The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

Kathleen Hynes won third place for her submission to the 2011 Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest hosted by the Ayn Rand Institute. Congratulations Katie for standing out from over 2,200 submissions! Click here  to view the list of winners and contest information.

Kathleen Hynes won third place for her submission to the 2011 Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest hosted by the Ayn Rand Institute. Congratulations Katie for standing out from over 2,200 submissions! Click here to view the list of winners and contest information.

Graduate English students, along with a guest, are cordially invited to a holiday open house on Sunday, December 18th from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. at the home of Dr. Lauren Shohet. Please RSVP via email to Dr. Hicks by Friday, December 9th.

The Graduate English Department is happy to introduce a new Independent Study option, which permits students to research and share information about non-academic career options for students with an M.A. in English. Below is a description of the Professional Research Option (PRO). Please let Dr. Hicks know if you have questions about this 3-credit independent study. Students who would like to register for this option can contact Susan Burns. The Professional Research Option (PRO) is a three-credit independent study in which students identify one or a cluster of jobs or professions in which an advanced degree in literature is beneficial. In the course of the semester, students will research the career options of interest, identifying one or two fields as the focus of their work. They must generate a research paper that explores the history and future prospects of the field of interest, as well as current information about the requirements of the work, geographical information...

This Tuesday, Dec. 6 at 7 p.m . in the Villanova Room of the Connelly Center , Harvard Professor Jill Lepore will be giving a talk entitled "Poor Jane Almanac: The Life and Opinions of Benjamin Franklin's Sister, an 18th century tale of two Americas." Dr. Lepore is the rare academic who straddles the worlds of academia and the mainstream press, and her talk should be fascinating and engaging. Along with being a prolific author of scholarly books and articles, she is also a staff writer for the New Yorker. Refreshments will be offered immediately following the talk.

If you are in the process of drafting your Thesis or Field Exam proposal, of if you are just interested in the process, here are a few exemplary Thesis and Field Exam proposals for you to review: Thesis Proposal model 1 Thesis Proposal model  2 Field Exam Paper model Field Exam Proposal model 2 Field Exam Proposal model 3

The Graduate English Department is hosting a Thesis and Field Examination Workshop on Tuesday, November 29th at 7:30 in SAC 300.  Lots of information about the thesis and field examination process will be provided, followed by a question and answer session. Pizza and drinks will be served. Please RSVP to Dr. Hicks by Wednesday, November 23rd at 5:00 p.m.

This Friday afternoon, November 11th , at 4:00 in Vasey Theater , well-known Irish poet Eamon Grennan is staging a dramatic recital by two actors of a verse play he has written called “Hunger.” The play has had great reception where it has played, and it runs less than an hour. Please consider kicking off your weekend with this major cultural event!

The 2012 Villanova Literary Festival lineup has been finalized, and we are in for a great round of readings this spring. All of the readings will be at 7:00 p.m. in the Connelly Center. February 2: Poet C.D. Wright Her poetry includes One with Others (volume; 2011 Lenore Marshall Prize); Rising, Falling, Hovering (volume; Griffin Poetry Prize); One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana (volume; 2003); and Deepstep Come Shining (book-length; 1998). Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and the Bunting Institute. February 21: Poet and Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair Juan Felipe Herrera The son of migrant farm workers, he attended UCLA, Stanford, and the University of Iowa. His work includes Half of the World in Light (2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry; 2009 PEN/Beyond Margins Award) and 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border (2008 PEN West award). Among his honors are two National End...

Africana Studies is sponsoring a lecture by Dr. Tess Onwueme, University of Wisconsin Professor of Global Letters. As the seventh annual Senghor-Damas-Cesaire lecture in Africana Studies, she will be presenting "Erupting Silences: Dr. Tess Onwueme Speaks/Performs the Soul of Africana" on November 14 at 4:00 pm at the Connelly Cinema . Click here to view the event postcard The event is co-sponsored by the Cultural Studies Program and the Institute for Global Interdisciplinary Studies.

Mark your calendars for the annual Graduate English Program Forum on applying for the Ph.D. On Tuesday, November 15 at 7:30 p.m. in SAC 300 , our two newest faculty members, Dr. Joe Drury, who received his Ph.D. at Penn, and Dr. Kamran Javadizadeh, who received his Ph.D. at Yale, will talk about the decision to pursue a Ph.D. and the nuts and bolts of applying. One of our recent graduates of the M.A. program, Don James McLaughlin, who is now pursuing his Ph.D. at Penn, will also talk about life in a Ph.D. program. Please email Dr. Hicks to R.S.V.P. by Friday, November 4th at 5:00 pm.

The New York Times recently published an article entitled "I was an Under-Age Smiotician" by Steven Johnson.  Co-creator of Findings.com and author, most recently, of  Where Good Ideas Come From  and the editor of  The Innovator’s Cookbook , Johnson ruminates on the lasting effects of his semiotics major from Brown. Click here to read the article!

Check out UPenn English Department's CFP page, where you can find daily updates about calls for conference papers and journal submissions. Everyone is welcome to subscribe to the site, so  Click here  to browse the recent posts for upcoming conferences and journal issues. 

Deena ElGenaidi was busy this spring with three different conference presentations. On April 9, 2011 at University of Delaware's Geis Student Research on Women Conference, she presented her paper "Cruel Femininity: The Androgyny and Performative Femininity of Shakespeare's Queen Margaret." The following weekend, on April 16, 2011, she presented at University of Rhode Island's [Pre]Occupations Conference. Her paper was entitled "Flying to Freedom: Stephen Dedalus's Nietzschian Journey." Finally, on May 28, 2011 at Northwestern University's Queertopia Conference, she presented the paper "Escape through the Exotic: Dorian's Struggle with Homosexuality in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray."

Irish Studies has lined up a semester full of great lectures, readings, theatrical performances, and film screenings. On October 17 , Patrick Mason, one of Ireland's leading theatre directors, will give the inaugural lecture for the Villanova-Abbey Theatre Exchange . His lecture, focusing on the new Irish Theatre, will be held at Dougherty West Lounge at 7:00 pm and will be followed by a reception.  Click here to view the event poster! On November 1, Booker Nominated Novelist Patrick McGuinness will host a reading at 5:30 pm in the Falvey Library Lounge. Click here to view the Irish Studies fall 2011 event calendar Check back for future events, or visit the  Irish Studies website  for more information.

As part of our arrangement with the Women's Studies Consortium of Greater Philadelphia, Villanova Women's Studies is bringing Dr. Karen Barad to Villanova to run a seminar on "agential realism" on Wednesday, November 9th at 1:30 in the afternoon in Room 200 of the Health Center Building . Dr. Barad is a Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research topics include feminist theory, physics, twentieth-century continental philosophy, epistemology, ontology, philosophy of physics, cultural studies of science, and feminist science studies. Barad earned her Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics. Her topic for the seminar is "Entanglements of Matter and Meaning" -- agential realism as an ethico-onto-epistemological understanding of mattering; what is entanglement?; why and how do entanglements matter; how to think with phenomena rather than objects; how to simultaneously acknow...

Laura Freeman presented a paper entitled "What's Wrong with the Mainstream? Discovering a Feminist Poetics in the Lyrical Style of Marie Howe" at the University of Delaware's Geis Student Research on Women Conference in the spring of 2011.

A report on the 2010-11 MLA Job Information List (JIL) is now available on the MLA Web site. The report shows trends in the number of jobs announced in the JIL over the past thirty-six years (1975-76 to 2010-11) and provides an analysis of the characteristics of ads that departments have placed in the JIL's digital databases each year since 2000-01.The number of jobs advertised in 2010–11 rose by 90 (8.2%) in the English edition and by 73 (7.1%) in the foreign language edition since 2009–10. In 2010–11 the JIL’s English edition announced 1,190 positions, compared with 1,100 in 2009–10; the foreign language edition announced 1,095 positions, compared with 1,022 in 2009–10. The number of jobs advertised in 2010–11 remains a third below the 2007–08 peak, when the English edition announced 1,826 jobs and the foreign language edition announced 1,680 jobs. For the full report, go to:  http://www.mla.org/

Congratulations to Dr. Shohet, Associate Professor of English, for being appointed the first holder of the Luckow Family Endowed Chair in English! The Chair supports a nationally recognized scholar and highly-regarded teacher who enhances the scholarly reputation of the department, college and university, while also advancing the education of Villanova literature students. As Chair holder, Dr. Shohet hopes to draw international perspectives together, especially expanding English majors’ and graduate students’ opportunities to consider international dimensions of their studies. Dr. Shohet also plans to explore interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary opportunities within the department. Click here  to read the full article.

The Elizabeth Cady Stanton Conference on Gender and Women's Studies will take place starting at 1:00 on Thursday. The conference features presentations by both undergraduates and graduate students who have done research on gender and women's studies. The keynote address will be by Dr. Noel Sturgeon, who is a Professor of Women's Studies and American Studies at Washington State University. Dr. Sturgeon, who received her Ph.D. from the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California at Santa Cruz, will be presenting on the political vision of James Cameron's film Avatar, using the film to explore questions about the potential of popular culture to function as a mode of activism. The schedule of panels is as follows: SESSION I: 1:10-2:10 Postmodern Approaches to Feminism - DEVON ROOM Women's Agency in Literature - BRYN MAWR ROOM East-West Perspectives on Women in Society - ROSEMONT ROOM Women & War - HAVERFORD ROOM Performance of Oppres...

On Saturday, April 2nd, Villanova's Graduate English Program hosted our 2nd annual Thesis and Field Exam Symposium. The event was well-attended by current and prospective students, as well as members of the faculty. We would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to all those who came in support of our presenters, and give a special thank you to those who presented, Mary Beth Harris, Jessica Fullerton, Chris Bollini, Kelly Vass, Katie Prilutski, and James McAdams.

The second annual Thesis/Field Examination Symposium will take place on Saturday, April 2nd from 10:00 to noon in SAC 300. This event is conceived as an opportunity for students who are completing the program to present their research, while also giving first-year students a sense of the sorts of projects that are undertaken as master's theses and field examinations. We hope to have two consecutive one-hour sessions, in which students offer ten-minute presentations of their research. The event is structured so there is plenty of time for comments and questions by audience members and other presenters. Copious amounts of delicious gourmet coffee will be served before and during the event, and after the second session, there will be a catered lunch. We hope to see you there!

The English Department announces the following $100 prizes to be awarded for the best essays written for English classes. Essays can be entered by faculty or students. They should be emailed to Susan Burns, English Department secretary, (susan.burns@villanova.edu) The deadline is April 8, 2011. (1). Undergraduate Award - The Jerome J. Fischer Memorial Award, given to the most distinguished scholarly or critical essay written by an undergraduate student at Villanova. (2). Graduate Award - The Margaret Powell Esmonde Memorial Award, given to the most distinguished scholarly or critical essay written by a graduate student at Villanova. The two prize-winning essays will be published. Eligibility: Both competitions are open only to students taking courses at Villanova University, including night school courses. To be eligible, essays must have been (1) written within a year preceding the deadline (2) written either for a Villanova English course (2100 level or higher) or for ...

Each summer, the Univeristy of Notre Dame offers a three-week Irish Studies Seminar in Dublin that has a very strong national reputation. Tuition and housing are usually around $4,000 per student. This year, the seminar has offered a special "two students for the price of one" deal to our students. One student has already expressed interest in the program. If you are interested in participating, please contact Dr. Heather Hicks! Here is some more information regarding the program: The IRISH SEMINAR 2011: Irish Modernisms 20 June – 8 July 2011 THEME Modernism, marked by a strongly self-conscious rupture with tradition and a formal and conceptual inventiveness, is often understood as a vigorous reaction against established religious, social and political views. Informed on one hand by the horrors of the Great War (1914-18) and governed on the other by a belief that our world is created in the very act of perceiving it, no absolute truth existed to provide guidance o...

At 1:00 PM on Thursday, February 17th, Fiach Mac Conghail, the director of the Abbey Theater, is speaking to Irish Literature classes. The event will take place in the Villanova University Theatre and we encourage you to attend!

On Thursday the 17th of February, the Annenberg Center will be hosting the Abbey Theatre's production of "Terminus" by Mark O'Rowe. The event will take place at 8:00 PM and those graduate students who wish should attend should contact Dr. Joseph Lennon. Some free tickets are available!

At 4:30 PM on Tuesday, February 15th, the Irish Studies Program will be hosting "James Joyce, Pioneer of Page and Screen." There will be a lecture given by John McCourt of the University of Trieste, followed by a film. McCourt is a world-renowned Joyce scholar who has written about Joyce’s time in Trieste in his biography, The Years of Bloom: James Joyce in Trieste, 1904–1920. The event will take place in Room 300 of the St. Augustine Center and we encourage you to attend!

Anamesa , a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal of graduate student writing and art based at New York University, is now accepting submissions for its Spring 2011 print issue. Graduate students across all disciplines are encouraged to send in writing including but not limited to: ~Academic essays ~Creative non-fiction ~Reportage ~Interviews ~Reviews ~Short stories ~Poetry ~Other unclassifiable prose creations, and art of all sorts (such as photography, drawings, paintings, film stills, posters, prints, etc.). Anamesa considers material from diverse subject matter, and publishes creative and intelligent works that exemplify the transdisciplinary spirit of the graduate community. Submission guidelines for papers: Include complete paper (up to 6000 words), abstract (up to 200 words), and cover sheet. Academic papers must adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style. All paper submissions—both non-fiction and fiction—are blind-reviewed so there should be no author-identifying i...

On Thursday, February 3rd the Villanova Irish Studies Program helped celebrate James Joyce's birthday at Flip and Bailey's. There was Irish music, dance, and readings at the open mic from works by James Joyce and other Irish writers. The Villanova Irish Dance Club also performed, as did musicians from Villanova and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Thanks to all who attended and performed!

We are pleased to announce the schedule for the 13th annual Villanova Literary Festival, which will include a distinguished group of fiction writers and poets. The festival will begin on Tuesday, February 17th, with a reading by Monique Truong. Truong’s second novel, Bitter in the Mouth , was recently released by Random House. Her first novel, The Book of Salt , was a New York Times Notable Book. On February 17th Terrance Hayes will be reading his poetry. His most recent book, Lighthead (Penguin, 2010), has been short-listed for the 2010 National Book Award. On March 10th, novelist Colum McCann comes to the festival. McCann is the author of Let the Great World Spin , which won the 2009 National Book Award for fiction. His is also the bestselling author of the novels Zoli , Dancer , This Side of Brightness , and Songdogs , as well as two critically acclaimed story collections. On March 24th, poet Eleanor Wilner will read from her work. Wilner has published six collections o...