Sigma Tau Delta 2026 Convention
Janine Utell
Workshop Leader
Janine Utell, award-winning writer, editor, and professor emerita of English and Creative Writing at Widener University, is the author of four books and editor of major scholarly volumes on modernism, life writing, and comics. She has led professional organizations, edited key journals in her field, and currently works for the Modern Language Association. At the convention, Utell will speak on career opportunities for English graduates and provide one-to-one mentoring sessions to support students’ professional development.
About the Author
Janine Utell is an award-winning writer and editor. Her areas of interest include modernist studies, multimodal narrative (including film and comics), life writing, and the intersections among gender, sexuality, affect, intimacy, and ethics.
She is the author of four books: Howard Cruse (University Press of Mississippi, 2023), Literary Couples and 20th-Century Life Writing: Narrative and Intimacy (Bloomsbury, 2019), Engagements with Narrative (Routledge, 2015) and James Joyce and the Revolt of Love: Marriage, Adultery, Desire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). She is the editor of the volumes Teaching Modernist Women’s Writing in English (Modern Language Association, 2021) and The Comics of Alison Bechdel: From the Outside In (University Press of Mississippi, 2020). These collections feature both established scholars and exciting new voices.
A new single-authored project is in progress: a book with the working title “Professions for Women and Institutional Bullshit.” This book considers negative affect and professional identity in women’s writing of the 1920s and 30s.
In addition to her writing, Janine has served as the Editor of “Orientations,” a forum dedicated to feminist and queer modernisms published on Modernism/modernity’s PrintPlus platform (2021-2023) and the Editor of The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914–1945 (2015-2020). She has often been invited to facilitate workshops and panels focused on writing, peer review, and publishing. She has also served as President of the Modernist Studies Association.
Janine has written on topics related to higher education, the humanities, writing, and leadership and mentoring (all with frequent references to her obsessions with cooking and baseball) as an occasional contributor to the University of Venus blog at Inside Higher Ed, Hybrid Pedagogy, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Until 2021, she was Professor and Chair of English and Creative Writing at Widener University in Chester, PA, and is now professor emerita. She divides her time between her home in the Queen Village neighborhood of Philadelphia and her job at the Modern Language Association in New York City.