This past Wednesday, the English Department celebrated 100 years of Langston Hughes's The Weary Blues with the event "I, too, sing America." A huge crowd of undergraduate students stopped by the 2nd floor lounge of Good Counsel Hall for a night of poetry and pizza.
In his opening remarks, Professor Javadizadeh said he hoped the event would give students a taste of what they could expect from English classes at Villanova. Professor Javadizadeh originated the event over 10 years ago as a way to introduce 1st year students to the English major and minor, at the time focusing on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The event has since centered on other works including J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, and, this year, Langston Hughes’ poetry collection The Weary Blues.
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Professor Javadizadeh and Professor Skillings welcome students.
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2nd Year English MA Christopher Supplee then took center stage, providing historical context to Langston Hughes’ life and his publication of The Weary Blues in 1926. Christopher concluded with a reading of Hughes’s poem “Dream Variations.”
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2nd Year English MA student Christopher Supplee reads "Dream Variations."
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Professor Javadizadeh then asked students to consider the many meanings of “dream” in the poem, as well as the jazz-related idea of variations. The room split into small groups, led by graduate students and undergraduate seniors, to discuss these two elements.
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| Undergraduate Senior John Snyder leads a discussion group. |
Students reconvened to listen to Professor Emily Skillings, who broke down the poem’s literary devices and how the use of form doesn’t limit a poem’s creative possibilities, but instead expands them.
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Professor Skillings discusses the poem's literary elements.
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Before the night let out, Professor Skillings invited students to write their own poems inspired by Hughes’ idea of variation. Students talked, ate, and wrote together in the shared, creative space the event had cultivated. Several students approached the professors afterward to say the event had made them want to pursue the English major.
Thank you to the graduate and undergraduate students who helped with setting up and leading the discussion groups. Congratulations to Professors Javadizadeh and Professor Skillings for a successful event!
