The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

Please join us for the   Fall 2024 Graduate Studies CLAS Research Symposium TOMORROW-- this Friday, November 15! This event highlights the outstanding and diverse scholarship being conducted by graduate students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Our very own Jaxon Parker will be among the presenters. When:  Friday, November 15 Time: 1 p.m. – 4 p.m. Where: Mullen Center Court Theatre (Oral Presentations)               Mullen Center Lobby (Poster Presentations)                                      Oral presentations will begin at 1 p.m. in the Court Theatre of the Mullen Center. Poster presentations commence thereafter in the lobby at 3 p.m. Please see the list of presenters below and make plans to support your classmates! Ligh...

Spring 2025 Course Descriptions   ENG 9560: Pathologies of Modernity Dr. Joe Drury CRN 36558 Thursday from 5:20 pm to 07:20 pm The theory and practice of medicine underwent dramatic changes between the eighteenth and early twentieth century. Medical knowledge was transformed by the rise of experimental science and the discovery of the circulatory and nervous systems, the introduction of new technologies, therapies, and drugs, the success of small-pox inoculation, Darwin’s theory of evolution, the emergence of public health and hygiene, anaesthesia, and germ theory. At the same time, medical practitioners raised their social status by establishing teaching hospitals, medical schools, and professional societies. Physicians began to present themselves as public authorities capable of diagnosing and treating the pathologies of modernity, while pointing to luxury, industrialization, urbanization, distraction, immigration, and empire as causes of sexual deviance, nervous illness, ...

Coming up on Tuesday, November 12th... This virtual forum features Jean Lutes, Denise Burgher, Trinity Rogers, and Brigitte Fielder of Taught by Literature , a collaborative digital humanities project that re-centers Black women writers, beginning with the work of African American author and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson. The speakers will use Dunbar-Nelson’s short story, “ His Heart’s Desire ” (1900) to explore the challenges scholars face in recovering little-known African American texts when confronted by multiple textual variants, manuscripts without dates, and a readership unfamiliar with an author’s work.  A remarkable short story about a boy who wants a doll, “His Heart’s Desire” is one of twelve short stories Dunbar-Nelson wrote in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries about children living in a poor urban neighborhood. The stories were inspired by her work teaching Black kindergarteners at the White Rose Mission in New York City.   Lutes, Burgher, Roge...

 

On Tuesday, October 29th, in SAC 300, Professors Megan Quigley, Kamran Javadizadeh, and Patrick Query discussed T.S. Eliot and his legacy with an audience of graduate students. The event marked the publication of Eliot Now (Bloomsbury, 2024), an important new collection of scholarly approaches to the life and writing of T. S. Eliot, co-edited by Professor Megan Quigley. During the colloquium, moderated by Professor Javadizadeh, Megan was in conversation about the book—and about new directions in Eliot studies—with Patrick Query, Professor of English at West Point. We look forward to seeing our graduate students at our next graduate event, Thursday evening's Teaching Roundtable!

Ann Marie Jakubowski, Villanova English MA '17, has won the Fathman Award from the International T. S. Eliot Society for her paper, "Conversion as Revision: The Retrospective Poetics of Burnt Norton ." The Fathman Award is presented each year by the T.S. Eliot Society, at its annual meeting, to the best paper presented by an early-career scholar. Graduate students and recent PhDs are eligible. Ann Marie graduated with a Villanova MA in 2017 and a PhD at Washington University in St. Louis in 2024. She is currently a Lilly Postdoctoral Fellow at Valparaiso University, where she teaches literary and humanities courses in the undergrad honors college, Christ College. Congrats, Ann Marie! Kamran Javadizadeh, Ann Marie Jakubowski, and Megan Quigley

Villanova English MA alum Olivia Stowell '21 was recently featured on the Vox podcast Today , Explained , in which she spoke about AI in the classroom and described her decision to ban AI use in the courses she teaches as she pursues her PhD in Communication and Media at the University of Michigan. Olivia described the genesis of her decision: "It was fall of 2023; I was the TA for a TV class with my advisor. They had an assignment where they had to write about social media reception... I noticed the repeated use of phrases and repeated sentence structures. I was like, this does not feel like student writing to me. I was pretty certain that a student had used ChatGPT and they ended up admitting to it." Olivia noted that, at the time, "There was no institution-wide policy, and there still isn't, that I know of, so professors are kind of setting their own." Prompted by her experiences with ChatGPT as a TA, Olivia began to think critically about how she would t...

 Dr. Lauren Shohet has just published an article in the journal Anglia titled "Touching the Shield of Achilles: Ekphrasis and/as Re-Mediation." Here is the abstract: Homer’s treatment of the Matter of Troy illuminates the foundational impossibility of representation in ways that sponsor examination of the semiotic choices, the costs and benefits and tradeoffs, of different practices. Homer’s ekphrastic description of the shield of Achilles highlights a variety of available semiotic systems focused on different media of representation. This article explores Homeric ekphrasis in relation to later theories of media intersection, interaction, and transformation. Not only word, image, music, and dance, but also human perception as such, are subject to mediation. You can view more information on the article here . The shield's design as interpreted by Angelo Monticelli, ca. 1820, image courtesy of Wikipedia

An ode to the importance of reading novels and poetry recently came from an unexpected corner. Pope Francis, in his latest letter, made a point to write on “the value of reading novels and poems as part of one’s path to personal maturity.” Although the Pope focuses on seminaries in his letter, his message is nevertheless relevant to lay Catholics as well as students of literature from diverse faith traditions. Francis observes that, in many seminaries (and universities!), “literature is considered non-essential.” However, he argues, “I consider it important that such an approach is unhealthy,” as it can lead to “serious intellectual and spiritual impoverishment.” Francis emphasizes the power of literature to facilitate wellbeing and personal growth, writing that, “…In moments of weariness, anger, disappointment, or failure, when prayer itself does not help us find inner serenity, a good book can help us weather the storm until we find peace of mind.” He goes on to contrast books with “...

 Nearby Germantown Academy is seeking a long-term sub English teacher. For more information, please visit their website .

The University of Maryland is currently hiring for lecturer positions for Fall 2024 with an application deadline of May 24th. The qualifications they are looking for are an earned Master’s degree in the field of instruction or a related field, as well as demonstrated successful teaching at the college level and/or relevant professional experience. Additional information on the university's lecturers (referred to as Professional Track Faculty or PTK within the UMD system) can be found on their English Department intranet . For more information and to apply, you can visit their application posting .

 The 14th Annual Thesis and Field Exam Symposium was held in SAC 300 on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, and featured research presentations by Megan Hayes MA '24, Sarah Gregory Herr MA '24, Matt Villanueva MA '24, and Eva Wynn MA '24.  Megan Hayes MA '24 presented her field exam, "Gothic Modernism: Exploring Race, Gender, and Sexuality Through Haunted Women." She described gothic modernism as a relatively new field, and fictional women as the topic where gothicism and modernism meet. She addressed questions such as: what constitutes haunting, and how are women haunted differently from men? Megan also provided advice for future students considering field exams. She said that she made her own syllabus at the beginning of her field exam, pairing one or two books per week along with secondary readings, and assigned herself response papers and summaries. Megan then spent three or four weeks in April writing. She found this structure extremely helpful in completing her ...

The Taught by Literature Project--as well as Dr. Jean Lutes, Trinity Rogers '24 CLAS, and Matt Villanueva '24 MA--has been featured in a recent podcast episode of the series Research that Resonates, which is produced for Villanova's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.  Following the legacy of African American writer and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson, researchers Trinity Rogers '24 CLAS, Matt Villanueva '24 MA, and Jean Lutes, PhD, professor of English and Luckow Family Endowed Chair in English Literature, aim to recenter the work of Black female intellectuals through the Taught by Literature project. From uncovering lost literature to transcription and video production, the researchers have grown the project into an outreach effort and collaborate with other scholars, schools and programs to makes these important stories available to a wider audience. For more information on the project, you can read  previous  coverage  on our  blog , and please listen to...

Calling all theater lovers... Current Villanova students AND alumni/ae can attend The Spanish Tragedy symposium for free! In academic year 2023-24, Villanova University faculty Dr. Chelsea Phillips (Theater) and Dr. Alice Dailey (English) launched a year-long interdisciplinary exploration of Thomas Kyd’s seminal Renaissance revenge play, The Spanish Tragedy  (1582). This extended pedagogical, scholarly, and creative endeavor began with a combined undergraduate-graduate course taught in fall 2023 titled “Legacies of Revenge.” It culminates in a  production of The Spanish Tragedy co-directed by Dailey and Phillips and staged in Villanova’s new John and Joan Mullen Center for the Performing Arts in April 2024 , along with a coinciding scholarly symposium on April 19-20, 2024. Through both academic study and performance, The Spanish Tragedy  Project seeks to foster engagement with the play as at once an historical and contemporary artifact ...

This event will feature a short discussion of Adania Shibli’s  Minor Detail  (2017)—an award-winning Palestinian novel that narrates two historical moments to show the haunting and all-too-ordinary nature of colonial violence—followed by a speculative creative writing exercise, inspired by Shibli, where we practice writing for social change. There will be pizza!  Wednesday, April 10 from 7:30 to 8:30 pm in Falvey 205.

By Katie Lewis What does it mean to be Asian American? This is the central question asked by Professor AJ Yumi Lee in a new undergraduate English course as of Spring 2024, ENG 4649: Introduction to Asian American Literature. The course explores how literature has represented and shaped Asian American identity since the 20 th  century.   The course is the first course to be offered by the English Department that focuses entirely on Asian American literature.   “It has been really fun teaching this class, and the students have been really excited,” said Professor Lee. “I have to give a shout-out to the class of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences dean's office. When I was developing the course, I was able to get a grant, since this is something that contributes to diversity efforts within the college. I definitely want to teach this class again and build off the conversations this semester.”   The beginning of the semester covered Asian American history, an area f...