The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

Cathy Velez, a beloved English adjunct faculty member, was honored at a recent Villanova Women's Soccer game for Faculty Appreciation Day. This recognition happened during halftime where she was titled one of the game's inaugural MVPs... Most Valuable Professors. Professor Velez, who has taught English 1975 for many years, was touched by the kind gesture and celebration. Attached below is a photo of Professor Velez at the game. Go Nova, Go Cats!  - Juliana Catania MA '28

Who’s Afraid of Woolfbot? Professor Megan Quigley and MA Student Tate Gibbons Explore the Use of A.I. Chatbots in the Classroom By Nikola Stojcic MA ‘28 For many of us in the humanities, the encroachment of artificial intelligence usage into our academic lives has provoked feelings of wariness, to say the least. Indeed, what role is there, if any, for artificial intelligence in the field of English literature? For Professor Megan Quigley and 2nd year English MA student Tate Gibbons, the answer might look something like their custom chatbot, “The Lighthouse”--or, as it has come to be known, Woolfbot. In her forthcoming article “ Refined Out of Existence”: Modernist Impersonality Revisited, ” Professor Megan Quigley describes how in the summer of 2024 she began studying the recently unarchived eight volumes of T.S. Eliot’s Complete Prose . To help her sift through nearly 7000 pages of prose and to better understand and evaluate the usage of A.I. for herself, Professor Quigley created a ...

On Wednesday September 9th, Professor Mary Mullen visited the Keough-Naughton Institute at the University of Notre Dame for a panel discussion of her recently published co-edited volume Race, Violence and Form: Reframing Nineteenth-Century Ireland.  Working alongside co-editor Renée Fox and contributor Amy Mulligan, Professor Mullen's book aims to deepen understanding of the often-overlooked literature of nineteenth-century Ireland by " employing new methodological frameworks that expand how we understand the global, racial, formal, periodized, and political scope" of works from the era. The book is indebted to the work of retired University of Notre Dame Professor Sara Maurer, who Professor Mullen says "helped dreamed up the collection."   The book at the heart of the discussion. Professor Mullen with fellow panelists Renée Fox and contributor Amy Mulligan. Professor Mullen with retired University of Notre Dame Professor Sara Maurer. by Nikola Stojcic MA 28...

The English Department is happy to announce Co-Working Wednesdays!  Wednesdays in the English Department office (SAC 402) from 5:30-7:15 PM.  First session is September 30th . See you there!  

Dr. Alice Dailey developed a photography-writing project, titled “Love Poem with Ectoplasmic Materializations,” in collaboration with her son, Adam Dailey. This past August, Tupelo Quarterly published this project in a folio on collaboration.  Page 8 of "Love Poem with Ectoplasmic Materializations" Led by a fascination with creating analog spiritualistic photographs, Dr. Dailey found herself experimenting with several mediums outside of the process of photography itself. What started as a project to recreate Victorian spiritualist photographs transformed into her recently published photography-writing project, “Love Poem with Ectoplasmic Materializations.” Dr. Dailey describes this project as originating from a desire to understand the creation of analog spiritualist photographs alongside the theory of embodied practice as a form of historical knowledge.  “The project thus began with no writing or narration planned. I simply wanted to make pictures,” explains Dr. Dailey when...

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...