The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

Alex Abad-Santos, a senior writer for Vox and a Villanova English graduate, was recently on NPR discussing problems stemming from a lack of diversity among food writers, chefs, and reviewers. You can catch the interview here and dip into his back catalogue of work at Vox here . Finally, you can read about his journey from Villanova English major to successful journalist here .

Congratulations to Dr. Yumi Lee, whose article, " Repairing Police Action after the Korean War in Toni Morrison's Home ," was just published in the journal Radical History Review . Dr. Lee's timely essay looks at the way Toni Morrison's 2012 novel Home  links the violence of US military “police action” in Korea in the early 1950s to the long history of police violence at home.  She argues that the novel's  critical portrayal of the Korean War punctures two enduring myths with origins in the 1950s: the myth of a peaceful domestic “color-blind” society and the myth of heroic US military intervention abroad. In Dr. Lee's reading,  Home  is an allegory that invites readers to imagine forms of justice outside of a policing framework, both globally and domestically, through its narrative of repairing trauma and harm through community care rather than punishment or retribution. Morrison’s rewriting of the 1950s in  Home  therefore places the contem...

The Villanova English  Department stands in solidarity with our Black students, staff, and faculty and their allies against anti-Black racism, police violence, and racial injustice. The faculty intend to contact students with  an action plan before the fall semester begins, and we will be asking for student input as we proceed. In the meantime, if you have specific suggestions or questions about our department response, please direct them to  Dr.  Jean   Lutes , chair of our department Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee, at   jean . lutes @villanova.edu . As a first step in our response to the rising Black Lives Matter movement, we invite you to consider  this reading list  on white supremacy, policing, and racial justice: James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963) [available online via Falvey Library], and Raoul Peck’s 2018 documentary I Am Not Your Negro [available for purchase on Youtube and Amazon prime video] ...

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Adrienne Perry, who has received the inaugural Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award from the journal Meridians: Feminisms, Race, Transnationalism . Dr. Perry received the award for a prose composition entitled Lamaze , which will be published in the journal. In their citation for the award, the judges wrote: " Lamaze is the story of two mixed-race sisters, growing up in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and grappling with teenage pregnancy, racism, alcoholism, and domestic violence. Summarized like this, the story sounds bleak; it is anything but. The sure, powerful voice of the narrator, 15-year old Adrienne, is utterly compelling as she leads us backward in time, peeling back layers of her family's experience to discover the almost magical heart of her love for her older sister. The judges were captivated by the quality of this narrative voice, paired with the rigorous and sophisticated formality of the story's structure and the way it comp...