The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

image retrieved from events.stanford.edu Dr. Kamran Javadizadeh traveled to California this past spring to give talks on the poets Jack Spicer and Solmaz Sharif. We sat down with Dr. Javadizadeh recently to hear more about these talks, which covered subjects as diverse as poets as radios, the notion of AI poetry, assimilation and language, and Iranian immigrant experience in the US. We first discussed Dr. Javadizadeh’s lecture at the Stanford Center for Poetics, which describes itself as “a home for research in poetics across periods, languages, and methods.” His talk, which took place on April 23 rd , was titled "Making Contact: Jack Spicer and Phatic Poetics." Dr. Javadizadeh borrows the concept of “phatic language” from the Russian linguist Roman Jakobson, a concept which Dr. Javadizadeh describes as a variety of language in which “you’re not communicating, so much as you’re calling attention to the channel along which you are about to be communicating.” Some examples mi...

Emily Skillings Our newest faculty member, Emily Skillings, who will begin teaching with us this fall, was just awarded a Howard Foundation Fellowship by the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation. The Foundation awarded 14 fellowships totaling $560,000 to support early mid-career individuals. Each recipient received an unrestricted $40,000 fellowship. The funds provide time to advance independent creative and scholarly work on a major project. Per the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation, "Since 1954, over 500 Howard Fellows have used the fellowship to transition from promising early-career status to recognized leaders in their fields. Howard Fellows have authored bestsellers, directed Oscar nominated feature-length films, and earned some of the world’s most prestigious honors including Pulitzer Prizes, the Rome Prize, and the Whiting Award. They have gone on to MacArthur, Guggenheim, and Carnegie Fellowships. "The Howard Foundation carefully selects its Fell...

For Stowell, Villanova’s graduate English program offered more than academic preparation—it provided the mentorship, teaching experience and intellectual community that continue to shape her work as a PhD candidate and educator today. Courtesy of Villanova CLAS News & Events When Olivia Stowell ’21 MA stepped into her first teaching assignment at the University of Michigan (which also happened to be in a 350-seat lecture hall), it easily could have overwhelmed her. Instead, she was prepared. Mentorship, classroom experience and faculty support in Villanova University’s graduate English program shaped not only how she teaches, but how she came to understand herself as an educator. “I love teaching; I really, really love it,” Stowell said. “I think one of the things that was valuable about my Villanova experience was the way it prepared me.” Currently a PhD candidate in the University of Michigan’s Communication and Media program, Stowell is taking the next steps in her educational a...

 Congratulations to our Spring 2026 MA graduates! Alexis Atwood, Carly Johnson, Maggie Jones, Katy Kessler, Jenna Kosnick, Ashley Lee, Griffyn Leeds, Ryan Miller, Anne Monsalve, Nosike Okafor, Natalie Pititto, Matthew Raskob, and Julia Reagan Here are some graduation pics graciously shared  by Katy Kessler:

Blogging for Scholars: Feeding Curiosities Through Research and Writing By. Alexis M. Atwood MA '26 Losing touch with the things that inspire us most is an almost imperceptible process. In youth, we are often pulled in vastly different directions; devouring books one day, exploring art or building scale models the next. These interests can fade into obscurity if not looked after carefully. As we grow to take on more responsibilities, we can begin to lose track of the small joys that lift our spirits and fill our days with simple wonder. As a scholar, I write firstly to remind myself of the things that I have lost touch with; to reconnect with a sense of imaginative play and exploration. I write also for others, to hopefully spark a sense of lighthearted curiosity for anyone who may come across my work.    I was fortunate at a young age to have friends who aspired to write novels and some who had journals and journals filled with poetry, friends who made me wish I had som...

By Griffyn Leeds MA '26 The English Department has generously funded my MA thesis research through the Graduate Mini-Grant funds. I am studying how the disease tuberculosis is staged in performance, and the most popular performance right now is  Moulin Rouge!  on Broadway. The funds granted afforded me the opportunity to see  Moulin Rouge!  and experience the extravagant spectacle in person. The experience was so incredible and so informative for my research. My thesis is now stronger for having seen the show live, and I could not have pursued this opportunity without the English Department’s generosity. I am grateful and overjoyed, and am so excited to complete my thesis on tubercular drama. Thank you Villanova University!

  Dr. Joe Drury recently presented at the American Society for 18th Century Studies conference in Philadelphia, which took place April 9-11. At the event, Dr. Drury presented his paper, “‘A Singular Man’: James Boswell’s Oddness,” which posits Boswell’s “oddness” as whimsy, a trait characterized by his almost compulsive tendency to overshare.  I was given the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Drury to discuss his paper in further detail. He cites Sianne Ngai’s book Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, and Interesting, as sparking his interest in whimsy. Ngai’s book, Dr. Drury explains, is a “cultural analysis of our everyday aesthetic vocabulary,” especially that vocabulary which extends beyond the popular yet constraining conception of aesthetics as beauty. While Ngai’s novel explores the “zany, cute, and interesting,” Dr. Drury is more interested in whimsy. Dr. Drury explains that whimsy “has its origins in the period that I study, the Enlightenment, the long 18th century…I ...

The Graduate English program celebrated its 16th annual Thesis and Field Exam Symposium last night, with nine students presenting on their theses and field exams to an audience of over 25 students, faculty, and staff in SAC 300.  After everyone had a chance to enjoy dinner, Graduate Director Mary Mullen opened the evening with a toast to the graduating class. We then began the academic presentation portion of the evening with students presenting in groups of three followed by time for questions and discussion.  The first student to present was Alexis Atwood, who presented her field exam on Civil War, Poetics, and Vulnerability: Investigating Corporal Vulnerability in Salvadoran Poetry of Witness. Her field exam was based upon a comprehensive reading of selected poems of witness, memoirs, and testimonial narratives that surround the civil war in El Salvador in the late 1970s. Her aim was to explore how poetic forms represent corporeal vulnerability and to understand how poems b...

We are excited to announce that Professor Kamran Javadizadeh recently published a new article, "Robert Frost at Midlife," in The Yale Review.  In his article, Dr. Javadizadeh presents Robert Frost as a midlife poet grappling with his career amidst evolving poetic trends. His astute readings of "Nothing Gold Can Stay," "To Earthward," and "I Will Sing You One-O" offer insight into Frost's preoccupation with mortality, loneliness, and the inevitable passage of time. Click here to read the full article in Dr. Javadizadeh's elegant prose.  If podcasts are more your thing, be sure to check out Professor Javadizadeh's "Close Readings," available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts . 

Although people often think humanities research is conducted by individuals, it is always collaborative. For Professor Mary Mullen, there is no greater pleasure than thinking with other people and refining research and writing with them. Professor Mullen's recently published co-edited volume, with Professor Renee Fox, titled   Race, Violence, and Form: Reframing Nineteenth-Century Ireland , is the product of several collaborative conversations at the University of Notre Dame, Villanova University, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. The volume is dedicated to Sara Maurer, Mary's undergraduate professor, mentor, and friend, who dreamed up ideas behind the book.  For more about this important volume, see  this recent blog  post from Liverpool University Press.