The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

One of our grad students, Adam Riekstins, MA '24, recently interviewed Dr. Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm, currently Professor and chair in the Department of Religion and chair in Science and Technology Studies at Williams College. According to Adam, "A few weeks ago, I had an amazing opportunity to interview Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm, a current academic 'celeb' who has laid a lot of the groundwork for metamodernism, a trending school of theory (both academically and publicly). I have written a lot about metamodernism in my graduate studies and presented on it at a few conferences as well." Adam initially reached out to Dr. Storm with a question about his work: "I approached reaching out to Dr. Storm very carefully, since his work has been the cornerstone of my graduate career so far and I didn't want to trigger a Wayne's World 'we're not worthy!' moment," he said. "I sent him an email with a few quick questions about metamodern...

From our friends at Main Point Books: Join Main Point Books, Alan Drew, and special guest John Vercher to celebrate the paperback release of The Recruit . Come spend a hot summer night with a detective on the hunt to solve a series of hate crimes. He stumbles upon a shadowy, dangerous network hiding in his quiet hometown - you'll stumble upon our lovely, cool new event space and two great contemporary writers! This event is at 7 pm in our lower level event space. Registration is requested via Eventbrite; walk-ins are welcome. Books will of course be for sale at the event, and can purchased for shipping through the links below. Alan Drew is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Gardens of Water and Shadow Man. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. An associate professor of English at Villanova University, where he directs the creative writing program, he lives near Philadelphia with his wife and two children. John Vercher is the author of: Three-Fifths , named a Be...

A few months ago, we ran a brief series highlighting some graduate English alumni and their careers. We thought we'd follow it up with an interview with a current student who is balancing studies and career: Sarah Gregory, current MA student and high school teacher. Sarah was kind enough to speak with us about her MA studies as well as her teaching. 1. What do you do at your job? What are some advantages and some challenges of working in your field? I have been in education for seven years, the last four of which I spent as a high school English teacher at a small private school in Lancaster County. Since it is a small school, I taught a different schedule each year, including a variety of English-related courses for grades 9-12. For the 2022-23 school year, I went part time in teaching to begin the English MA program at Villanova full time. For me, the best part of teaching high school English is that it combines many things I love and can do well: working with students, facilitat...

Villanova Magazine  recently featured Professor Lutes's research on Black women writers. Learn more and read the full article  here .