The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

Professor Yumi Lee will be facilitating an event on March 29 featuring Professor Nick Mitchell from the University of California, Santa Cruz. The event will be a conversation on policing, abolition, critique in/of the university, and the institutional projects of Black Studies and Women’s Studies. The discussion will probe such topis as: why do universities have police forces? What is the relationship between universities and prisons? What does an abolitionist vision of the university look like? You can pre-register for the event, which will be conducted online via Zoom, here .   

On  Friday, March 19, Dr. Jean Lutes will be part of a panel titled "The Women's Pages: A Hard Look at Soft News," sponsored by the New-York Historical Society's annual Max Conference on Women's History. This year's conference theme is "Breaking News, Breaking Barriers: Women in American Journalism."  The panel, which is free and open to the public, starts at 1.00pm and will be held virtually on Zoom. It will also be recorded and made available to the public shortly after. Visit here more information and to register for the Zoom link.    

  Please join Villanova English faculty Dr. Jean Lutes and Dr. Travis Foster on Tuesday, March 16 for "We Have Been Here All Along: Gender, American Literature, and White Supremacy," an event to celebrate the publication of a new collection of essays on Gender in American Literature and Culture . The volume, co-edited by Dr. Lutes, will be published this month by Cambridge University Press and features essays by Dr. Lutes and Dr. Foster. The book introduces readers to key developments in gender studies and American literary criticism. It offers nuanced readings of literary conventions and genres from early American writings to the present and moves beyond inflexible categories of masculinity and femininity that have reinforced misleading assumptions about public and private spaces, domesticity, individualism, and community. The book also demonstrates how rigid inscriptions of gender have perpetuated a legacy of violence and exclusion in the United Stat...

A special issue of Legacy, a Journal of American Women Writers , has been guest-edited by Dr. Travis Foster. The special issue, “American Women’s Writing and the Genealogies of Queer Thought,” is available now. According to their website, “In print since 1984, Legacy  is the only scholarly journal to focus specifically on American women’s writing, broadly defined, from the seventeenth through the mid-twentieth centuries.” Professor Foster, along with Professor Timothy M. Griffiths of Penn State University, guest-edited the special issue and provided an introduction. The journal features articles such as “Producing Intimacy: Queer Attachments in Workingwomen’s Writings” and “‘A Queer Semblance of a Baby’: Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s Queer Futurity.” The issue can be read here .

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

Villanova faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students are invited to a one-day symposium on "Masculinities" on Friday, January 31. The event will take place at the Inn at Villanova, starting at 8.30 a.m. Speakers will include Villanova English faculty members Dr. Travis Foster and Dr. Jean Lutes. Visit here to pre-register for the symposium. For the program and other information, please contact kelly-anne.diamond@villanova.edu.

scholarly paper submissions critical engagement with genders and sexualities from all academic disciplines intersectional explorations of feminist and queer studies 3000 word maximum formatting and citations in APA style creative submissions critical engagement with genders and sexualities in any of the following formats:  text files (e.g., poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction): 3000 words maximum  audio files (e.g., spoken word, interview): 10 minutes maximum  image files (e.g., photograph, painting)  video files (e.g., short film, animation): 10 minutes maximum  include a short statement (500 words maximum) explaining how the work is informed by and/or contributes to intersectional explorations of feminist and queer studies submissions must be authored/created by undergraduate students, recent graduates (undergraduate degrees completed within the last year), or graduate students in their first year of graduate studies. please send submission...

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...

Gender and Women's Studies Program is partnering with the History Department to organize Villanova's first Masculinities Symposium on  Friday, January 31st, 2020  at the Inn at Villanova . The Symposium provides a platform for Villanova Faculty and Graduate Students from any discipline to present their recent or ongoing research projects to an audience of peers and interested public through 20 - minute presentations. Presentations can focus on a wide range of topics including but not limited to fatherhood, female masculinity, hegemonic masculinity, contemporary or historical enactments of masculinity, and different cultural forms of masculinity. The Masculinities Symposium invites abstract submissions from Villanova Faculty and Graduate students. Abstracts should be a maximum of 300 words and be submitted via email to kelly - anne.diamond@villanova.edu by November 15.

The 30th Annual Gender & Women’s Studies Student Research Conference is on Friday, April 5, 2019. 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. Essays and creative work must engage gender, sexuality, or feminist theories. All papers must have been written during Spring or Fall 2018 or written specifically for the conference. The conference is accepting submissions for both undergraduate and graduate students. Full Paper Eligibility and Submission Guidelines can be found here . Submission Deadline: Friday, February 8, 2019 Conference presented by Villanova's Gender & Women's Studies Program and The Greater Philadelphia Women's Studies Consortium.  Questions? Email gws@villanova.edu

The Wednesday after Thanksgiving, GWS is hosting an event titled "Public Disclosures of Private Realities": LGBTQ History and the Archive of Everyday Life by Dr. Stephen Vider of Bryn Mawr College. This is a great chance to meet and mingle with an expert as well as attend an important lecture within the field of Gender and Sexuality Studies. When : Wednesday, November 28 at 6PM Where : Bartley 1010

Below are the Gender & Women’s Studies courses being offered this spring. Students pursuing the certificate may be particularly interested in these offerings. Remember you can take up to two courses in another department with permission from Dr. Radcliffe. GWS 8000: Critical Perspectives on Gender Dr. Elizabeth Kolsky R 7:30-9:30 An interdisciplinary study of gender, women, and sexuality, this course surveys contemporary developments in feminist, gender, and queer theory. It also applies those theories to a variety of topics, such as the representation of gender, the history of sexuality, the science of sexual difference, gender in the workplace, and gender in the digital age. Throughout the semester, we will consider how ideas about gender are bound inextricably to ideas about race and class. Sample student comments on the Spring 2018 course: "Amazing course taken as an elective outside my department. Everything I learned can be integrated into the way I conduct scienc...

Upcoming GWS Event! Mothers at Work: Who Opts Out? Presented by Dr. Liana Christin Landivar, Sociologist and Faculty Affiliate, Maryland Population Research Center, University of Maryland, College Park When: Tuesday, November 13th, 6pm GWS recruitment and information session at 5:30 Pizza will be served! Where: Tolentine 215 Liana Christin Landivar is the author of Mothers at Work: Who Opts Out? This book examines mothers’ employment rates and work hours in 55 occupations and shows that women in managerial and professional occupations were the least likely to opt out of the labor force but most likely to scale back on work by a few hours per week when they had children.

"Where Do We Go Now?" A film by Nadine Labaki (2011) November 7, 3pm, Connelly Center Cinema Introduction: Dr. Kerry San Chirico, Theology & Religious Studies When violence threatens to break out between the Muslim and Christian population of a remote Lebanese village, it is up to the women of the village to come together to prevent more deaths. With creativity and humor, they do all they can to bring their community together again. Dealing with difficult topics like religious tensions, death and violence, the film beautifully manages to maintain a fine balance between comedy and tragedy

The Stories We Tell : A writing workshop for survivors of sexual violence, domestic violence and trafficking Every survivor story has power and purpose. During “The Stories We Tell,” a two-day writing workshop, survivors will read and discuss testimonial writing, reflect on how to share their own stories, and engage in a series of innovative writing exercises. With a focus on memoir, fiction, non-fiction and poetry, “The Stories We Tell” was created to support those who seek to use writing as a vehicle for personal or political change. October 27-28 2018 10am-5pm (Saturday) • 11am-5pm (Sunday) Brought to you by The Voices and Faces Project (co-founders, Anne K. Ream and R. Clifton Spargo) in partnership with Villanova University. Applications are required: Email janet@voicesandfaces.org. Applications will be excepted until FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12TH !

October 8, 3pm, Connelly Center Cinema "Pariah," A Film by Dee Rees (2011) Introduction: Dr. Katie Grimes, Theology & Religious Studies Alike is an African-American high-school student who loves poetry. Dreaming of having a girlfriend, she must negotiate her family’s visions of her future with her own ideas about who she is. When she meets Bina, she finds a new friend, and new possibilities open. The film accompanies Alike through a formative piece of her adolescence, sensitively dealing with issues of gender, race, sexuality and religion. This screening is sponsored by the Faith & Culture Forum/Office for Mission & Ministry, the Department of Theology & Religious Studies and the Gender and Women’s Studies Program.

The GWS semester events are officially in swing so mark your calendars for this coming Monday, October 1st as we welcome Dr. Jim Ferris of the University of Toledo for poetry and performance.  Was Your Mama White? Excavating Hidden History Poetry / Performance by Dr. Jim Ferris, Professor, Ability Center Endowed Chair of Disability Studies, University of Toledo MONDAY, OCTOBER 1ST, 5:00 PM COMMUNICATION DEPARTMENT STUDIO GAREY HALL Sponsored by: The Dept. of Communication, The Center for Peace and Justice Education, Gender and Women’s Studies, The Office of Disability Services, and Africana Studies Jim Ferris is a poet and performance artist. He is author of Slouching Towards Guantanamo, Facts of Life, and The Hospital Poems , which won the Main Street Rag Book Award in 2004. Ferris, who holds a doctorate in performance studies, has performed at the Kennedy Center and across the United States, Canada and Great Britain; recent performance work includes the sol...

Arcadia University’s English Department has issued an invitation for their upcoming graduate conference, "The 19th Century and Gender & Sexuality," which will take place close by on Saturday, October 6th. Visit our post on the Conference Opportunities page for more information! As always, remember that if you decide to submit proposals to any conferences, be sure to consider applying for funding. See the Graduate Studies Office’s webpage on Conference Travel Funding . And remember that you have to apply for the funding before you attend the conference. (In recent years, the funding has tended to run out early in the spring semester.) You can apply before you hear whether your paper is accepted, but next year’s funding cycle doesn’t begin until June 1, so don’t apply before then. One further note: the Graduate Studies Office will give students only one travel grant in a fiscal year, so if you think you might also present at a conference that would cost more to get to,...

Gender and Women's Studies Student Research Conference CALL FOR PAPERS The 29th Annual Gender & Women’s Studies Student Research Conference is on  Friday, April 6, 2018 . 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. Essays and creative work must engage gender, sexuality, or feminist theories. All papers must have been written during Spring or Fall 2017 or written specifically for the conference. Paper Eligibility and Submission Guidelines : http://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/artsci/gws/ecs_conference/papers.html Submission Deadline: Friday, February 16, 2018 Conference presented by Villanova's Gender & Women's Studies Program and The Greater Philadelphia Women's Studies Consortium.  Questions? Email gws@villanova.edu

Come by tomorrow, Wednesday February 22 at noon for a great lecture by our own Dr. Joseph Drury. Co-sponsored by the Gender & Women's Studies and English departments. "Libertines and Machines in Enlightenment Britain" Dr. Drury's talk is drawn from a section of his forthcoming book, Novel Machines: Technology and Narrative Form in Enlightenment Britain. It reads the seduction fiction of Eliza Haywood, published in the 1720s, as a critique of male libertinism that responds to the two competing interpretations of Hobbes's materialism circulating in early eighteenth-century Britain. Like Hobbes, Haywood's characters are machines, whose wills are entirely determined by the desires produced in them by external objects. But her characters draw very different conclusions from this basic premise. Her male characters tend to be "libertine machines," who claim that because their transgressions are determined by external causes, they cannot be blamed or...