The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

This post by guest blogger Christine Lairson. The annual Ph.D. Forum for hopeful English Ph.D. candidates took place on the evening of Monday, November 11th. Dr. Heather Hicks served as moderator. Three speakers shared their insight and advice on applying for and completing a Ph.D. in English, as well as realistic statistics about the job market and potential careers after acquiring the degree. Each speaker expressed enjoyment and appreciation for the experiences in his or her respective Ph.D. programs. Dr. Brooke Hunter, who received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at Austin with a specialization in medieval literature, discussed statistics regarding job growth (and stagnancy), employer's bias in gender, age, and race, and the importance of funding and networking. Following Dr. Hunter's perspective, Dr. Kamran Javadizadeh, who received his Ph.D. in English from Yale University with a specialization in modernist poetry, shared anecdotes of his ...

This post by guest blogger John Dodig. On the brisk afternoon of Sunday, November 3, a dozen students from Professor Kamran Javadizadeh’s graduate-level modern poetry class met at the Rosenbach Museum and Library. The Rosenbach, which sprawls across two interconnected townhouses on Delancey Street in the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood of Philadelphia, is the unlikely home of the Marianne Moore Collection, including poetic manuscripts, letters, notebooks, photographs, papers, and even furniture from the life of the important modernist poet, who spent most of her life in New York City after graduating from Bryn Mawr in 1909. The class began in the research library of the Rosenbach, where the museum’s assistant director of education Farrar Fitzgerald passed around a lengthy letter Moore received from Ezra Pound and a copy of Moore’s response. Pound’s message, typed with his characteristic purple typewriter ribbon, asked the slightly younger poet about her age, h...

On October 3, Dr. Kamran Javadizadeh and a group of Villanova English majors and MA candidates hosted the "Wildcat in the Rye" event, the English department's first book discussion geared toward an audience of freshmen. Close to eighty students gathered on the second floor of Good Counsel Hall (with some spillover on the overhanging balcony) to eat pizza and discuss J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Dr. Javadizadeh opened the evening by sharing his first experience with the book: an older friend read him a passage in which a speaker at protagonist Holden Caulfield's Pencey Prep (modeled on Valley Forge Military Academy, which Salinger attended) gave a speech and interrupted himself with a bout of flatulence. Dr. Javadizadeh then read one of his favorite passages, in which Caulfield discusses his attraction to the American Museum of Natural History and the way in which nothing there changes no matter how many times one visits. He then described how the book ...

On September 26th, second-year grad students as well as curious first-years gathered to go over the timeline of thesis deadlines, in order to get a feel for what the process will be like. Pizza was eaten and questions asked as the second year students started to get a picture of what the next few months will look like. Students also had plenty of time after Dr. Hicks' talk to chat, share experiences and stories, and laugh together about rising stress levels.

Megan Quigley's Modern British Novel course visited the Barnes Foundation at its new location downtown in Philadelphia on Saturday, Oct. 4th. Seeing works by Matisse, Picasso, Soutine, Modigliani and many others helped to bring home the parallel stylistic experimentalism in fiction in the early twentieth-century. What a great resource nearby!

A reception will be held on Friday, September 13 for all Graduate English students. A library orientation will begin at 3:30 PM in Falvey Library Room 204, and the reception, which includes dinner, will begin at 5 PM in the main English Department offices. Contact Heather Hicks ( heather.hicks@villanova.edu ) if you have not yet RSVPed so we can see you there!

The Graduate Liberal Studies lecture series begins on Tuesday, April 16th with a multidisciplinary panel discussion on the theme "Community and Identity." The panel is comprised of the following faculty members: Valentina DeNardis (Classical Studies) Crystal Lucky (Africana Studies) Paul Rosier (History) Fayette Veverka (Theology) Click here to see the official event poster.