The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

Graduate English students, along with a guest, are cordially invited to a holiday open house on Sunday, December 18th from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. at the home of Dr. Lauren Shohet. Please RSVP via email to Dr. Hicks by Friday, December 9th.

This Tuesday, Dec. 6 at 7 p.m . in the Villanova Room of the Connelly Center , Harvard Professor Jill Lepore will be giving a talk entitled "Poor Jane Almanac: The Life and Opinions of Benjamin Franklin's Sister, an 18th century tale of two Americas." Dr. Lepore is the rare academic who straddles the worlds of academia and the mainstream press, and her talk should be fascinating and engaging. Along with being a prolific author of scholarly books and articles, she is also a staff writer for the New Yorker. Refreshments will be offered immediately following the talk.

The Graduate English Department is hosting a Thesis and Field Examination Workshop on Tuesday, November 29th at 7:30 in SAC 300.  Lots of information about the thesis and field examination process will be provided, followed by a question and answer session. Pizza and drinks will be served. Please RSVP to Dr. Hicks by Wednesday, November 23rd at 5:00 p.m.

This Friday afternoon, November 11th , at 4:00 in Vasey Theater , well-known Irish poet Eamon Grennan is staging a dramatic recital by two actors of a verse play he has written called “Hunger.” The play has had great reception where it has played, and it runs less than an hour. Please consider kicking off your weekend with this major cultural event!

Africana Studies is sponsoring a lecture by Dr. Tess Onwueme, University of Wisconsin Professor of Global Letters. As the seventh annual Senghor-Damas-Cesaire lecture in Africana Studies, she will be presenting "Erupting Silences: Dr. Tess Onwueme Speaks/Performs the Soul of Africana" on November 14 at 4:00 pm at the Connelly Cinema . Click here to view the event postcard The event is co-sponsored by the Cultural Studies Program and the Institute for Global Interdisciplinary Studies.

Mark your calendars for the annual Graduate English Program Forum on applying for the Ph.D. On Tuesday, November 15 at 7:30 p.m. in SAC 300 , our two newest faculty members, Dr. Joe Drury, who received his Ph.D. at Penn, and Dr. Kamran Javadizadeh, who received his Ph.D. at Yale, will talk about the decision to pursue a Ph.D. and the nuts and bolts of applying. One of our recent graduates of the M.A. program, Don James McLaughlin, who is now pursuing his Ph.D. at Penn, will also talk about life in a Ph.D. program. Please email Dr. Hicks to R.S.V.P. by Friday, November 4th at 5:00 pm.

Irish Studies has lined up a semester full of great lectures, readings, theatrical performances, and film screenings. On October 17 , Patrick Mason, one of Ireland's leading theatre directors, will give the inaugural lecture for the Villanova-Abbey Theatre Exchange . His lecture, focusing on the new Irish Theatre, will be held at Dougherty West Lounge at 7:00 pm and will be followed by a reception.  Click here to view the event poster! On November 1, Booker Nominated Novelist Patrick McGuinness will host a reading at 5:30 pm in the Falvey Library Lounge. Click here to view the Irish Studies fall 2011 event calendar Check back for future events, or visit the  Irish Studies website  for more information.

As part of our arrangement with the Women's Studies Consortium of Greater Philadelphia, Villanova Women's Studies is bringing Dr. Karen Barad to Villanova to run a seminar on "agential realism" on Wednesday, November 9th at 1:30 in the afternoon in Room 200 of the Health Center Building . Dr. Barad is a Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research topics include feminist theory, physics, twentieth-century continental philosophy, epistemology, ontology, philosophy of physics, cultural studies of science, and feminist science studies. Barad earned her Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics. Her topic for the seminar is "Entanglements of Matter and Meaning" -- agential realism as an ethico-onto-epistemological understanding of mattering; what is entanglement?; why and how do entanglements matter; how to think with phenomena rather than objects; how to simultaneously acknow...