The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

George presented his paper entitled "Toy Guns: Agency, Performativity and Resignation in Pádraic Ó Conaire’s  Exile " at Notre Dame's Hybrid Irelands Conference on Friday, March 30, 2012.

Cynthia presented at the spring conference on Critical Theory, “Principles of Uncertainty,” at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her panel was labeled "Shifty Subjectivities: Race, Gender, and Contingent Imagery in Popular Culture" and consisted of three interlocking papers that explore the uncertainty created/perpetuated within 21st century popular culture, discussing the ways in which intersectional identities are constructed and informed by/through ideology, culture, and power. Her paper entitled “Cultural Miscegenation in Mansbach’s Angry Black White Boy” focused on Adam Mansbach’s protagonist, Macon Detornay, as a white boy who authentically reflects and refracts his abiding identification with Hip Hop Culture. One result of his embrace of Hip Hop culture is Macon’s ultra-identification with blackness, uncertainly construed in a world where even in his most earnest desires to deconstruct whiteness, it is black identity that is repeatedly over-determined. Hip Hop culture presents...

Karen presented a paper entitled " 'A Bomb in Gilead': Biblical Subversion in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale" at this year's Elizabeth Cady Stanton Conference.

Ben recently traveled to  Manchester, UK to present his paper entitled "Between Critics: Dorian Gray and the Phallosocial Intellect" at the University of Salford's "Extremity and Excess" Graduate Conference.

Congratulations to Grace Oh, Alexandra Edwards, and Afton Woodward for their recent publications in Concept, Villanova's graduate journal! Grace's essay, entitled "The Reconstitution of Sisterhood in Augusta Webster's 'A Castaway,'" was published in both the printed and on-line forms of the journal.   Alex's essay "'Proper for a Lady's Brush': The Visual Arts in the Work of Louisa May Alcott," and Afton's essay, "'His Blood is Infected': Transmission of Disease and Wealth in Dickens's Bleak House," are both in the online version.

Ryan presented at three conferences this semester: Oklahoma State University's Frontiers and Borders Conference in Stillwater, OK; The 15th Annual Conference for the Association of the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities in Ft. Worth, TX; and The National Popular Culture & American Culture Association's National Conference in Boston, MA. He also has two forthcoming publications: "Effaced and Eroticized: Revealing and Refiguring Child Witnesses" will appear in the Fall 2012 issue of  Law and Literature  (Vol. 24, Issue 3), published for Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, by the University of California Press. "Ishmael's Impersonal Narration: Queer Style in  Moby-Dick " is forthcoming in Jan Van Eyck Akademie's  Issues in Contemporary Culture and Aesthetics .

Rebecca presented her paper entitled “Castles and chimeras” in the New World: Creating the American Gothic in  Edgar Huntly " at the April 2012  Shifting Tides, Anxious Borders,  Binghamton University's annual graduate student conference in Transnational American Studies.

Rebecca Wilson and Kathleen Hynes, along with professional tutor and Villanova alum Juliana Morro, facilitated a round-table discussion entitled: "After Hours: How Special Events Extend Writing Centers’ Reach" at the 23rd Conference of the Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association (MAWCA) in March 2012.

Check out Marc Schuster's new novel,  The Grievers.  Schuster's second novel is a darkly comic coming of age story, in which a Charley Schwartz tries to help his  alma mater  plan a memorial service for a deceased high school buddy who committed suicide. Amid various problems that arise from the school, his friends, and the planning process, Schwartz attempts to set his world right and keep everything from unraveling.   The Grievers  is   available now on your Nook and Kindle and will be in print this May from The Permanent Press.

The third annual Thesis/Field Examination Symposium will take place on Saturday, April 14th, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. in the Devon Room in the Connelly Center . This event is an opportunity for students who are completing the program to present to each other their research, while also giving first-year students a sense of the  projects that are undertaken as master's theses and field examinations. We hope to have two consecutive one-hour sessions, in which students offer ten-minute presentations of their research. The event is structured so there is plenty of time for comments and questions by audience members and other presenters. Copious amounts of delicious gourmet coffee will be served before and during the event, and after the second session, there will be a catered lunch. Please email Dr. Hicks if you would like to present your research at this event, or if you would like to attend as an audience member. Please RSVP by Monday, March 26th.