Janae Howe

Professional Bio

Professor Howe's teaching at Penn State focuses mostly on composition. She regularly teaches two different versions of ENGL 15: Rhetoric & Composition as well as ENGL 202D: Business Writing. At the Altoona campus, she sometimes teaches ENGL 202B: Advanced Writing in the Humanities.

In addition, she sometimes teaches in her first discipline: religious studies. She has taught ENGL 104: Bible as Literature during the summer LEAP session, and this fall she's teaching an online section of RLST 140Y: Religion in American Life & Thought.

Prof. Howe's research interests are diverse, including nostalgia and masculinity in North American film and television, British literature of the fin de siècle and Edwardian periods, the works of Henry de Vere Stacpoole (1863-1951), Robinsonades and other survival narratives, science fiction, utopian and apocalyptic literature, Spenser’s medievalism, classical and early modern pastoral literature, and Arthurian literature. Theoretically, she is orientated towards psychoanalytic theory, the work of Svetlana Boym on nostalgia, memory studies, empire studies, and postcolonialism.

Prof. Howe began her teaching career at the University of Southern Mississippi and at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, TX. Before she began teaching, she worked for 15+ years in the nonprofit and social services sector, and in that field, she served in a variety of roles from case management to volunteer recruitment to grant writing and program management.