The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

Sometimes our graduate students like it so much at Villanova that they decide to stick around and work here, using the skills they’ve gained as students to further the mission of the university as employees. Christoforos Sassaris, who graduated with his MA this past spring, is now working as a distinctive collections coordinator at Falvey Library, and he was nice enough to share with the YAWP some reflections on his experience as a student transitioning into an employee. As a distinctive collections coordinator, Christoforos handles a wide variety of tasks. He works with “preservation and digitization of rare books and archives, digitizing a lot of books and old newspapers, photographs and other items.” Christoforos added, “I work on a GIS project, a digital map project, essentially. I’m currently taking part in curating an exhibit, which will be up during the fall semester, and will relate to military and illustrated maps over the last hundred years or so.” He writes blog posts for F...

​​​​Interview conducted by Jacqueline Ridberg Larabee VU MA '23 student Daniella began her Masters in English at Villanova knowing she wouldn’t end up in an typical “English” field. Rather her passion was always art. As an undergraduate she majored in Art History & English, and she knew that “Art history has a huge writing emphasis, but it is a flaw of most art history programs that they do not prioritize writing coursework.” Thus Daniella decided to pursue her MA in English. She talks about two divergent paths she saw herself going down after receiving her Masters: “One was to get a PhD in Art History, not English, and the other path was to pursue communications for an art museum.” Daniella decided to tangibly explore her post-grad career options by taking advantage of the English Department’s Professional Research Option (PRO), focusing on marketing & communications for Museums. The PRO course, available to second year English Masters students, consists of cre...

By Guest Contributor Daniella Snyder Read the abstract from Daniella's PRO here . In the last three decades or so, museums have become less of a place to plainly store antiques and sculptures, and more a place that collates and shares human experiences. According to Salvador Salort-Pons, the CEO, director, and president of the Detroit Institute of the Arts, these experiences and stories have a profound effect on visitors, writing that while we see ourselves in these stories, “it is through them that we encounter new perspectives that change how we think and feel.” Therefore, a good museum requires great storytellers of these human experiences, whether they are curators, directors, docents, talkative security guards, or well-written wall labels. These people—those that have the ability to tell a great story—understand and respect the invaluable power of language. Before completing my professional research option, I believed that museum communications was a relatively monolithic c...

The Graduate English Department is happy to introduce a new Independent Study option, which permits students to research and share information about non-academic career options for students with an M.A. in English. Below is a description of the Professional Research Option (PRO). Please let Dr. Hicks know if you have questions about this 3-credit independent study. Students who would like to register for this option can contact Susan Burns. The Professional Research Option (PRO) is a three-credit independent study in which students identify one or a cluster of jobs or professions in which an advanced degree in literature is beneficial. In the course of the semester, students will research the career options of interest, identifying one or two fields as the focus of their work. They must generate a research paper that explores the history and future prospects of the field of interest, as well as current information about the requirements of the work, geographical information...