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Janna Chance

Professor of English

About

Dr. Chance earned her B.A. in English and French from Texas A&M University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Rice University. She serves as president of the Union Faculty Forum and teaches a wide range of courses, including written composition, world literature, British literature surveys, Romanticism, the Victorians, women writers, and literary theory. Her main scholarly interest is in nineteenth-century British women writers, especially women writers of faith. She regularly presents papers at the annual British Women Writers Conference and is currently working on a book project entitled Sin, Gender, and Moral Complexity from Hannah More to the Brontës.

Education

  • Ph.D, Rice University

  • M.A., Rice University

  • B.A., Texas A&M University

Scholarship

Articles

  • Encyclopedia articles on Anne Raikes Harding’s 1819 novel Decision: A Tale and on W. Joseph Walter’s 1812 English translation of François-René de Chateaubriand’s The Martyrs, or The Triumph of the Christian Religion (2027)

    Cambridge Guide to the Novel, 1660–1820

  • ‘I am little and ignorant: but for all that I am right’: Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna and the Early-Victorian Controversy over Theological ‘Controversy’ (2026)

    Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature

  • Original Sin and Feminine Virtue in Hannah More’s Coelebs in Search of a Wife (2020)

    Christianity & Literature

  • Curious Readers, Feminine Modesty, and Autobiographical Authority in Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna’s Personal Recollections (2014)

    Journal of the Union Faculty Forum

Presentations

  • Death-Scene Didacticism in Catherine Sinclair’s Holiday House (2026)

    Victorians Institute Conference

  • Evangelical Conversion and Spiritual Abuse in Mary Ann Kelty’s The Story of Isabel (2026)

    British Women Writers Conference

  • Mary Martha Sherwood’s Infant’s Progress: Transforming Bunyan to Transform Child Readers (2025)

    British Women Writers Conference

  • ‘A negation of self is the very essence of Gospel morality’: Evangelical Conversion and Self-Abnegation in Mary Ann Kelty’s The Story of Isabel (2023)

    Midwest Conference on Christianity and Literature

  • Early Victorian Women Writers and the Controversy over ‘Controversy’ (2022)

    Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature

  • The Female Martyrs of the English Reformation: John Foxe and Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna for American Sunday Schools (2022)

    British Women Writers Conference

  • Looking Backwards and Forwards in Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna’s A Peep into Number Ninety (2019)

    Southeast Conference on Christianity and Literature

  • Conversions to Controversy in The Christian Lady’s Magazine and the Writings of Its Editor, Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna (2019)

    British Women Writers Conference

  • Femininity, Depravity, and Dangerous Knowledge in Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna’s Falsehood and Truth (2018)

    Southeast Conference on Christianity and Literature

  • Mary Augusta Ward (2010)

    2010 Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Association Conference

  • Fire, Brimstone, and Female Empowerment in the Anti-Oxford Movement Writings of Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna and Caroline Fry (2009)

    Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Association Conference

  • Femininity and Consent in Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Mansfield Park’ (2008)

    One Community, One Event Series sponsored by Jackson Public Library

Dissertations

  • Obeying God Rather than Men: Protestant Individualism and the Empowerment of the Victorian Heroine (2008)

    Rice University

Awards

  • Newell Innovative Teaching Award (2019)

    Faith, Doubt, and Literary Canonicity in ENG 427: Victorian Literature

  • Chair’s Dissertation Prize (2008)

    Awarded for the most outstanding dissertation of the year.