The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

The first annual Thesis/Field Exam Symposium has now been rescheduled and will be held on Saturday, March 27th, at 10:00 a.m., in the Honors Seminar Room. There are six presenters scheduled, and we welcome additional presenters to participate, as well. If you would like to present or attend, please RSVP by Monday, March 15th. Thank you!

Students wanting to get a raw and uncensored take on Ph.D. admissions can visit gradcafe.com. If you are currently applying, be warned: it is not for the faint of heart. The site includes discussion boards in which students who have applied to Ph.D. programs reveal if they have been accepted or rejected in real time. One additional disclaimer: the content is not vetted or policed, so you cannot trust its accuracy. Thanks to Andrew Owens for passing along this information.

See what the team behind the bestselling graphic novel Logicomix makes of the legacy of structuralism by checking out their latest comic strip at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/5284373a-1f94-11df-8975-00144feab49a.html. Thanks to Dr. Ormsby-Lennon for passing this along.

Nicole Monaghan, Villanova English MA '99, has recently published a poem in the online literary magazine  Foundling Review  (Feb. 2010, issue 3). Nicole is a stay-at-home mother to three children, ages 10, 8, and 4. She has written poetry, fiction, and nonfiction throughout her life and has recently begun pursuing publication of her work. Nicole won two prizes at the Philadelphia Writers' Conference in June, 2009, in the categories of Literary Short Story and Poetry. Her fiction is forthcoming in  Long Story Short .

Jana Llewellyn's blog, "An Attitude Adjustment: Making the Best of Stay-at-Home Motherhood," explores a range of issues through a feminist lens, and was recently given a "Beautiful Blogger" award. You can read her blog at http://www.anattitudeadjustment.com/ Since receiving her degree in 2006, Jana has taught at Country Day School of the Sacred Heart, Delco, and Cheltenham High School. In reflecting on her education in Villanova's Graduate English Program she says, "I'm most happy with my degree because I did it while I was working full-time and I loved doing it. It nourished me."

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Joseph Drury will be joining Villanova's English Department in the Fall of 2011. Dr. Drury received his B.A. from Oxford University, his M.A. from the University of London, and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University. Dr. Drury specializes in eighteenth-century fiction, and his recent articles include "Haywood’s Thinking Machines," published in Eighteenth-Century Fiction , and "The Novel and the Machine in the Eighteenth Century," published in Novel: A Forum on Fiction .