The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

Reposted from Villanova's English Department Blog . Dr. Chiji Akoma has been named one of the recipients of the 2013 Faculty Development Grant. The grant will fund his trip to Nigeria to do archival work at the Nigerian Television Authority headquarters library in Abuja in the summer of 2014. Dr. Akoma is conducting research for a monograph on the development of popular theater in south eastern Nigeria, using as his primary source the television show Icheoku, which ran on both regional and national networks in the 1980’s up to mid-1990’s. The show is set in the late 19th century colonial era and features the daily interactions between a British colonial administrator who doubles as a magistrate and his half-literate Nigerian court clerk and interpreter. Dr. Akoma is using the television series to explore the idea of cultural agency and the development of popular theatrical tradition in south-east Nigeria, especially in light of the resulting interface of orality and literacy....

The Modern Language Association has developed a new blog geared toward Graduate Students, http://mlagrads.commons.mla.org/ . Hosted by the MLA Committee on the Status of Graduate Studetns in the Profession, the blog will cover the annual MLA convention, the job market, and other issues relevant to graduate student members of the MLA.

A new graduate student lounge has opened on the third floor of Old Falvey. The lounge has been fully renovated, is well-heated, has afternoon sunlight, and is blissfully silent except for the turning of pages and the clicking of typing keys. Additionally, it is open 24 hours a day. Graduate students must scan ID cards to enter. We expect to see English graduate students accumulating here as paper writing ramps up. Katie will not move from this spot until the semester is over.

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 ...

Second-year graduate English student Corey Arnold was recently featured on Falvey Library's advertising materials due to his good looks and well-known ability to imitate a person deep in thought. Corey's recent celebrity has led to him being asked to make his "inspired face" all across campus and to make soulful poses in front of his own effigy. We look forward to seeing where Corey's modeling career will take him next. You inspire us all, Corey Arnold.

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...

Dr. Dailey in front of Fellows' Hall, where John Milton  lived when he was a student at  Christ's College, Cambridge. Over the fall break, I traveled to England to give a scholarly talk and to pursue new research. My first stop was Christ’s College, Cambridge, where I shared my current work on corporeality and real presence with the Medieval-Renaissance Faculty Colloquium of Cambridge University. I was treated to a wonderful tour of Christ’s College, alma mater of John Milton and Charles Darwin. There I saw the hall where Milton lived and sat in the beautiful room in which senior fellows of the college, like Darwin, have for centuries drunk wine, talked, made friendly wagers, and kept hand-written accounts of their consumption. These bound ledgers, some including Darwin’s hand writing, are still stored in the room and brought out for nightly record-keeping. After my time in Cambridge, I spent three days in London studying Michael Landy’s Saints Alive, an exhi...

This summer, the National Science foundation decided to award Villanova a grant of $1.67 million to build a CAVE system in Old Falvey. The CAVE is a room-like enclosure which has walls, floor and in some cases a ceiling made of rear-projection screens, allowing viewers inside the room to experience and interact with 3D immersive environments. The CAVE will be able to hold 10-15 students for research and classroom experiences and will be integrated with a mobile robot platform which will be developed at Villanova for telepresence experiences. Dr. Klassner has been spearheading this interdisciplinary project. The overall vision for the use of the CAVE includes technologically enhanced teaching and will allow Villanova to foray into the Digital Humanities. See the figure for a cutaway schematic view of the proposed CAVE facility. Villanova has invited professors from all disciplines to attend two luncheons to learn about the CAVE's capabilities and to deve...

This past September, current PhD student and Villanova Alum Alexandra Edwards stood onstage to accept a Creative Arts Emmy® for Original Interactive Program. She and her teammates were recognized for their work on the multimedia online project, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. We were able to email Alex and ask about her experience with the show, her current studies and her time at Villanova. The YAWP: Congratulations! Did you EVER envision yourself as an Emmy winner? Alex: NEVER. Never ever. Not even when I was standing onstage getting the award. It's amazing, but it still hasn't sunk in. Probably because I'm still doing the same stuff I was before: reading, writing papers, procrastinating on writing papers, the whole grad student thing. The YAWP: Lizzie Bennet Diaries is categorized as an "Interactive Media" project. What exactly does Interactive Media mean when it comes to entertainment? Alex: Interactive Media a big catch-all term for any kind of entertain...

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded Villanova Master's alumna Alexandra Edwards ('12) with a Primetime Emmy® for her work on The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, an interactive, multi-platform adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Edwards and the other two members of the transmedia team took home the Emmy® for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media—Original Interactive Program. The team accepted their award live onstage at the 2013 Primetime Creative Arts Emmy® Awards and were featured in the cable broadcast version of the ceremony. This fall, Edwards continues her work with Pemberley Digital, the production company behind The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. She serves as the transmedia producer for Emma Approved, the recently launched interactive adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma. She is also attached as the transmedia producer for the upcoming interactive webseries Hashtag Hamlet. The project has been invited to the 2013 Sundance Institute New ...