The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

Professor Kamran Javadizadeh will soon be releasing a new podcast, "Close Readings." He spoke with the YAWP about the podcast's origins, his process, and what we can expect when we listen. What inspired you to make a podcast? Are there literary or poetry podcasts that you enjoy listening to?   I think that for me (as, apparently, for so many!) this is partly a pandemic story. During the early days of the pandemic I found myself listening to podcasts more than had previously been my custom (I wrote a bit about that experience  here ), usually while walking my dog, and I found that I enjoyed the company that they provided, the peculiar feeling of having a friendly voice or two in your ear while you went about your daily chores. And then also during that time I was able to convince a few of my friends, both scholars and poets, to visit my classes at Villanova. That experience taught me that I quite enjoyed talking to experts for the benefit of curious audiences; I felt like

Back in 2020, we wrote a brief entry about MA English alumni career outcomes on the YAWP. That entry was based on data from the years 2008-2018. To say the least, it seems time for a refresh, particularly given how much the employment landscape has shifted in the past few years--so here is new data about the kinds of jobs our alumni obtain, based on our graduates during the period from 2019 through the spring of 2022. In comparison with our previous post, you'll note that there are no full-time faculty positions represented in our graph here--which makes sense, since our time window for this post wouldn't allow our alumni enough time to complete a PhD.  Interestingly, K-12 education is the biggest piece of the pie (go teachers!). Just like last time, 10% of our graduates are in higher ed administration. Other strong options for our grads are PhD programs, medical humanities roles, and marketing positions.  Our graduates have job titles like instructor, editor, coordinator, wri