The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

George presented his paper entitled "Toy Guns: Agency, Performativity and Resignation in Pádraic Ó Conaire’s  Exile " at Notre Dame's Hybrid Irelands Conference on Friday, March 30, 2012.

Cynthia presented at the spring conference on Critical Theory, “Principles of Uncertainty,” at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her panel was labeled "Shifty Subjectivities: Race, Gender, and Contingent Imagery in Popular Culture" and consisted of three interlocking papers that explore the uncertainty created/perpetuated within 21st century popular culture, discussing the ways in which intersectional identities are constructed and informed by/through ideology, culture, and power. Her paper entitled “Cultural Miscegenation in Mansbach’s Angry Black White Boy” focused on Adam Mansbach’s protagonist, Macon Detornay, as a white boy who authentically reflects and refracts his abiding identification with Hip Hop Culture. One result of his embrace of Hip Hop culture is Macon’s ultra-identification with blackness, uncertainly construed in a world where even in his most earnest desires to deconstruct whiteness, it is black identity that is repeatedly over-determined. Hip Hop culture presents

Karen presented a paper entitled " 'A Bomb in Gilead': Biblical Subversion in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale" at this year's Elizabeth Cady Stanton Conference.

Ben recently traveled to  Manchester, UK to present his paper entitled "Between Critics: Dorian Gray and the Phallosocial Intellect" at the University of Salford's "Extremity and Excess" Graduate Conference.

Congratulations to Grace Oh, Alexandra Edwards, and Afton Woodward for their recent publications in Concept, Villanova's graduate journal! Grace's essay, entitled "The Reconstitution of Sisterhood in Augusta Webster's 'A Castaway,'" was published in both the printed and on-line forms of the journal.   Alex's essay "'Proper for a Lady's Brush': The Visual Arts in the Work of Louisa May Alcott," and Afton's essay, "'His Blood is Infected': Transmission of Disease and Wealth in Dickens's Bleak House," are both in the online version.

Ryan presented at three conferences this semester: Oklahoma State University's Frontiers and Borders Conference in Stillwater, OK; The 15th Annual Conference for the Association of the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities in Ft. Worth, TX; and The National Popular Culture & American Culture Association's National Conference in Boston, MA. He also has two forthcoming publications: "Effaced and Eroticized: Revealing and Refiguring Child Witnesses" will appear in the Fall 2012 issue of  Law and Literature  (Vol. 24, Issue 3), published for Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, by the University of California Press. "Ishmael's Impersonal Narration: Queer Style in  Moby-Dick " is forthcoming in Jan Van Eyck Akademie's  Issues in Contemporary Culture and Aesthetics .

Rebecca presented her paper entitled “Castles and chimeras” in the New World: Creating the American Gothic in  Edgar Huntly " at the April 2012  Shifting Tides, Anxious Borders,  Binghamton University's annual graduate student conference in Transnational American Studies.

Rebecca Wilson and Kathleen Hynes, along with professional tutor and Villanova alum Juliana Morro, facilitated a round-table discussion entitled: "After Hours: How Special Events Extend Writing Centers’ Reach" at the 23rd Conference of the Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association (MAWCA) in March 2012.