The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

Thanks to Dr. Evan Radcliffe for hosting the Thesis and Field Exam Workshop last week. Current grad students met last Thursday evening to get information about the thesis and field exam process, including timelines, requirements, and examples from previous graduate students (which can also be found here  on the YAWP). Students also enjoyed pizza together while they got more details about what the thesis or field exam entail. Some important dates to keep in mind for grad students planning on finishing their degree in Spring 2020: December 13: Last day to submit a spring thesis or field exam proposal to Mike January 31: Last day to apply for May graduation April 24: Last day for students writing a spring thesis to defend and submit May 1: Last day for students taking a spring field exam to complete the oral component May 4: 10th Annual Thesis and Field Exam Symposium, at 5:30pm in SAC 300! Best of luck to all grad students starting work on their theses and field exams!

Thanks to all who came out to the Publishing Matters: See Your Name in Print - Publishing 101 event this past Wednesday! Celebrated author Robin Black and editor Travis Kurowski held a panel discussion alongside student editor Tia Paris, moderated by Dr. Adrienne Perry. 

Congratulations to Dr. Tsering Wangmo, whose article, " Dialectics of Sovereignty, Compromise, and Equality in the Discourse on the 'Tibetan Question,' " was just published in the journal boundary 2 . In her article, Dr. Wangmo observes that since 1950, the Chinese government has determined the status and position of Tibetans, but it has not won the battle for Tibetans’ hearts and minds. On the contrary, ongoing Tibetan resistance under Chinese rule points to serious fissures in the Chinese state’s ideological and cultural project of “liberating” Tibet. Wang Hui’s article “The ‘Tibetan Question’ East and West: Orientalism, Regional Ethnic Autonomy, and the Politics of Dignity” analyzes the March 2008 “riots” in and around Lhasa in order to understand the impediments to a real solution to the crisis in Tibet. Although Wang Hui offers productive ways of moving beyond the status quo, Dr. Wangmo suggests that his analysis of Tibet is limited by multiple ideological cont...

Check out this report about Friday's climate change demonstration in the Delaware County Daily Times , featuring comments by Villanova English professor Dr. Jean Lutes and senior English major, Molly Bonini. This is not the first climate activism involving Nova's English department. Grad students and faculty also participated in a climate strike last year. Villanova students marching for the environment

Congratulations to Dr. Jean Lutes, whose article, " Legendary Affect: Intimacies in Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop ," was just published in the latest issue of the journal Studies in the Novel . Dr. Lutes's essay uses affect theory to better understand Willa Cather’s master experiment with legend in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). Treating emotions not as interior to individuals but as dynamic impressions within social networks, she connects the novel’s deliberate, nondramatic continuity of feeling to Cather’s understanding of the legend as a genre. The novel articulates the value of legends repeatedly, and Cather viewed Archbishop itself as a legend. The novel’s serene, inexorable narrative of incomplete intimacies celebrates bonds of faith and love, even as it documents failures of understanding and the weaknesses of personal attachments as a form of resistance to oppression. Discovering what she calls “legendary affect” at work does not a...

Check out the front-page story in today's  Philadelphia Inquirer   to see Villanova English's own Dr. Alice Dailey discussing the amazing discovery of a Shakespeare First Folio annotated by John Milton, which had been hiding in plain sight in the Free Library of Philadelphia since 1944.

Dr. Cara Saraco, Villanova English Alumna ('13) recently became Director of Academics at Sacred Heart Academy in Bryn Mawr, PA. Prior to coming to Sacred Heart, she taught English at Salesianum School in Wilmington, Delaware for several years. According to the Sacred Heart Academy News, as a female teacher in an all-boys school, Dr. Saraco chose to focus her doctoral research on the intersections of feminism and critical literacy in her classroom. Dr. Saraco stated, "I am very excited to take on this new role of leading the academic program at Sacred Heart Academy. I love that our curriculum is designed to educate the whole person and that our mission is woven into everything we teach. I look forward to being part of the team that sets up our girls for bright, successful futures, helping each girl find her unique voice and gifts to share with the world." You can read more about Dr. Saraco and the school in this article . Way to go, Cara!

Our own Avni Sejpal will be presenting at the Graduate Student Research Symposium on September 13th at 3PM in the Haverford Room of the Connelly Center. Here is the abstract of her presentation: “Indentured Imaginaries: Global Migration, Worldmaking, and Postcolonial Literature examines neglected colonial narratives and bureaucratic archives of indenture at the British Library. It puts historical records into conversation with postcolonial literary narratives to produce an account of nineteenth-century globalization. Little attention has been paid to the ways in which dispossessed communities engaged with transnationalism. This project corrects that oversight by studying globalization from below. It shows that impoverished colonial subjects, forgotten by history, did not merely experience the world at large, they actively produced it. Finally, it demonstrates that this transnationalism necessarily transforms contemporary notions of both globalization and world literature.” Way to go...

Villanova English alumnus Don James McLaughlin has co-edited a special issue of Common-place , exploring intersections between Walt Whitman and disability studies. McLaughlin is also featured in the issue, having contributed a piece examining the posthumously published book of Whitman’s letters to Peter Doyle titled Calamus (1897), focusing primarily on the importance of the letters to understanding their evolving relationship following Whitman’s paralytic stroke in 1873. Here is the official announcement about the issue: " Common-place Journal is pleased to announce a new special issue, “Revisiting the Whitmanian Body at 200: Memory, Medicine, Mobility," exploring the poet’s intersection with disability, age, theories of mind, and the history of medicine. Coinciding with Whitman’s upcoming 200th birthday on May 31, these articles offer new approaches to Whitman’s understanding of the body, in all of its contradictions, from the perspective of current movements in sch...