The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

Reposted from Villanova's English Department Blog . Dr. Chiji Akoma has been named one of the recipients of the 2013 Faculty Development Grant. The grant will fund his trip to Nigeria to do archival work at the Nigerian Television Authority headquarters library in Abuja in the summer of 2014. Dr. Akoma is conducting research for a monograph on the development of popular theater in south eastern Nigeria, using as his primary source the television show Icheoku, which ran on both regional and national networks in the 1980’s up to mid-1990’s. The show is set in the late 19th century colonial era and features the daily interactions between a British colonial administrator who doubles as a magistrate and his half-literate Nigerian court clerk and interpreter. Dr. Akoma is using the television series to explore the idea of cultural agency and the development of popular theatrical tradition in south-east Nigeria, especially in light of the resulting interface of orality and literacy....

The Modern Language Association has developed a new blog geared toward Graduate Students, http://mlagrads.commons.mla.org/ . Hosted by the MLA Committee on the Status of Graduate Studetns in the Profession, the blog will cover the annual MLA convention, the job market, and other issues relevant to graduate student members of the MLA.

A new graduate student lounge has opened on the third floor of Old Falvey. The lounge has been fully renovated, is well-heated, has afternoon sunlight, and is blissfully silent except for the turning of pages and the clicking of typing keys. Additionally, it is open 24 hours a day. Graduate students must scan ID cards to enter. We expect to see English graduate students accumulating here as paper writing ramps up. Katie will not move from this spot until the semester is over.

This post by guest blogger Christine Lairson. The annual Ph.D. Forum for hopeful English Ph.D. candidates took place on the evening of Monday, November 11th. Dr. Heather Hicks served as moderator. Three speakers shared their insight and advice on applying for and completing a Ph.D. in English, as well as realistic statistics about the job market and potential careers after acquiring the degree. Each speaker expressed enjoyment and appreciation for the experiences in his or her respective Ph.D. programs. Dr. Brooke Hunter, who received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at Austin with a specialization in medieval literature, discussed statistics regarding job growth (and stagnancy), employer's bias in gender, age, and race, and the importance of funding and networking. Following Dr. Hunter's perspective, Dr. Kamran Javadizadeh, who received his Ph.D. in English from Yale University with a specialization in modernist poetry, shared anecdotes of his ...

Second-year graduate English student Corey Arnold was recently featured on Falvey Library's advertising materials due to his good looks and well-known ability to imitate a person deep in thought. Corey's recent celebrity has led to him being asked to make his "inspired face" all across campus and to make soulful poses in front of his own effigy. We look forward to seeing where Corey's modeling career will take him next. You inspire us all, Corey Arnold.

This post by guest blogger John Dodig. On the brisk afternoon of Sunday, November 3, a dozen students from Professor Kamran Javadizadeh’s graduate-level modern poetry class met at the Rosenbach Museum and Library. The Rosenbach, which sprawls across two interconnected townhouses on Delancey Street in the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood of Philadelphia, is the unlikely home of the Marianne Moore Collection, including poetic manuscripts, letters, notebooks, photographs, papers, and even furniture from the life of the important modernist poet, who spent most of her life in New York City after graduating from Bryn Mawr in 1909. The class began in the research library of the Rosenbach, where the museum’s assistant director of education Farrar Fitzgerald passed around a lengthy letter Moore received from Ezra Pound and a copy of Moore’s response. Pound’s message, typed with his characteristic purple typewriter ribbon, asked the slightly younger poet about her age, h...

Dr. Dailey in front of Fellows' Hall, where John Milton  lived when he was a student at  Christ's College, Cambridge. Over the fall break, I traveled to England to give a scholarly talk and to pursue new research. My first stop was Christ’s College, Cambridge, where I shared my current work on corporeality and real presence with the Medieval-Renaissance Faculty Colloquium of Cambridge University. I was treated to a wonderful tour of Christ’s College, alma mater of John Milton and Charles Darwin. There I saw the hall where Milton lived and sat in the beautiful room in which senior fellows of the college, like Darwin, have for centuries drunk wine, talked, made friendly wagers, and kept hand-written accounts of their consumption. These bound ledgers, some including Darwin’s hand writing, are still stored in the room and brought out for nightly record-keeping. After my time in Cambridge, I spent three days in London studying Michael Landy’s Saints Alive, an exhi...

This summer, the National Science foundation decided to award Villanova a grant of $1.67 million to build a CAVE system in Old Falvey. The CAVE is a room-like enclosure which has walls, floor and in some cases a ceiling made of rear-projection screens, allowing viewers inside the room to experience and interact with 3D immersive environments. The CAVE will be able to hold 10-15 students for research and classroom experiences and will be integrated with a mobile robot platform which will be developed at Villanova for telepresence experiences. Dr. Klassner has been spearheading this interdisciplinary project. The overall vision for the use of the CAVE includes technologically enhanced teaching and will allow Villanova to foray into the Digital Humanities. See the figure for a cutaway schematic view of the proposed CAVE facility. Villanova has invited professors from all disciplines to attend two luncheons to learn about the CAVE's capabilities and to deve...

This past September, current PhD student and Villanova Alum Alexandra Edwards stood onstage to accept a Creative Arts Emmy® for Original Interactive Program. She and her teammates were recognized for their work on the multimedia online project, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. We were able to email Alex and ask about her experience with the show, her current studies and her time at Villanova. The YAWP: Congratulations! Did you EVER envision yourself as an Emmy winner? Alex: NEVER. Never ever. Not even when I was standing onstage getting the award. It's amazing, but it still hasn't sunk in. Probably because I'm still doing the same stuff I was before: reading, writing papers, procrastinating on writing papers, the whole grad student thing. The YAWP: Lizzie Bennet Diaries is categorized as an "Interactive Media" project. What exactly does Interactive Media mean when it comes to entertainment? Alex: Interactive Media a big catch-all term for any kind of entertain...

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded Villanova Master's alumna Alexandra Edwards ('12) with a Primetime Emmy® for her work on The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, an interactive, multi-platform adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Edwards and the other two members of the transmedia team took home the Emmy® for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media—Original Interactive Program. The team accepted their award live onstage at the 2013 Primetime Creative Arts Emmy® Awards and were featured in the cable broadcast version of the ceremony. This fall, Edwards continues her work with Pemberley Digital, the production company behind The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. She serves as the transmedia producer for Emma Approved, the recently launched interactive adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma. She is also attached as the transmedia producer for the upcoming interactive webseries Hashtag Hamlet. The project has been invited to the 2013 Sundance Institute New ...

On October 3, Dr. Kamran Javadizadeh and a group of Villanova English majors and MA candidates hosted the "Wildcat in the Rye" event, the English department's first book discussion geared toward an audience of freshmen. Close to eighty students gathered on the second floor of Good Counsel Hall (with some spillover on the overhanging balcony) to eat pizza and discuss J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Dr. Javadizadeh opened the evening by sharing his first experience with the book: an older friend read him a passage in which a speaker at protagonist Holden Caulfield's Pencey Prep (modeled on Valley Forge Military Academy, which Salinger attended) gave a speech and interrupted himself with a bout of flatulence. Dr. Javadizadeh then read one of his favorite passages, in which Caulfield discusses his attraction to the American Museum of Natural History and the way in which nothing there changes no matter how many times one visits. He then described how the book ...

Lauren Shohet's reflective essay "The Unruly Pearl" is included in the catalogue for the show Christopher Cook: A Sign of Things To Come," on exhibit at the Ryan Lee Gallery in Chelsea (527 W. 26th St) Oct 10-Nov 16. This English artist currently works mostly in graphite, a medium he describes as between painting and drawing. Dr. Shohet's essay considers relationships between Cook's work and the Baroque.

Chiji Akoma presented “Frederick Douglass, Diaspora Identity, and the American Colonization Society Project” at a special panel marking Frederick Douglass Week at West Chester University’s Frederick Douglass Institute, on September 30, 2013.

In September, Dr. Foster gave a talk titled "Case Studies in Queer Ecology: Jewett to Freud" at Columbia University's Women & Society Seminar, arguing that Sarah Orne Jewett uses her 1884 novel, A Country Doctor, to apply Darwinian biology to Freudian questions about the diversity of human sexuality. And in November, he will present a work-in-progress, "Campus Novels and the Nation of Peers," at the University of Pennsylvania's Americanist Reading Group. The paper analyzes popular novels of student life published between the Civil War and World War I, arguing that this genre played a key role in reconciliation between the white North and South and the accompanying resubjugation of recently freed slaves.

Jean Lutes gave a talk titled, "Nellie Bly's Trip: A Stunt of World-Class Proportions," at Villanova on June 10, 2013, as part of Falvey Library's "Paper for the People: A Conference on Dime Novels and Early Mass-Market Publishing," which was organized to celebrate the recently discovered collection of dime novels and other late-nineteenth-century popular materials.

Dr. Ormsby-Lennon's essay "Of Late a Tabu: Newer light on Darker Authors" appears in kirsten Juhas, Patrick Mu[umlaut there]ller, and Mascha Hansen eds,  "The First Wit of the Age": Essays on Swift and his Contemporaries in Honour of Hermann J. Real  (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013), 149-166.

Dr. Megan Quigley delivered the annual East Coker lecture on  July 14th  at the T. S. Eliot summer school in the UK entitled, "Why  East Coker  is Still Shocking."  This lecture, part of a new project on Eliot and his influence on twentieth-century fiction, stems from archival work completed on two recent fellowships: at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, CA and at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, TX.  Dr. Quigley also organized a panel, "'That is not what I meant at all': Literary--Philosophical Correspondents,"for the annual Modernist Studies Association Conference, which took place at the University of Sussex.  Dr. Quigley's paper for that panel, delivered on  September 1st , was called "Rebabelization & Nonsense:  Finnegans Wake  in Basic English."

Dr. Lucky served as a moderator for the panel "Rethinking Scholarship and Knowledge Production" at the Black Doctoral Network Conference held at the Philadelphia Double Tree by Hilton Hotel, October 3-5, 2013.

Deborah A. Thomas, Ph.D., published “Vibrations in the Memory:  Bleak House ’s Response to Illustrations of Becky in  Vanity Fair ” in  Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction , 44 (2013), which appeared this summer.

On September 26th, second-year grad students as well as curious first-years gathered to go over the timeline of thesis deadlines, in order to get a feel for what the process will be like. Pizza was eaten and questions asked as the second year students started to get a picture of what the next few months will look like. Students also had plenty of time after Dr. Hicks' talk to chat, share experiences and stories, and laugh together about rising stress levels.

Megan Quigley's Modern British Novel course visited the Barnes Foundation at its new location downtown in Philadelphia on Saturday, Oct. 4th. Seeing works by Matisse, Picasso, Soutine, Modigliani and many others helped to bring home the parallel stylistic experimentalism in fiction in the early twentieth-century. What a great resource nearby!

A reception will be held on Friday, September 13 for all Graduate English students. A library orientation will begin at 3:30 PM in Falvey Library Room 204, and the reception, which includes dinner, will begin at 5 PM in the main English Department offices. Contact Heather Hicks ( heather.hicks@villanova.edu ) if you have not yet RSVPed so we can see you there!

This year, Villanova Master's alumnus Don James McLaughlin ('09) won  The Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching by Graduate Students  at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is pursuing doctoral studies in English.

Dr. Ormsby-Lennon wanted to share this fun  article , which collects 20 terrible book covers for classic novels. Enjoy!

Congratulations, newly minted M.A. students!

Falvey Library’s recent rediscovery of a collection of dime novels, reprint libraries and other late-19th century popular materials has sparked new interest at the library, and they want to share this exciting moment with everyone. To do so, Falvey is hosting a popular culture conference on June 10 called Paper for the People. The first in a series of popular cultural conferences entitled VuPop, this year’s conference is broadly construed so presentations about the history of story papers, newspapers, or early popular mass literature are all welcome. Michael Foight, one of Falvey's Special Collections Librarians, especially invites English Graduate students to attend the event and even consider presenting. Click here  to visit the VuPop website.

On May 14th Joe Lucia, the head of Falvey Library, is hosting a day of conversation about future directions for the library as a key component of the academic environment. The theme of the day is "Library Transformation and Academic Life in the Digital World" and will include various speakers addressing the topic. While everyone is invited to attend this event as audience members, Lucia is also looking for speakers to give "lightning talks" on what they believe a library should be (and/or what Falvey Library should become), and he would love for a graduate student or two to volunteer. Dr. Hicks will be one of the faculty speakers, and she would be happy to hear your thoughts about Falvey, which might help to shape her comments. As a kickoff in the morning, the university will formally receive the 2013 Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Award for Excellence . Fr. Peter will be on hand to accept the award from ACRL President Steven Bell. At the...

The students of Shakespeare in Performance (HON 5753) invite you to our free public performances of The Merchant of Venice on May 2 and 3. After a semester-long literary and dramatic exploration of Shakespeare's play, led by Dr. Alice Dailey (English) and Dr. Shawn Kairschner (Theatre), the honors students are pleased to present an hour-and-twenty-minute production that features the work of eleven student actors, original music, and a post-show talk by the cast. Click here to read the production flyer.

The Graduate Liberal Studies lecture series begins on Tuesday, April 16th with a multidisciplinary panel discussion on the theme "Community and Identity." The panel is comprised of the following faculty members: Valentina DeNardis (Classical Studies) Crystal Lucky (Africana Studies) Paul Rosier (History) Fayette Veverka (Theology) Click here to see the official event poster.

The Philosophy Department has just announced their lineup for their annual conference! The conference is free and open to the public, and will be taking place April 12th and April 13th in the Villanova Room of the Connelly Center. Click here to learn more .They are asking that you indicate whether you plan to attend to help them manage attendance.

Presenters, faculty, and friends gathered after another successful Elizabeth Cady Stanton conference to hear testimonials from alumni and a senior Gender and Women's Studies major - and to applaud some well-deserving essay winners!

Poet Diane Gilliam Fisher, PhD, will be on campus tomorrow,  Tuesday, Feb. 19 at 7:00 p.m., to give a reading at Falvey Library as part of the 15th Annual Villanova Literary Festival . Dr. Fisher’s most recent book,  Kettle Bottom , tells the story of the West Virginia coal mine wars of 1920-1921 through the individual perspectives and voice of characters affected by those events. The reading is the second in this year’s Literary Festival, sponsored by the Department of English. Along with Dr. Fisher, the festival will bring major writers from all over the country to Villanova’s campus, including Junot Díaz , a recent recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction . Keep an eye on the Department of English blog and homepage for future announcements regarding festival events. This event will be held in the Speakers’ Corner of the Library , and will be followed by a book sale and signing. Click here to read more about Dr. Fisher and the upcoming event. Graphic ...

Don't be surprised if you see a new face in the library this semester. Alexander (Alex) Williams, a Drexel University iSchool graduate student, is serving a six-month internship with Falvey's  Academic Integration and Information and Research Assistance teams. Alex is an alum of our Graduate English Program, earning his degree with us in 2011. Now, he is focusing on information services although he is also interested in competitive intelligence. He expects to graduate from Drexel in 2013. Alex earned his bachelor’s degree in English literature and religious studies from Stonehill College , Easton, Mass. While a student at Stonehill, Alex worked as a circulation aide in the library, an early indication of his future interests. Click here to read more of Alex's story.

Don't be surprised if you see a new face in the library this semester. Alexander (Alex) Williams, a Drexel University  iSchool  graduate student, is serving a six-month internship with Falvey's  Academic Integration  and  Information and Research Assistance  teams. Alex is an alum of our Graduate English Program, earning his degree with us in 2011. Now, he is focusing on information services although he is also interested in competitive intelligence. He expects to graduate from Drexel in 2013. Alex earned his bachelor’s degree in English literature and religious studies from  Stonehill College , Easton, Mass. While a student at Stonehill, Alex worked as a circulation aide in the library, an early indication of his future interests. Click here  to read more of Alex's story.

Congratulations to Dr. Dailey, whose book, The English Martyr from Reformation to Revolution , was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in December, 2012.

Congratulations to Dr. Ormsby-Lennon, whose book Hey Presto!: Swift and the Quacks has been selected by Choice magazine as a 2012 Outstanding Academic Title in the “Humanities, English and American” category. Check it out here!

You can start where everyone starts on the internet these days, at  Wikipedia . If you think you are ready to jump in and get your feet wet, check out this  article by Lisa Spiro , who discusses just how to get started.

A great article by Tom Scheinfeldt, " Stuff Digital Humanists Like ," defines Digital Humanities by its values. Unfortunately, defining Digital Humanities isn't that simple, and  A Short Guide to the Digital_Humanities  has sparked significant controversies over the definition. The full book of  Digital_Humanities  is also a great resource to get you started. To read an interesting contrast of the two sides of the definition debate, check out this  blog post.

To give you an idea of what can come of Digital Humanities, here are some projects that might pique your interest: NINES Catalog of Digital Scholarly Editions NEH ODH Other interesting DH-related projects include: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries , which stands as an example of transmedia storytelling and the future of texts.  See also Cathy Davidson's blog article about  Nick Sousanis' dissertation  about comic books written in comic book format.  These days you can do word analysis across multiple texts using  Google nGrams.

For more information about Digital Humanities and its impact on libraries, check out these useful links: What Is Digital Humanities and What's it Doing in the Library? What are some challenges to doing DH in the library? Additional hurdles to novel library services If you are looking for something close to home,  Falvey Library has its own DH initiative ,  Aurelius . Click here to learn more about the library's  online exhibit + DH projects .

Here are two powerhouse Digital Humanities Centers if you are curious to see their latest news and projects: Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities  

Just like all other academic fields, Digital Humanities already has a nice stock-pile of journals and news sources for your perusal: Digital Humanities Quarterly Journal of Digital Humanities Literary & Linguistic Computing Digital Studies / Le champ numérique News:  DH Now  ( submit your work/join DH registry ) ATCamp Philly

A lot of DH buffs and organizations have jumped on the Twitter band-wagon and are tweeting away with the latest DH info.  UCLA  has some great information about why they use Twitter in their DH classes. Check out these Digital humanists on Twitter to hear what they have to say: @dancohen  DH list @paige_roberts  DH list @amandafrench  DH women list @AnummaBrooke  DH/digital learning list If you are looking for more Digital humanists on Twitter, check out this  DH registry . 

Here are a few more useful resources and organizations: Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations ADHO resources CenterNet DH centers THATCamp THATCamp Philly Blackwell's Companion to the Digital Humanities

 As part of the English Department's Luckow Endowed Chair Graduate Speakers Series, Dr. James English, John Welsh Centennial Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, delivered a talk to students and professors on the fascinating and encouraging information he has gathered in researching his book, The Global Future of English Studies .

“Who gets to be an American?” ask Jebney Lewis and Maria Möller, two Philadelphia artists whose work lays bare the violent nativism and xenophobia present in the history of the city. They will be giving a talk at Falvey Speakers’ Corner on Monday, January 28 at 6:30 PM and will discuss their Kensington Riots Project, a site-specific experiential art project that recalls two violent anti-Irish Catholic clashes in 1844 in which churches (including Old St. Augustine’s Church) and buildings were burned and destroyed with cannons; twenty people were killed; and over a hundred more were wounded. This episode was one of the most serious race riots in the country’s history, and was set off by debates about economic and employment opportunity; fear about religious freedom and religious education; governmental control; and community and national identity. The piece was informed by the urgency of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street and involved a six-week workshop in which Arab-American te...

It's that time of year again! CONCEPT, the interdisciplinary journal sponsored by the Graduate Program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, is now accepting both article submissions and volunteers to serve as editors and peer-reviewers. The author of the best article in the 2013 issue will receive the Graduate Student Research Prize. Authors should register with the website , and follow the instructions for posting their submission (authors may submit no more than 1 article for consideration). Those interested in serving as editors and peer-reviewers should consult the job descriptions posted on the website .

On Monday, January 28th, at 7:30 in SAC 300, Dr. James English, John Welsh Centennial Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, will be delivering a talk as part of the Luckow Endowed Chair Graduate Speakers Series. This series is designed to address professional questions concerning the discipline of English. Dr. English will be speaking about the fascinating (and encouraging) information he has gathered in researching his book, The Global Future of English Studies . Here is a link to his book: http://www.amazon.com/Global-English-Studies-Blackwell-Manifestos/dp/0470654945. Please email Dr. Hicks to RSVP.