The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

Professor Megan Quigley will present at talk titled, "Was Hugh Kenner an Eliot Fan?" at The Pound Era at 50: Hugh Kenner's Modernism. The event will take place on April 7 from 4:30-8:00 pm at Princeton University in Chancellor Green 103.

Learn more about Professor Kamran Javadizadeh's residence at the James Merrill House in this article . Lots of interesting tidbits here, including facts about Merrill's occult inspirations, news on Javadizadeh's upcoming literary projects, and some recollections from Kamran about his grandfather, who smuggled poetry out of an Iranian prison in the lining of his clothes. From the article: "Oh, and 'yes, I've been working mostly in Merrill's secret study, the one you enter through a bookcase,' Javadizadeh says. 'How great is that? It's amazing. I've heard some of the (Merrill) fellows are more interested in the possibilities of a quiet space to work and maybe aren't particularly fans of Merrill or even poetry. For others like me, though, this is a magical opportunity because of how deeply we revere the man who lived and wrote here. You can certainly feel his presence.'"  

Professors Joe Drury, Evan Radcliffe, and Kimberly Takahata will present their research at the 2022 ASECS Conference , taking place in Baltimore from March 31-April 2. Professor Joe Drury is presenting on the roundtable  "Do We Still Need the Human?" and the panel "The Unproductive--Sexualities." Professor Evan Radcliffe is presenting on the roundtable "Bad   Feelings in the Eighteenth Century." And Professor Kimberly Takahata will chair the   roundtable " Eighteenth - Century Studies in Dialogue with the Work of Dionne Brand, Saidiya   Hartman, and Christina Sharpe" (as co-chair of the Race and Empire Caucus) and present in the roundtable " Publish or Perish? Perspectives on Publishing in Grad School." Professor Chelsea Phillips, from Villanova's Theatre department, is  presenting on the panel "Reproduction and Futurity I" and chairing  the panel "Reproduction and Futurity II."

Join us for the 2nd Annual Villanova  English Department Alumni Career Panel on Wednesday the 23 rd   at 6:30 p.m.!   Four former Villanova English majors will discuss the work they do, the paths they took to their current jobs, and how their English studies contributed to their careers. The speakers will be... Joanna Bowen, ’07, Director, Augustinian Volunteers Patrick Mullaney, '09, Marketing Manager at Verity Pharmaceuticals Meghan Muniz, '05, Director of Diversity and Inclusion Partnerships, Pfizer  Greg Watry, ’13, Editorial Content Writer at Road Runner Sports There will be chances to ask questions and exchange information as well. For the Zoom link to this event, please reach out to michael.malloy@villanova.edu.

From our friends in Gender and Women's Studies: Back from our reluctant two-year hiatus, we cordially invite you to  Villanova's 32 nd  Annual Gender & Women's Studies Conference,  which will take place on  Friday, March 25th, 2022  f rom  8:45am-4:00pm  in  the  Connelly Center!  We have an exciting full day of panels and performances by Villanova undergraduates and graduate students from across the university. Additionally, complimentary breakfast, lunch and snacks will be available throughout the day. We very much hope you will join us!  We are so pleased to announce that this year's  Keynote Luncheon  will feature a lecture by  Dr. Erin Murphy  of Boston University, entitled  "Amazons and Zombies: Margaret Cavendish’s Soldiers, Gender, and the Paradoxes of War."  To quote from a description of Dr. Murphy's lecture: "As demonstrated by ongoing debates about who can be a 'comba...

Professor Kimberly Takahata will give the keynote  at the Northwestern Undergraduate Conference on Literature (NUCL) on March 19th. Her talk is titled, "Indigeneity and Indigenous Life in Colonial Virginia."   The  conference website is here.

Professor Tsering Wangmo Dhompa will be giving a poetry reading as part of an online event series hosted by The Nation tonight. Besides her work teaching here at Villanova, Professor Wangmo Dhompa is the author of many books of poetry, most recently Revolute . She has also written a non-fiction book, Coming Home to Tibet , which was published by Penguin India. More information about the free online reading can be found here . You can also hear Professor Wangmo Dhompa reading excerpts of her poetry in an episode of our departmental podcast from last year, here .

 The Twenty-Fourth Annual British Graduate Shakespeare Conference is calling for papers for their hybrid conference to take place on June 23-25.  According to their website, "BritGrad is an interdisciplinary conference which provides a friendly and stimulating academic forum in which graduate students can present their research, hear plenaries from world-renowned academics and network with each other. From 1999-2019, the conference took place in an active hub for early modern research: The Shakespeare Institute, part of the University of Birmingham, based in Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon. In 2020, BritGrad took place online in an equally dynamic virtual space, which allowed the conference to include more participants than ever before. This continued with the 2021 conference, which initiated a hybrid format offering three days of online panels and events, as well as two days in-person at the Shakespeare Institute." This year's format will again be fully hyb...