The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

 The 2022 College English Association of Ohio conference will take place both in-person and digitally on Saturday, April 9. The conference will focus on changes in the disciplines of English and writing studies, particularly in the light of social changes emerging from the pandemic. They welcome proposals by Monday, February 15th. For more information, please visit their site here . 

The VU English Program's graduate director, Evan Radcliffe, was recently profiled by the university regarding a course he put together this past fall. You can read the piece in its original setting here . The magic of Harry Potter first flew in (on a broomstick, of course) to homes everywhere nearly 25 years ago. Debuting in 1996 with  Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone  (retitled  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone  for American publication in 1997) J. K. Rowling’s fantastical world of witches and wizards both captivated and enticed readers of all ages, assimilating itself into every facet of popular culture.   Evan Radcliffe, PhD, an associate professor and Director of the English Graduate Program, was first introduced to the series through his children. Together, Dr. Radcliffe and his family read all seven novels and discussed their thoughts around the dinner table. Now, years later, Dr. Radcliffe has crafted an English course with the specific purpose of analyzing Harr

Olivia Stowell, MA '21, was recently profiled by Villanova's graduate college of liberal arts and sciences. She shared her reflections on her graduate student career so far, her scholarship, and her advice for other aspiring scholars. You can see the original article here , or you can read the text of it below. Olivia Stowell is currently pursuing a PhD in Communication and Media at the University of Michigan. She published her first academic article “There’s Certainly a Lot of History Here, But We’re Here to Roast Oysters: Afterlives of Trans-Atlantic Exchange in Top Chef: Charleston” in the journal Television and New Media in January 2022. Congratulations, Olivia! Here is the article: While at Villanova, Olivia Stowell ’21 MA developed strong relationships with professors and peers, explored research opportunities and established a healthy work-life balance as a busy grad student – each of which helped her on her journey to pursuing her doctoral degree. VILLANOVA, Pa. – Oliv

Professor Mary Mullen will participate in a two day, online symposium sponsored by the Rutgers British Studies Center and Berkeley's British Studies Center on "How Victorianists (Might) Talk about Race" on February 17 and 18th.  She will present her research on nineteenth-century Ireland in a paper titled, "Comparison, Colonial Unknowing, and Ireland." For more information about the event, and to register for the event, go  here (schedule coming soon).  

  The  2022 Literary Festival   has an amazing lineup of writers. Put these dates in your calendar now!

A recent issue of The Point magazine features a conversation between Villanova alum Jessica Swoboda and Professor Javadizadeh about criticism in public. In it, Professor Javadizadeh discusses his writing--both his academic scholarship and his public writing. Here's a taste: "I’ve been thinking recently about something that the critic R. P. Blackmur said, which is that the thing that makes poetry poetry (and what distinguishes it from mere “verse”) is that it “adds to the stock of available reality.” And that feels like a sensible definition to me. I like that definition of poetry. I think that a critic, whether writing in an academic journal or whether writing in a sort of journalistic space for magazine or whatever, might help a reader see how a poem, for instance, has added to the stock of available reality. Here’s the new experience you can have while reading this poem. But I also think that the critic can, at times anyway, make their own writing do that for a reader."

On January 20, 2022, the Chicago Public Library is sponsoring an online event featuring Professor Jean Lutes's ongoing collaborative work to recover a short story collection by pioneering African-American writer Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Registration and additional information available   here .

Professor Quigley published an essay, "What If?: New Insight into the Friendship of Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot" about her research on T. S. Eliot in the Los Angeles Review of Books . She has been working in a recently unsealed archive of letters between T. S. Eliot and Emily Hale at Princeton University. In Professor Quigley's words: "Nearly two years ago, an archive of letters was unsealed at Princeton that radically changed the way scholars understand the life and work of T. S. Eliot. Two months later, with COVID-19 numbers soaring, this long-awaited archive slammed shut again. On Monday, October 18, 2021, I was the first external scholar finally to return to those papers. Unsurprisingly, the focus of readers so far has been on the shocking relationship memorialized in the letters between Eliot and Emily Hale, the American teacher with whom he was avowedly in love. But the Hale letters contain at least one other revelation, with profound and as yet unexplored

On a cold week here in the Villanova area, let's take a look back at warmer weather with this picture from fall '21 of Professor Megan Quigley's graduate T.S. Eliot course. They are shown here outside Falvey Library, with Mendel field in the background. Back Row (left to right): Jess Derr, Jacqueline Ridberg Larabee,  Amanda Piazza, Isobel McCreavy, Samantha Covais, Hannah Kahn, Oliva Bodner, Caitlin Salomon Front row (left to right): Franki Rudneski, Christina Kosch, Ethan Shea, Deidra Cali

Congratulations to Olivia Stowell, MA '21, who was recently published in Television & New Media . Her paper is called "There’s Certainly a Lot of History Here, But We’re Here to Roast Oysters: Afterlives of Trans-Atlantic Exchange in Top Chef: Charleston."   Here is the abstract of Olivia's paper: "This article reads the premiere episode of Top Chef ’s fourteenth season, Top Chef: Charleston (2016), for its engagement with the history of slavery in the United States, arguing that Top Chef deploys acknowledgments of historical violences for the purpose of concealing those same violences. By analyzing the discursive and visual content of Charleston’s premiere’s elimination challenge, which required two chefs to cook head-to-head at a plantation, this article outlines how race shapes the action of Top Chef both overtly and covertly, emerging as an organizing factor for the program as a whole. Charleston’s premiere episode illuminates how history is re