The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

I hope that someone will be celebrating my birthday 450 years from now, though Shakespeare may not have expected this kind of fete: On April 23, Villanova's English Department, under the leadership of the wonderful Dr. Alice Dailey, celebrated Shakespeare's 450th birthday with a book-shaped cake, a Hamlet-inspired student film, and Shakespearean door prizes such as Hamlet finger puppets. A surprisingly large and energetic crowd filled the Old Falvey Library Reading Room, where a large screen held a projection of Dr. Dailey's "@Shakespeare" live tweets, and a birthday cake for Shakespeare sat next to birthday-cake flavored Oreos. This party whimsically assumed that Shakespeare would be quite caught up on both technology and 20th century desserts had he managed to live long enough. Old-fashioned readings of favorite passages were presented alongside a student film that, in a postmodern, non-chronological way, explored the what-ifs in Hamlet...

The Yawp staff wanted our readers to become a little more familiar with the experience in the daily lives of Villanova Graduate English Students. Currently our crop of second-years is working to polish thesis and field exam, most of them trying to finish by the end of the semester. We decided to check in with Katie Parks, who is writing about Teresa Deevy, a 20th Century Irish playwright.  The Yawp: Katie Parks. How are you? Does this email find you in the midst of writing? Katie Parks:  Hi, Yawp ! I am doing well this semester. I am currently in the midst of editing and revising my thesis. Draft. Revise. Draft. Revise. Lather, rinse, repeat. TY: Is thesis writing everything you hoped it would be? Has anything surprised you about this process? KP:  I'm not really sure what I hoped thesis writing would be like, but the process has proved that this kind of venture requires a great amount of organization and discipline. I have been surprised continuously by ...

Current Villanova graduate English student Lee Nevitt won a prize at the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Conference for Best Graduate Essay. The conference is organized annually by the Gender and Women's Studies program and showcases the work of undergraduates and graduate students from area schools. Lee's paper focused on the novels The Good Soldier and Mrs. Dalloway , particularly paying attention to the repressed homosexuality of the characters John Dowell and Septimus Smith. He argued that the investment of both protagonists in war service and its attendant social values (upholding the institution of marriage, fostering the imperial myth, and valuing a violent masculine identity) is at odds with their socially prohibited desire, resulting in characters who are fundamentally at war with themselves: a fact that is crystallized in their inability to feel grief and express desire through language.

Travis Foster's "Sex before Sexology" class will be presenting a mini-conference at 7:30 PM on April 22 and April 29. Location and a full schedule can be found below or at http://sexbeforesexology.wordpress.com/ . SCHEDULE April 22 7:30 – 8:10 p.m. INTIMATE NARRATIONS Jonathan Kadjeski, “ Ormond , or a Frozen Witness: Reading Antimimetic Narrative through the Paralipsis of Intimacy” John Polanin, “’Born of the smoke and danger of death’: Political Productions of Sexual Identities” 8:10 – 8:50 p.m. READING BODIES Katie Miller, “Fate and Predestination in The Hermaphrodite and ‘The Amber Gods’” Theresa Kircher, “Simultaneously Sexed: A Transgender Reading of Winterson’s Written on the Body and Butler’s Gender Performativity” 8:50 – 9:00 Break 9:00 – 9:40 p.m. BIRTH IT SLANT Samantha Vitale, “Perpetuating Progeny: Racial Reproductive Politics in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl ” Lee Nevitt, “Queer Reproduction and Its Contents” Apr...

Dr. Lennon published an essay, "The Starvation of a Man: Terence MacSwiney's Hunger Strike and Famine Memory" in the final volume of the four part book series: Memory Ireland: Explorations in Irish Cultural Memory (2014). He published an essay, "The Starvation of a Man: Terence MacSwiney's Hunger Strike and Famine Memory" in the final volume of the four part book series: Memory Ireland: Explorations in Irish Cultural Memory (2014). He published three poems in the "Literary Miscellany" in the Ulster Tatler (July 2013) "Ophthalmologist’s Ring," "Circle," and "Spree." He also presented a paper at the 2013 American Conference for Irish Studies, entitled "Staged Authenticity in Marina Carr” and another "Unfixable Antiquity in the Writings of James Clarence Mangan" at the 2013 Southern Regional American Conference for Irish Studies at Emory University, where I also sat on a panel on contemporary Irish po...

Dr. Lauren Shohet, Luckow Family Professor of English, led two seminars for scholars, on "Forms of Time," at the Shakespeare Association of America conference in April. She published an essay entitled "Macbeth: The State of the Art," in Continuum Renaissance Drama: Macbeth, ed. John Drakakis and Andrew Hiscock (Arden). The i-pad app of Othello she edited for Luminary Shakespeare was released in fall 2013; it includes her commentary stream “What is a Self?” and a swipe gallery of Othello images from the Folger Shakespeare Library, plus commentary, curated and authored by Shohet and Peter Holland. She also delivered an invited lecture to the Northeast Milton Seminar on "Eve as New Media Scholar" at the University of Connecticut (November) and a paper on "The Fragrance of the Fall" at the Conference on John Milton in Murfreesboro, TN, in October. As a member of the Shakespeare Association of America Program Committee, she recently completed a term p...