The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

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. ...

Visitors to the forty-third annual T.S. Eliot Society meeting, held recently in St. Louis and marking the centenary of The Waste Land , had an opportunity to see four 'generations' of Villanovans presenting: former Villanova professor Vincent Sherry, Professor Megan Quigley, MA alum Ann-Marie Jakubowski '17, and current MA student Ethan Shea '23. Ethan Shea presented on "Eliot Goes to the Cinema: Film, Mechanical Reproduction, and the City in The Waste Land ." He told the YAWP that "Attending the T.S. Eliot Society Meeting was an incredibly rewarding experience, and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from so many scholars on such a wide array of topics concerning Eliot. I also received a lot of helpful feedback on my presentation that I hope to apply to my research in the future. Hopefully, I'll be back again next year." Ethan Shea presenting   Ethan Shea, Megan Quigley, Ann-Marie Jakubowski   Megan Quigley, Vincent Sherry, Eth...

This past week I received the opportunity to interview Villanova alumna Jessica Swoboda '15 (B.A., Honors, English and Humanities), who is now completing her PhD in English at the University of Virginia. Her articles in The Point magazine, “Plural Visions: A reflection on ‘Criticism in Public’” and “Practicing Acknowledgement,” explore new ways of interpreting literature and interrogate characteristics of modern academia, both of which she examines further in her dissertation, “Entangled Relations: Characters, Interpretation, and Aesthetic Experience.” During her time at UVA, she has received multiple research grants from the English Department as well as an Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Summer Research Fellowship. From 2018-2020, she was the Irby Cauthen Jefferson Fellow, a title she holds again this academic year.  Jessica also serves as the Head Copy Editor for New Literary History and as a contributing editor for The Point .      Thank you very much for a...

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...

Professor Lauren Shohet recently contributed a chapter to the newly released Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Interface .  According to Routledge, "The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Interface provides a ground-breaking investigation into media-specific spaces where Shakespeare is experienced. While such operations may be largely invisible to the average reader or viewer, the interface properties of books, screens, and stages profoundly mediate our cognitive engagement with Shakespeare." Professor Shohet's chapter is called "The Heuristics of Interface: Shakespeare's Cymbeline ." Here is the abstract to Professor Shohet's chapter: "This chapter considers interfaces as liminal spaces where significantly different entities are mediated in ways that allow users to undertake some work across the gap between them, and investigates the heuristic as an essentially narrative tool for navigating that gap. The chapter explores what digitally ...

Professor Joe Drury has just been published on Samuel Johnson (well, just been published in the UK; the book will be out on this side of the pond in another few months). Professor Drury contributed a chapter for The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Johnson . Here is the excerpt for Professor Drury's chapter: "Even though Samuel Johnson paid close attention to the natural sciences, conducted chemical experiments at home, and included a large number of scientific terms in his Dictionary , he is typically thought to have made no significant contribution to Enlightenment science. This chapter challenges this view by reading Johnson’s periodical essays as important examples of 'experimental moral philosophy,' an eighteenth-century field of inquiry that sought to extend the Newtonian method from the sensible world to the study of human subjectivity. Drawing on the methods and conceptual repertoire of vitalist natural philosophy, especially chemistry, Johnson’s essays offe...

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.

A new exhibit of military and illustrated maps has debuted at Falvey Memorial Library, which was co-curated by Villanova graduate English alumnus, Christoforos Sassaris '22. Per the Falvey Library blog, "Our latest exhibit, Art of War: Illustrated and Military Maps of the Twentieth Century , is now on display on the 1st floor of Falvey Library and in select cases at the Prince Family Veterans Resource Center. Both locations feature a selection of two types of imagery: maps that are illustrated, highly pictorial, and created for public distribution; and topographic maps that have been created by government war offices for use in military conflict. The juxtaposition forces a close analysis of the very nature of maps. Often assumed as truthful and accurate, maps lead and guide the way, provide direction, and help us make decisions. Yet as with anything that is human-made there are things to consider – the knowledge or bias of the creator, the intended audience, the purpose of the...

Thanks to everyone who was able to attend the graduate/faculty reception on Friday! Mexican food firmly defeated Mediterranean in our poll this year, and a good time was had by all. A special thanks to Professor Yumi Lee for taking the pictures! Bailee Formon, Ethan Shea, Matt Villaneuva, Sarah Herr, Theo Campbell, Adam Riekstins Professors Kimberly Takahata & Megan Quigley Matt Villaneuva, Sarah Herr, Theo Campbell, Ethan Shea Ethan Shea and Professor Joe Drury

 VU Grad English students hanging out at the Graduate Kick-Off Picnic, August 26, 2022. Adam Riekstins, Sarah Herr, Matt Villaneuva, Megan Hayes