Janice Radway

Janice Radway (born January 29, 1949) is an American literary and cultural studies scholar.

Radway holds a BA from Michigan State University, 1971, and a MA from State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1972. She earned her PhD from Michigan State University 1977 with the dissertation A Phenomenological Theory of Popular and Elite Literature. She taught in the American Civilization Department at the University of Pennsylvania and in the Literature Program (which she also chaired) at Duke University. She served as an editor of American Quarterly, and, in 1998-99, as president of the American Studies Association. In 2008, she became Walter Dill Scott Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. Radway is also professor emerita of Literature and History at Duke University.

Radway is very widely known for her scholarship on readers and reading in the contexts of romance novels, middlebrow culture, and American studies.