Alumni at Nova: Christoforos Sassaris
Sometimes our graduate students like it so much at Villanova that they decide to stick around and work here, using the skills they’ve gained as students to further the mission of the university as employees. Christoforos Sassaris, who graduated with his MA this past spring, is now working as a distinctive collections coordinator at Falvey Library, and he was nice enough to share with the YAWP some reflections on his experience as a student transitioning into an employee.
As a distinctive collections coordinator, Christoforos handles a wide variety of tasks. He works with “preservation and digitization of rare books and archives, digitizing a lot of books and old newspapers, photographs and other items.” Christoforos added, “I work on a GIS project, a digital map project, essentially. I’m currently taking part in curating an exhibit, which will be up during the fall semester, and will relate to military and illustrated maps over the last hundred years or so.” He writes blog posts for Falvey library, transcribes hand-written archival letters, and has been working on a dime novel project, indexing and scanning early twentieth century pulp periodicals. “I try not to get too distracted with some of the interesting things,” he noted.
Christoforos’s current work is closely related to the skills he practiced and refined as a graduate student. “A lot of the research I did for a fellowship or classes is very similar to the research I’m doing now,” he said. “Having a background in literature and the history of literature and publishing—and texts in general—comes in handy, even at points where I don’t realize that it does. I will see a list of names of authors, and having read their work gives a lot of context for the work that I do here (in Falvey).” Some connections between his student research and his current job are quite direct: “One of my (thesis) chapters was on Lovecraft, and we have one of Lovecraft’s journals.”
In addition to the work he did as a graduate student, Christoforos’s experience as a graduate assistant helped prepare him for his current role. “Most of my RA responsibilities,” he said, “were in the general realm of library work. I assembled bibliographies of secondary and primary sources. I looked through a lot of the same types of websites that I am now helping to populate with data.” He also noted that the work he did in the Writing Center helped him improve his own writing, which he now draws on for producing blog entries, social media posts, and descriptive labels for special exhibitions.
Christoforos singled out his Professional Research Opportunity (PRO) experience as having been especially crucial for bringing him to his current position and career path. “I’m convinced I would not have gotten this position if I hadn’t done the PRO,” he said. “It taught me more about the field, made me more certain that this was what I wanted to do, and it introduced me to a lot of the people at Falvey.”
Working with Villanova’s distinctive collections, Christoforos is able to explore many resources that would be of interest to English students. He mentioned a special fondness for the dime novel collection: “I think it’s really interesting, what people found interesting on a day to day level in the past.” He also singled out the McGarrity collection, which focuses on Irish and Irish-American subjects, as being especially rich and relevant for English scholars. When asked what other resources might be of special interest to our English MA students, he noted, “We have an original copy of Ulysses.”
Christoforos continues to enjoy reading for pleasure, and is about to start Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose.
To sum up, Christoforos noted, “Doing the English MA definitely prepared me for this. I went into the MA having the sense that this was probably what I wanted to do, but not being 100% sure… Over the course of the two years I really developed this interest and I see a lot of one-to-one relationships between the work I did as a student and what I do now.”
As a distinctive collections coordinator, Christoforos handles a wide variety of tasks. He works with “preservation and digitization of rare books and archives, digitizing a lot of books and old newspapers, photographs and other items.” Christoforos added, “I work on a GIS project, a digital map project, essentially. I’m currently taking part in curating an exhibit, which will be up during the fall semester, and will relate to military and illustrated maps over the last hundred years or so.” He writes blog posts for Falvey library, transcribes hand-written archival letters, and has been working on a dime novel project, indexing and scanning early twentieth century pulp periodicals. “I try not to get too distracted with some of the interesting things,” he noted.
Christoforos’s current work is closely related to the skills he practiced and refined as a graduate student. “A lot of the research I did for a fellowship or classes is very similar to the research I’m doing now,” he said. “Having a background in literature and the history of literature and publishing—and texts in general—comes in handy, even at points where I don’t realize that it does. I will see a list of names of authors, and having read their work gives a lot of context for the work that I do here (in Falvey).” Some connections between his student research and his current job are quite direct: “One of my (thesis) chapters was on Lovecraft, and we have one of Lovecraft’s journals.”
In addition to the work he did as a graduate student, Christoforos’s experience as a graduate assistant helped prepare him for his current role. “Most of my RA responsibilities,” he said, “were in the general realm of library work. I assembled bibliographies of secondary and primary sources. I looked through a lot of the same types of websites that I am now helping to populate with data.” He also noted that the work he did in the Writing Center helped him improve his own writing, which he now draws on for producing blog entries, social media posts, and descriptive labels for special exhibitions.
Christoforos singled out his Professional Research Opportunity (PRO) experience as having been especially crucial for bringing him to his current position and career path. “I’m convinced I would not have gotten this position if I hadn’t done the PRO,” he said. “It taught me more about the field, made me more certain that this was what I wanted to do, and it introduced me to a lot of the people at Falvey.”
Working with Villanova’s distinctive collections, Christoforos is able to explore many resources that would be of interest to English students. He mentioned a special fondness for the dime novel collection: “I think it’s really interesting, what people found interesting on a day to day level in the past.” He also singled out the McGarrity collection, which focuses on Irish and Irish-American subjects, as being especially rich and relevant for English scholars. When asked what other resources might be of special interest to our English MA students, he noted, “We have an original copy of Ulysses.”
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| Christoforos Sassaris MA '22 |
To sum up, Christoforos noted, “Doing the English MA definitely prepared me for this. I went into the MA having the sense that this was probably what I wanted to do, but not being 100% sure… Over the course of the two years I really developed this interest and I see a lot of one-to-one relationships between the work I did as a student and what I do now.”
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