, “For the Love of Jane Austen.” 

While on sabbatical leave in 2010-2011, Prof. Wells completed a book on what Austen means to amateur readers today, which incorporates her research on literary tourism at Chawton and her work on Alberta Burke. Everybody’s Jane: Austen in the Popular Imagination is forthcoming in spring 2012 from Continuum. 

Prof. Wells has presented on Austen to regional, national, and international audiences, most recently as a Traveling Lecturer in 2010-2011 for the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA).  She designed the program for “Inspired by Jane Austen,” a symposium hosted by JASNA’s New York region at Manhattanville in March 2010, at which speakers ranging from Manhattanville students and staff to published authors explored how Austen influenced them both personally and professionally.

Prof. Wells joined the editorial board of Persuasions in 2011.  Outside the Austen realm, she has published articles on authors from George Eliot to Jasper Fforde, and on topics from feminine accomplishments to Oprah’s Book Club.  She coedited The Brontës in the World of the Arts (2008) and reviews books regularly for Brontë Studies.