The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

The Center for Research and Fellowships (CRF)  is excited to announce a new workshop series designed for current and prospective graduate students seeking funding to support their research!  “Applying to Grants and Fellowships to Support Your PhD,” Friday, April 10, 12:00 – 1:00 PM on Zoom:  This workshop will provide an overview of grants and fellowships designed to support doctoral research, from dissertation conception to completion. Open to current Villanova PhD students and current undergraduate and master's students interested in pursuing a PhD. All disciplines welcome!  Registration on Handshake here.     “Applying to Grants and Fellowships to Support Master’s Research,” Friday, April 17, 12:00 – 1:00 PM on Zoom:  This workshop will provide an overview of grant and fellowship opportunities available to support research at the master’s level. Open to current Villanova master's students a...

  Coming Soon! Augustine and AI Panel discussion, on Monday, January 26th at 6 p.m. in Falvey 205. Featuring as a special guest Villanova MA alum el friedman, along with Villanova faculty. Organized by the English department AI committee.

Our very own subject librarian Sarah Wingo will be facilitating a workshop on literary text analysis using NLTK and Python on November 5, 2025, from 12-1 p.m. We encourage you to attend and add to your digital humanities skills! No coding experience is necessary.

  Next week, on Tuesday, September 9th, from 6-7 p.m. in Falvey Library 205, Villanova English, Honors, and the Writing Center will co-sponsor a roundtable discussion: Who Writes Better: Robots or Me? The discussion will feature Professors Megan Quigley, Kimberly Takahata, and Stefan Perun (Associate Director for Digital Learning Pedagogy). In keeping with the theme of this roundtable, here is what Microsoft Co-Pilot has to say about Megan Quigley (the following may or may not be true): Professor Megan Quigley is an Associate Professor of English at Villanova University, where she is also affiliated with Irish Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies. Her academic focus is on British and Irish literary modernism, and she has made significant contributions to the study of authors like T.S. Eliot, Henry James, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. She is the author of the book  Modernist Fiction and Vagueness: Philosophy, Form, and Language , which explores the intersection of literary...

Our very own Lisa Sewell will be reading, along with Ethel Rackin, at Main Point Books, on Thursday, April 10th, in celebration of National Poetry Month. We hope you will be able to make it!

Please join us for the   Fall 2024 Graduate Studies CLAS Research Symposium TOMORROW-- this Friday, November 15! This event highlights the outstanding and diverse scholarship being conducted by graduate students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Our very own Jaxon Parker will be among the presenters. When:  Friday, November 15 Time: 1 p.m. – 4 p.m. Where: Mullen Center Court Theatre (Oral Presentations)               Mullen Center Lobby (Poster Presentations)                                      Oral presentations will begin at 1 p.m. in the Court Theatre of the Mullen Center. Poster presentations commence thereafter in the lobby at 3 p.m. Please see the list of presenters below and make plans to support your classmates! Ligh...

Coming up on Tuesday, November 12th... This virtual forum features Jean Lutes, Denise Burgher, Trinity Rogers, and Brigitte Fielder of Taught by Literature , a collaborative digital humanities project that re-centers Black women writers, beginning with the work of African American author and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson. The speakers will use Dunbar-Nelson’s short story, “ His Heart’s Desire ” (1900) to explore the challenges scholars face in recovering little-known African American texts when confronted by multiple textual variants, manuscripts without dates, and a readership unfamiliar with an author’s work.  A remarkable short story about a boy who wants a doll, “His Heart’s Desire” is one of twelve short stories Dunbar-Nelson wrote in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries about children living in a poor urban neighborhood. The stories were inspired by her work teaching Black kindergarteners at the White Rose Mission in New York City.   Lutes, Burgher, Roge...

Calling all theater lovers... Current Villanova students AND alumni/ae can attend The Spanish Tragedy symposium for free! In academic year 2023-24, Villanova University faculty Dr. Chelsea Phillips (Theater) and Dr. Alice Dailey (English) launched a year-long interdisciplinary exploration of Thomas Kyd’s seminal Renaissance revenge play, The Spanish Tragedy  (1582). This extended pedagogical, scholarly, and creative endeavor began with a combined undergraduate-graduate course taught in fall 2023 titled “Legacies of Revenge.” It culminates in a  production of The Spanish Tragedy co-directed by Dailey and Phillips and staged in Villanova’s new John and Joan Mullen Center for the Performing Arts in April 2024 , along with a coinciding scholarly symposium on April 19-20, 2024. Through both academic study and performance, The Spanish Tragedy  Project seeks to foster engagement with the play as at once an historical and contemporary artifact ...

This event will feature a short discussion of Adania Shibli’s  Minor Detail  (2017)—an award-winning Palestinian novel that narrates two historical moments to show the haunting and all-too-ordinary nature of colonial violence—followed by a speculative creative writing exercise, inspired by Shibli, where we practice writing for social change. There will be pizza!  Wednesday, April 10 from 7:30 to 8:30 pm in Falvey 205.

 By Melody Gleason MA '25 Over the past two semesters, Dr. Dailey, Dr. Chelsea Phillips from the Theater department, and a group of students from various programs and departments have been working together to examine the theme of revenge and justice as a tragic element. The first half of this project started as class in the fall 2023 semester called, Legacies of Revenge – Across Time, Space, Genre, & Media. The course engaged both graduate and undergraduate students from multiple disciplines including English majors, minors, and theatre majors. Students in the course studied narratives of revenge across a plethora of entertainment mediums: from classical drama, to contemporary fiction, to modern film. The class especially focused on the play,  The Spanish Tragedy  written in the 1580s.   Dr. Dailey describes  The Spanish Tragedy  as  “the precursor to  Hamlet  and to a whole extensive revenge tragedy genre that enters the Elizabethan Thea...

Mary Mullen will present her research on Irish famine novels on Wednesday, April 3 at the Novel Theory Seminar at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University. She will participate alongside scholars Claire Connolly and Mary Burke in an event titled,  "Irish Fiction Then and Now."  This is a hybrid event that will take in person and online. You can  register here. Here is the abstract for her talk: Irish famine novels often begin by addressing a skeptical public fatigued by stories of Irish suffering. Many authors passively “place” or “lay” their novels before the public, insisting that however strange their narrative seems, they depict the truth. The preface to William Carleton’s  The Squanders of Castle Squanders  (1852) is defensive, suggesting that despite his concern “for the general welfare of my countrymen,” he expects that all parties will be disappointed with the novel’s politics. Considering these prefaces and other public addresses within Iris...

Coming soon! Villanova undergrad English major Jenine Hazlewood will be presenting to the school district of Philadelphia on the topic of "What were they made for? A Timeline of the 'Black Barbie' Doll."  This free virtual professional development workshop will take place on March 16 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. To learn more and to register, please visit the virtual form .

J oin us for an exciting reading and conversation with two phenomenal authors! Thomas Swick is a veteran travel writer, newspaper editor, and Villanova alum celebrating the publication of his new memoir,   Falling into Place . Ariel Delgado Dixon is the author of   Don't Say We Didn't Warn You  and   Sourland , forthcoming from Random House. Swick and Delgado Dixon will share their paths to becoming writers, as well as their varied and interesting experiences, from Swick’s life behind the Iron Curtain to Delgado Dixon’s work as a farmer. This event is a good fit for anyone interested in travel writing, becoming a novelist, journalism, and editing (for starters). Refreshments provided! 

There will be a second teach-in on Palestine focused on Solidarity taking place on Monday, November 6 in the Driscoll Auditorium. The event will take place from 4:00-6:00 pm and will be followed by a student-led strategizing session from 6:00-7:00 pm. Come with questions. There will be pizza!

Please join us on November 8th, 2023 6 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. for an in-person event at Larson Kelly Auditorium in Driscoll Hall. This is a collaboration between the Lepage Center, the English Department, and Global Interdisciplinary Studies to consider what speculative fiction can tell us about real world history. Science fiction, fantasy, horror, post-apocalyptic fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, alternate history, weird fiction, climate fiction, all their overlap and subgenres come out of a milieu of real world experiences for their authors, shaped by the structures within which they live their lives. From gothic horror to Afrofuturism, writers and artists have responded to the real world by creating fictional ones that speak to the conditions of society, different understandings of what has come before, and conceiving what might come next. From Mary Shelley to Ursula K. Le Guin to N.K. Jemisin; from Jules Verne to Samuel R. Delany to Kim Stanley Robinson; all these writers, their ...

From our friends at Main Point Books: Join Main Point Books, Alan Drew, and special guest John Vercher to celebrate the paperback release of The Recruit . Come spend a hot summer night with a detective on the hunt to solve a series of hate crimes. He stumbles upon a shadowy, dangerous network hiding in his quiet hometown - you'll stumble upon our lovely, cool new event space and two great contemporary writers! This event is at 7 pm in our lower level event space. Registration is requested via Eventbrite; walk-ins are welcome. Books will of course be for sale at the event, and can purchased for shipping through the links below. Alan Drew is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Gardens of Water and Shadow Man. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. An associate professor of English at Villanova University, where he directs the creative writing program, he lives near Philadelphia with his wife and two children. John Vercher is the author of: Three-Fifths , named a Be...

In conjunction with the exhibit on illustrated and military maps co-curated by our own Christoforos Sassaris MA '22, Falvey Memorial Library and the Office of Veterans and Military Service Members will soon be presenting an exhibit talk and reception. Invited speakers will discuss maps, their history, their use, and what the future holds for them in the military and beyond. The event will take place on Wednesday, Nov. 9 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in Speakers’ Corner, Falvey Memorial Library.  According to Falvey Library, "The event will feature remarks from Francis A. Galgano, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Geography and the Environment and US Army Lt. Colonel (Retired), followed by a roundtable discussion joined by Ken DeTreux, MA, MPA, US Marine Corps Colonel (Retired) and Joseph Evans, current Villanova PhD student, US Army Lt. Colonel (Retired). The event will be moderated by Michael Brown, Director, Office of Veterans and Military Service Members, Villanova University. ...

On Monday, Oct. 3rd, Dr. Benjamin T. Smith will present a lecture in Falvey Library on "The Drug War: The Five Biggest Myths." According to Dr. Smith, "For over a century, politicians and civil society leaders, journalists and policemen have been waging a war on drugs. Wars need their narratives. And the drug war is no different. It is based on over a century of bad sociology, poor science, and even poorer criminology. In this talk, I pick out the five biggest myths which underpin both mass incarceration in the US and the violence of counter-narcotics campaigns abroad." Dr. Smith has been writing about the history of Mexico for twenty years. He now specializes on twentieth-century politics, the narcotics trade and crime. But he has also researched and written about indigenous politics, Catholicism, conservatism, newspapers, journalism and censorship. His most recent book, The Dope: The History of the Mexican Drug Trade (WW. Norton/Penguin, 2021) was described by th...

The first meeting of the BIPOC Writing Group for fall 2022 will take place tomorrow in Garey Hall. Writing prompts, pizza, and high fives will be provided. Reach out to Program Coordinator Mike Malloy or Professor Tsering Wangmo for more information or to RSVP.

Scholarships are available to the 12th annual T.S. Eliot International Summer School, managed by the Institute of English Studies at the University of London. The Summer School will take place this July. Please see the flyer below, and more information is available on their website . Thanks to Professor Megan Quigley for bringing this to our attention!