The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

ENG 8000 What’s Hot? Introduction to Theory Across the Discipline of English Dr. Heather Hicks CRN 22340 Monday 5:20-7:20 pm This course will be run as a seminar in which each week, a different graduate faculty member will introduce you to a body of theory that is particularly important within current discussions in their field of specialization. What are some of the major theoretical approaches in medieval studies today? Early modern studies? What about 19th-century American literature and British literature?  Modernism?  Postcolonial Studies? Irish Studies? Contemporary literature? This class is an attempt to bring you immediately into dialogue with a wide variety of theories that are shaping literary study today. The course is intended to be a lively opportunity to meet most of the English faculty members who teach at the graduate level and to engage in dialogue about and analysis of the contemporary state of literary theory. Assignments will include biweekly journals and a final...

Professor Megan Quigley was quoted in the New York Times on a new edition of James Joyce's  Ulysses with illustrations by Eduardo Arroyo: “I tell my students," said Professor Quigley, "to find anything they can that will help us to understand Joyce’s master novel — literature or music mentioned, historical references, later novelists influenced by Joyce (like Sally Rooney), maps, charts, previous minds who have tussled and argued and written about Joyce in everything from scholarly articles to blogs and fanfic. Joyce’s universe is one for the obsessive reader who will find any clues to chart their way through the novel. I’m happy to throw my hat in to support an edition of Ulysses  with images.”  You can check out the full article  here.

Professor Jean Lutes has been working in collaboration with Villanova undergraduate students and others on a project to recover a book of short stories about Black children in turn-of-the-century New York. The book was written by the pioneering Alice Dunbar-Nelson, but was never published as a complete collection as had been intended.  The project has received support from the  Anne Welsh McNulty Institute at Villanova, which seeks to build "a community and network that supports gender-based initiatives throughout the University and beyond." To quote from the Institute's statement on the project, "This public-facing humanities project aims to recover a lost short story collection written in the 1890s by Black author and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson, based on her experience teaching Black kindergarteners at the White Rose Mission in New York City. 'The Annals of ‘Steenth Street,' as Dunbar-Nelson titled the planned collection, features the youngest residents o...

 Today is the 100th anniversary of the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses in its entirety. Happy birthday to Leopold, Stephen, Molly, and the gang. If you're interested in reading a bit more about the book, especially in a Villanova context, why not check out a piece by Ethan Shea, a first-year graduate student here in the program, which is available on the Falvey Library blog .