The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

          When Dr. MaryJo Yannacone, Villanova BS ‘90, MA ‘94, and Superintendent of Springfield Township School District, entered my Zoom call midday on a quiet Friday afternoon, she had already dealt with a litany of complicated problems and situations, including but not limited to handling a weather-induced facilities breakdown, attending a regional superintendents meeting, running a business meeting, addressing a student matter, and, the cherry on top, being notified of an active water main break affecting one of the district’s buildings mere minutes before our conversation began. Dr. Yannacone, however, radiated such a present, attentive calmness that I had no idea any of this was going on until I asked her what a typical day in her life as a superintendent looks like.             “There's no predictability about the day,” she explained. “You can schedule your calendar for meetings, school visits, and oth...

English faculty and graduate students are cordially invited to attend the Graduate English Conference at nearby Lehigh University on March 20th. The theme of the conference is literature and social justice, in particular in relation to health, and the keynote speaker is Dr. Travis Lau.  You can register by March 1st to attend by visiting Lehigh's registration form .

  Dr. Tsering Wangmo braved the weather this past weekend in order to facilitate a packed poetry workshop at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. Professor Wangmo's workshop was part of a series, titled "I See You Face to Face," named in honor of Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," referencing that Whitman once worked at the Brooklyn Apprentices' Library, which ultimately became the Brooklyn Museum. The  series of workshops  takes place in art galleries within the museum, allowing poets to draw from the art they see around them in crafting their verse.  Dr. Wangmo's workshop took place in the Rubin Museum Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room. According to the Brooklyn Museum's  website , "The Rubin Museum Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room presents more than 100 artworks and ritual objects as they would be displayed in an elaborate Tibetan Buddhist household shrine—a space used for devotional prayer, offerings, and rituals. Scroll paintings (thangk...

 Registration for fall 2026 opens on March 23rd! Fall 2026 Course Descriptions ENG 8 000           What’s Hot? Introduction to Literary Theory         Dr. Michael Dowdy ENG 8460           Serious Whimsy          Dr. Joseph Drury ENG 8560           Victorian Publics & Populations         Dr. Mary Mullen ENG 9750           Literatures of US Empire         Dr. Yumi Lee ENG 9760           Climate Fiction         Dr. Heather Hicks ENG 8000 What’s Hot? Introduction to Theory Across the Discipline of English Dr. Michael Dowdy CRN Tuesday 7:30-9:30 pm This course will be run as a seminar in which each week, a differen...

While everyone else was being festive, English professors were busy at the Modern Languages Association Conference in Toronto in January. Professor Kamran Javadizadeh, the chair of the executive committee for the MLA’s Poetry and Poetics Forum, chaired two panels on poetry. Professor Megan Quigley delivered a paper entitled “Modernist Impersonality in the Age of AI,” and was an official mentor for other faculty at the conference! Per Dr. Quigley, "It was cold but wonderful."

  Coming Soon! Augustine and AI Panel discussion, on Monday, January 26th at 6 p.m. in Falvey 205. Featuring as a special guest Villanova MA alum el friedman, along with Villanova faculty. Organized by the English department AI committee.

Don James McLaughlin, who graduated from the Villanova MA program in 2009, has just published  Phobia and American Literature, 1705-1937: A Therapeutic History with Oxford University Press.  Per Don James's website, " Phobia and American Literature, 1705-1937: A Therapeutic History provides an intellectual history to explain how phobia first came to prominence as a medical diagnosis, political analytic, and aesthetic sensibility in American print cultures." The book "demonstrates how in the early 1800s a phobic imagination emerged by way of an experimental comparison integrating understandings of infectious disease and psychopathology: rabies and racism." The book goes on to analyze "how phobia evolved into a framework for exploring myriad themes, including the relationship between individual psychology and social injustice, the benefits and limits of empathy as a mode of political engagement, and various functions of fear as an affective force in civil s...

       Last week, I sat down for a chat with Alexis Atwood ‘26 to discuss how one class from her first semester of courses in the Graduate English program inspired her to pursue a fascinating research topic. Alexis arrived at Villanova last fall and, as a first-year student, took the required ENG8000: Literary Theory with Dr. Heather Hicks, a survey course designed to introduce first-years to a wide variety of theoretical fields and frameworks. She told me how two particular classes in ENG8000—on Vulnerability Studies and Border Studies—helped her build upon her pre-existing scholarly interests and develop them further in a new context.       “I’ve always been interested in discourse in particular and the ways that discourse exposes systems of dominance, so I think that's kind of what brought me to Vulnerability Studies," said Alex.  "And then I found that poetry was a potent source to pull from when it came to understanding discourse and the...

On Friday, December 5th, Dr. Tsering Wangmo presented virtually on "Chigdrel and the Politics of Sorrow" as part of  The Khyentse Foundation Buddhist Studies Lecture Series , sponsored by Northwestern University. According to the summary provided by Northwestern, Dr. Wangmo examined "a lesser-known chapter in Tibetan exile history through the story of the Group of Thirteen, a collective of Khampa chieftains and religious leaders who established settlements in India in the mid-1960s with a hope to protect their diverse regional and religious traditions. This decision set them apart from the majority Tibetan refugees who joined the settlements established by the Tibetan government. They were cast as being opponents to Tibetan unity." This presentation relates to subjects covered more extensively in Dr. Wangmo's recently published book,  The Politics of Sorrow . Focusing on the early years of Tibetan exile life in India and Nepal, this book marks a significant chan...

  Jenna Kosnick '26, pictured alongside Dr. Mary Mullen and Julia Reagan '26           I recently sat down with Jenna Kosnick, who’s in their second year of pursuing a master’s degree in English, to hear about their experience attending 2025’s North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA 25) conference last month. Hosted by Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., from November 13th to 16th, NAVSA 25 invited Victorian Studies academics from across the country to discuss how their work identifies and examines the ripple effects of and linkages between the Victorian period and today’s modern world. NAVSA 25 offered panels with focus ranging across disciplines, including “Urban Aftermaths: The Literary City,” “Art and Intimate Spaces in the Victorian Home,” “Cognition, Belief, and The Real,” and “Empire, Slavery, and The Gothic,” which was moderated by the department’s own Dr. Mary Mullen and featured Jenna’s talk, “The Gothic Reigns in Demerara ...