The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

Don James McLaughlin, who graduated from the Villanova MA program in 2009, has just published  Phobia and American Literature, 1705-1937: A Therapeutic History with Oxford University Press.  Per Don James's website, " Phobia and American Literature, 1705-1937: A Therapeutic History provides an intellectual history to explain how phobia first came to prominence as a medical diagnosis, political analytic, and aesthetic sensibility in American print cultures." The book "demonstrates how in the early 1800s a phobic imagination emerged by way of an experimental comparison integrating understandings of infectious disease and psychopathology: rabies and racism." The book goes on to analyze "how phobia evolved into a framework for exploring myriad themes, including the relationship between individual psychology and social injustice, the benefits and limits of empathy as a mode of political engagement, and various functions of fear as an affective force in civil s...

Novelist and editor Jason Rekulak captivated his audience with stories about his journey from English graduate to editor and writer in Philadelphia. In conversation with Dr. Joe Drury and Dr. Adrienne Perry, Rekulak discussed the success of  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies  and its film adaptation, the creative process behind writing books, literary fandom, and the realities of life as a writer and editor. 

Laura Tscherry, a current PhD student at Indiana University and 2017 graduate from the Villanova English MA program, was recently published in the Print Plus edition of Modernism/modernity . Laura wrote on "Queer Domestic Architectures: Theorizing Kinship and Communal Modernism," focusing on the way that various intimate living situations exist in literature (and in life!) beyond the heteronormative family unit. In their words, "I propose a theory of communal domestic spaces that asks what it means to share one's private life with strangers and what happens to relationality and space when those strangers become kin without the normative trappings of romance and children."  To pursue this theme, Laura writes on "more liminal or atypical domestic arrangements such as convents, tenement buildings, boarding schools, and old age homes," which "collapse, or complicate, neat boundaries of public and private." Laura goes on to note that "Communa...

Professor Megan Quigley recently published "Kenner as an Eliot Fan"   at Nonsite.org . It is her first scholarly piece on fanfiction. It " works to break down the border between scholarship and fandom, impersonality and attachment, objective annotation and invested interpretation." Read the full article  here .

Villanova MA student Adam Riekstins has published a novel with his publishing company, Parsley Wake Publishing. The book, Robin and the Great White Heron , is available in Kindle and paperback versions, both online and in select stores. Robin and the Great White Heron will also soon be released to Barnes and Noble and other major book retailers.  Robin and the Great White Heron is a philosophical adventure that explores the meaning in our lives against the excesses of society, religious fanaticism, comical grief and bad art. When Robin’s friend dies, she is faced by a wave of existential reckoning and must come to terms with not only her own indifference to life but with the world around her that has become so strange and alienating.   The novella takes influence from postmodern and philosophical authors such as Albert Camus, Nathanael West, Anthony Burgess and Vladimir Nabokov. The narrative aims to diagnose the modern problems of asserting singular identity in a sea of (no...

  Ellipsis , the literary magazine supported by Villanova English, is accepting student, faculty, and staff submissions for its 2021 publication. They are happy to consider graduate student submissions. The editors welcome "submissions of any form of writing and artwork -- photography, sketches in your notebook when you're bored in class, murals, finger paintings, poems, short stories, essays, recipes, Instagram stories, screenshots of your friends' text messages . . . you name it, we want to review it!" To submit, send your work as an attachment to vuellipsis@gmail.com with the title of your work and your name in the subject line. Please refrain from putting your name on the submission itself to keep the review process anonymous. The editors will contact you in the spring to inform you if your work was accepted into the magazine. If you are interested in being part of the Ellipsis  staff or learning more about the submission process, email vuellipsis@gmai...

This post by guest blogger and professor Dr. Adrienne Perry. What does a career in publishing look like? How does someone interested in jobs or internships in publishing get started?  On Monday night, a packed room gathered to hear four high-powered Villanova alumni answer these and other questions. Cece Ryan, Publisher of  People  magazine and Senior VP at Meredith Corporation underscored that there are lots of different kinds of publishing (hint: it’s not all about books). According to Ryan, finding fulfilling work after Villanova should be an exhilarating process. Villanova students can feel both proud and prepared to meet their futures. Gary Urda, Senior VP for Sales at Simon and Schuster, reminded the audience that publishing is a 26 billion dollar a year industry on the cutting edge of art and culture. Given the size of the industry, what percentage of jobs in this field are editorial? At Simon and Schuster, Urda estimated about 10%. He then discussed the dynami...

This past Monday, four Villanova alumni shared their experience in publishing at the Publishing Matters: Careers in Publishing Alumni Panel event. Bob Bender (Simon & Schuster), Cece Ryan (People and Meredith Corporation), Gary Urda (Simon & Schuster), and Kelly Moran (Macmillan/St. Martin's Press) shared their experiences in book and magazine publishing, as well as their thoughts on what it takes to launch a successful publishing career. The four panelists also shared how a Villanova education has influenced their work. Thanks to everyone who attended!