The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

A special issue of Legacy, a Journal of American Women Writers , has been guest-edited by Dr. Travis Foster. The special issue, “American Women’s Writing and the Genealogies of Queer Thought,” is available now. According to their website, “In print since 1984, Legacy  is the only scholarly journal to focus specifically on American women’s writing, broadly defined, from the seventeenth through the mid-twentieth centuries.” Professor Foster, along with Professor Timothy M. Griffiths of Penn State University, guest-edited the special issue and provided an introduction. The journal features articles such as “Producing Intimacy: Queer Attachments in Workingwomen’s Writings” and “‘A Queer Semblance of a Baby’: Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s Queer Futurity.” The issue can be read here .

Congratulations to Dr. Megan Quigley, whose article, "Reading Virginia Woolf Logically: Resolute Approaches to Woolf's The Voyage Out and Wittgenstein's Tractatus , was just published in the journal Poetics Today in a special issue focusing on the relationship between logic and literature. Dr. Quigley's article argues for a “resolute reading” of Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out , akin to Cora Diamond and James Conant’s reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus . She argues that, like some recent readers of the Tractatus , we should think of The Voyage Out as therapeutic nonsense. What does that mean? The “resolute" approach to the Tractatus argues that we should embrace Wittgenstein’s own assertion that the Tractatus is finally nonsense. Accordingly, the Tractatus acts as a kind of therapy, enabling us to dispense with certain types of philosophical, linguistic, and analytical claims. Quigley argues that Woolf’s The Voyage Out takes a...

Check out our Student Bios section (see the link at the top of the page) to learn about some of our new English MA students for Fall 2020!

The PMR is making an open call to scholars, institutions, and societies to propose papers, panels, or sponsored sessions for their upcoming conference in all areas and topics in late antiquity/patristics, Byzantine Studies, Medieval Studies, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, and Renaissance and Reformation Studies. Scholars are especially invited, but not required, to address the conference's plenary theme of thought and prayer. The deadline for submission is July 30th, 2020, and notices of acceptance will be sent by August 15, 2020. The conference will take place, virtually, from October 16-18, 2020, at Villanova. Abstracts should be submitted here .

When Virginia Woolf’s brother died, she lied about it for nearly a month in a series of letters to her closest friend. In The New Yorker , Professor Kamran Javadizadeh examines why.

Villanova English issued the following statement on Instagram in response to the Black at Villanova University account: " The English Department urges all Villanovans to read the stories being shared on the  @blackvillanova  account, including posts that call out the English Department for instances of racism. We are listening, and we are committed to taking action to combat racism and white supremacy in our department and across campus."