The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

While everyone else was being festive, English professors were busy at the Modern Languages Association Conference in Toronto in January. Professor Kamran Javadizadeh, the chair of the executive committee for the MLA’s Poetry and Poetics Forum, chaired two panels on poetry. Professor Megan Quigley delivered a paper entitled “Modernist Impersonality in the Age of AI,” and was an official mentor for other faculty at the conference! Per Dr. Quigley, "It was cold but wonderful."

On Friday, December 5th, Dr. Tsering Wangmo presented virtually on "Chigdrel and the Politics of Sorrow" as part of  The Khyentse Foundation Buddhist Studies Lecture Series , sponsored by Northwestern University. According to the summary provided by Northwestern, Dr. Wangmo examined "a lesser-known chapter in Tibetan exile history through the story of the Group of Thirteen, a collective of Khampa chieftains and religious leaders who established settlements in India in the mid-1960s with a hope to protect their diverse regional and religious traditions. This decision set them apart from the majority Tibetan refugees who joined the settlements established by the Tibetan government. They were cast as being opponents to Tibetan unity." This presentation relates to subjects covered more extensively in Dr. Wangmo's recently published book,  The Politics of Sorrow . Focusing on the early years of Tibetan exile life in India and Nepal, this book marks a significant chan...

Jenna Kosnick '26 and Julia Reagan '26 presented last weekend at the North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) conference. Julia’s paper was titled “Political Economy’s Failures in Thomas Malthus and Mary Barton ,” and Jenna’s was titled “The Gothic Reigns in Demerara .” Congrats, Jenna and Julia! And thanks to Dr. Mary Mullen (pictured below with Jenna and Julia) for providing the photos!

Last Friday, November 14, MA students Ashley Lee '26 and Alexis Atwood '26 took part in the Graduate Research Symposium in the Connelly Center. Ashley presented a poster and Alexis gave a three-minute thesis oral presentation. Dr. Radcliffe dropped by to support! Jenna Kosnick '26 and Julia Reagan '26 also participated, but are not pictured, as they were traveling at the time.

Villanova English major Ben Marcoulier '27, English MA student Julia Reagan '26, and Dr. Crystal J. Lucky presented together Friday, November 7th at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers 2025 Conference in Old City, Philadelphia. The roundtable highlighted the public humanities project Taught by Literature ( https://www.taughtbyliterature.org/ ), which works to honor the legacy of Black author and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Taught by Literature was founded by Dr. Jean Lutes, Denise Burgher, and Dr. Brigitte Fielder to make Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s work digitally available and to support educators in teaching early Black women intellectuals in their classrooms, from kindergarten to college. Bringing together undergraduate and graduate students and professors, Taught by Literature invites Black women educators to present their work for a broader audience, engages students in the archives and the process of textual recovery, and works with public school teachers to d...

 By Matt Villanueva, MA '24 Over winter break, I had the privilege to attend the 139 th annual MLA conference in downtown Philadelphia. Throughout the four-day conference I was able to attend many panels and special sessions on various topics and presented on a special session “Recentering Black Women Intellectuals: A Philadelphia School District Collaboration” to discuss our research project with other scholars and educators and to debut the Taught by Literature website (taughtbyliterature.org). The conference days were, admittedly, tiring and overwhelming at times. Every block time had multiple sessions that I wished to attend and for three days, I bopped around the center city Marriot and Loews hotel conference rooms to hear fellow grad students adjacent to established scholars share their work. The two days I attended a myriad of sessions for the whole day ranging from topics of representation in digital humanities, the storytelling power of music, postcolonialism, and Fil...

This weekend, professors Kamran Javadizadeh and Megan Quigley put their poetry skills to work at the T. S. Eliot conference in Cambridge, MA. They co-taught a seminar on "T. S. Eliot and Close Reading” to a group of professors and graduate students at the Houghton Library at Harvard University on Friday. Megan later delivered a lecture, “Perfectly good, normal and right: Eliot, Attraction, and Intimacy,” in Emerson Hall, the same philosophy building where T. S. Eliot took his philosophy courses at Harvard a century ago. Speaking of close reading, for more close reads you can listen to Kamran’s podcast on  Apple  or  Spotify .

Second-year VU English MA student Caitlin Salomon recently presented at the NeMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association), on a panel entitled "The Future is Fragile," which "examined how the concept of fragility shapes our world and society." "My paper," said Salomon, "put Walter Miller’s (post)apocalyptic novel A Canticle for Leibowitz in conversation with Judith Butler’s theory of vulnerability. I suggested that though Butler’s framework is an exemplary theoretical model to follow, Miller’s novel shows that even when we admit—and have tangible proof of—our own fragility, our flawed humanity leads us to protect ourselves at others’ expense. His inclusion of a posthuman character at the novel’s conclusion intriguingly poses that humanity can only be invulnerable when it’s no longer entirely human." Caitlin was kind enough to answer some additional questions about the conference for the YAWP. What was your impression of the conference itself? Th...

Visitors to the forty-third annual T.S. Eliot Society meeting, held recently in St. Louis and marking the centenary of The Waste Land , had an opportunity to see four 'generations' of Villanovans presenting: former Villanova professor Vincent Sherry, Professor Megan Quigley, MA alum Ann-Marie Jakubowski '17, and current MA student Ethan Shea '23. Ethan Shea presented on "Eliot Goes to the Cinema: Film, Mechanical Reproduction, and the City in The Waste Land ." He told the YAWP that "Attending the T.S. Eliot Society Meeting was an incredibly rewarding experience, and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from so many scholars on such a wide array of topics concerning Eliot. I also received a lot of helpful feedback on my presentation that I hope to apply to my research in the future. Hopefully, I'll be back again next year." Ethan Shea presenting   Ethan Shea, Megan Quigley, Ann-Marie Jakubowski   Megan Quigley, Vincent Sherry, Eth...

Incoming MA student Adam Riekstins recently presented at a conference hosted by the Hidden Nabokov Society, as part of its first international conference in over two decades. The conference took place from June 15th to June 19th at Wellesley college, where Vladimir Nabokov once lectured.  According to Riekstins, "It was such a humbling experience to chat, dine and interact with Nabokov experts from everywhere around the world for nearly a week straight. It was, as most of us joked, a beguiling Nabokovian Summer Camp." Riekstins presented on Lolita as a gothic novel, tracing structural similarities it shares with Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde .  As part of the proceedings, presenters even had an opportunity to view Nabokov's personal butterfly collection, which is housed at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. "Thank you," said Riekstins, "to Wellesley College for hosting the event and to Harvard's Museu...

Some of our students were recently reported on by the college of liberal arts and sciences; here is that report on Hannah Kahn and Caitlin Salomon: VILLANOVA, Pa. – First-year Villanova University English MA graduate students Hannah Kahn and Caitlin Salomon recently presented at The Conference on Christianity and Literature’s (CCL) 2022 Western Regional conference, “Literary Geographies – Space, Place, and Environments,” held at Biola University in La Mirada, California, April 7 to 9, 2022. Kahn discussed her work, “Embodied and Empowered: A Critical Analysis of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale .” "Presenting at the CCL conference was an enriching experience. Not only was I given the opportunity to share my scholarship on a topic that I'm passionate about but also was afforded the chance to partake in thought-provoking dialogue during the question-and-answer section," Kahn said. "It was a pleasure to meet other scholars from across the country and learn from eac...

Professors Joe Drury, Evan Radcliffe, and Kimberly Takahata will present their research at the 2022 ASECS Conference , taking place in Baltimore from March 31-April 2. Professor Joe Drury is presenting on the roundtable  "Do We Still Need the Human?" and the panel "The Unproductive--Sexualities." Professor Evan Radcliffe is presenting on the roundtable "Bad   Feelings in the Eighteenth Century." And Professor Kimberly Takahata will chair the   roundtable " Eighteenth - Century Studies in Dialogue with the Work of Dionne Brand, Saidiya   Hartman, and Christina Sharpe" (as co-chair of the Race and Empire Caucus) and present in the roundtable " Publish or Perish? Perspectives on Publishing in Grad School." Professor Chelsea Phillips, from Villanova's Theatre department, is  presenting on the panel "Reproduction and Futurity I" and chairing  the panel "Reproduction and Futurity II."

From our friends in Gender and Women's Studies: Back from our reluctant two-year hiatus, we cordially invite you to  Villanova's 32 nd  Annual Gender & Women's Studies Conference,  which will take place on  Friday, March 25th, 2022  f rom  8:45am-4:00pm  in  the  Connelly Center!  We have an exciting full day of panels and performances by Villanova undergraduates and graduate students from across the university. Additionally, complimentary breakfast, lunch and snacks will be available throughout the day. We very much hope you will join us!  We are so pleased to announce that this year's  Keynote Luncheon  will feature a lecture by  Dr. Erin Murphy  of Boston University, entitled  "Amazons and Zombies: Margaret Cavendish’s Soldiers, Gender, and the Paradoxes of War."  To quote from a description of Dr. Murphy's lecture: "As demonstrated by ongoing debates about who can be a 'comba...

 Congrats to our grad students Em Friedman MA '21 and Christoforos Sassaris MA '21, who presented posters at the Villanova Graduate Research Symposium this fall. Em's topic was Feminist Abolitionism Across Time , and Christoforos's was Locating the Byzantine in Medieval English Literature: The Auchinleck Manuscript . More information about the graduate research symposium can be found here . Here is Em's abstract: The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS) was an interracial women's abolitionist group active in Philadelphia from 1833-1870. This project explores the PFASS's ideological and rhetorical strategies by close reading documents in their archive, including annual reports, minutes, correspondence and personal letters to other abolitionists, speeches and financial records. The PFASS's archive is housed with the Abolitionist Papers at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. By focusing on the three Women's Anti-Slavery Conferences —hel...

 Second-year MA student Isobel McCreavy will be presenting her paper " Focalizing on Young Adult Literature: The Dangers of Ignoring Focalization" at the 118th Annual PAMLA Conference in Las Vegas on November 11th!  Isobel's essay "examines the use of tropes and narrative roles in young adult fiction to examine the messaging in four young adult works - John Green’s Paper Towns, J. K. Rowling’s the Harry Potter series, Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instrument series, and Stephen Chbosky’s Perks of Being a Wallflower. Each work has three narrative roles that dictate the perceptions and identity formations of its characters. The roles of narrator, focalizer and focalizee create dynamics in the works where characters exist only in relation to other characters, and their identities are tied to these roles. Embedded in tropes like the Girl Quest Tale and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, these roles confine the autonomy of its characters and hint at the dangers of focalization, i...

The Referent of Ireland conference was held at Villanova University on Friday, February 21st, 2020. Panelists read and responded to a series of shared articles with short papers, and will reconvene over the summer in Galway to continue their work. The conference was designed to build "on fresh work on reference—or how the text refers to a world outside of the text—in order to rethink the aesthetics and politics of nineteenth-century Irish literature." Panelists considered questions such as: "What does literature about nineteenth-century Ireland refer to, and what are its habits of reference? Does the referent change for readers across time? Now that old saws about Ireland’s failed realism have been put to bed, what purposes might be served by thinking about Irish referential habits? Does thinking about Ireland and reference strand nineteenth-century Ireland in old paradigms of representation that preclude us from thinking about mediation? How does the nineteenth-centur...

Villanova's first-ever Masculinities Symposium was held on Friday, January 31st. The event featured the work of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. Presentations were given by many names familiar to the Villanova Graduate English community, including Dr. Travis Foster, who presented on The Effeminate Man, as well as Jesse Schwartz, graduate student, who presented on Death and Consumption, The Two Genders in  Shakespeare’s ​I Henry IV​ and ​Coriolanus. Dr. Travis Foster Dr. Marylu Hill, Melissa Sturges, and Jesse Schwartz

Each year the Villanova Gender and Women’s Studies Program hosts a student research conference.  It is an exciting opportunity to showcase your work, discuss your interests with students and faculty from Villanova and other area universities, and see the broad range of intellectual disciplines encompassed by Gender and Women’s Studies. Submit your paper to compete for a  CASH AWARD  in one of the following three categories: 1.        Papers or creative works by first-year undergraduates (4-10 pages) 2.        Papers or creative works by sophomores, juniors, and seniors (5-20 pages) 3.        Papers or creative works by graduate students (12-30 pages) The Barbara Wall Award for Feminist Praxis may be given to a paper that demonstrates a commitment to practical applications of feminist theory. Eligibility Essays and creative work must engage gende...

In October, second year MA student Sarah Beth Gilbert served on two panels and presented at the first Multiverse Con, an inclusive science fiction/fantasy conference. Sarah Beth served on the panels, “Beyond Gender: LGBTQ+ Representations in Science Fiction” and “Female Agency in Wielding Power,” at which she presented her paper, “Institutionalized Control of Female Agency: Knowledge and Power of Witches in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Penny Dreadful .” You can read more about Sarah Beth's research and Multiverse Con here . Congrats, Sarah Beth!

Second-year student Matthew Ryan and first-year student Olivia Stowell both presented papers at the South Central MLA conference in Little Rock, AK, this past weekend! Matthew presented his paper "The Contemporary Irish Tragedy" on a panel on Gothic Presence, examining the intersection of the Irish Gothic, tragedy, and the bildungsroman. Olivia presented her paper "Mater Dolorosa, Mother Beyond Discourse: Suffering, Maternity, and Discourse in My Name Is Asher Lev " on a panel on Gender and Race in 20th Century American Literature, conducting a Kristevan reading of Chaim Potok's novel. Congratulations to Matthew and Olivia! Matthew Ryan and his fellow Gothic Presence panelists