Tibetan Women Writing Symposium

Professor Tsering Wangmo Dhompa recently participated a Tibetan Women Writing Symposium at the University of Virginia, held April 8-10. English masters student, Theo Campbell, interviewed her to learn more about this important event.

Theo Campbell: What was your favorite part of the event?

TWD: There are very few occasions when I hear Tibetan being spoken in public spaces, so my heart was dancing listening to poetry read in the many Tibetan dialects. The event was planned in 2019 by professors and scholars of Tibetan Studies and Buddhist Studies from France, England, and the U.S. The goal was to bring together Tibetan women writers from inside Tibet and in the diaspora and international scholars to have conversations about Tibetan literature. It seemed like an impossible gathering with multiple postponements due to COVID, and visa restrictions for writers traveling from Tibet and India. One writer arrived a few hours before her reading so there was a lot to celebrate at this unprecedented event celebrating Tibetan women’s literature. 

 

Theo Campbell: Why do you think it’s important to have events like this that bring together writers from a particular culture?

TWD: This was an extraordinary event for multiple reasons. If I’d have to pick three reasons, I’d say first, that Tibetan writers in the diaspora are often denied entry into Tibet, and it’s difficult for Tibetan writers from Tibet to leave Tibet so a face-to-face meeting between us is near impossible. Then, secular literature and the genre of fiction is a recent development in Tibetan literature, and even within this field, narratives of men and by men have held dominance so an event celebrating the writings of women is rare. Lastly, the ongoing occupation of Tibet makes the Tibetan language crucial in our collective struggle. The Tibetan language becomes something we have to fight for because it is either banned or made an optional language within the curricula in Tibet. 

 

Literature provides a space where writers and readers can be in the same place and share their longing for a different present, and talk about what it means to be and write as Tibetans even as they write in different languages and under very different circumstances. 

Tenzin Dickie, Min-Nangzey, Chimay, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Tsedron Kyi and Kelsang Lhamo

Theo Campbell: This was an event that featured both public readings of creative works and scholarly discussion of them. What do you see as the connection between literary scholarship and creative writing, and how do these two practices work together or push against each other in your own work?

TWD: This is such a beautiful question and one that I am still trying to feel out as I write.One of the writers present at the symposium spoke about how the form of the novel or short story allows her to write about the everyday labor of women and the violence inflicted on women in a way that she cannot do so in her essays. I suppose I am circling around the same questions in both creative writing and my research. I feel I can approach them from different directions. One of the Tibetan scholars (who is also a spectacular translator) pointed out that some of my poems are filled with the cadence and feeling of the Tibetan language. He could hear Tibetan. I loved hearing that, poetry allows me to carry over sounds, images, and notes from the Tibetan language into the English. I can dream, I can put my longing for justice in a different pace and urgency from that of my research work.  

Dhondup Rekjong (translator); Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Dr. Lama Jabb (translator) and Chimay

Early Reviews of Alan Drew's The Recruit

 Alan Drew's latest novel, The Recruit, will be out this summer (you can preorder it here). But early reviews are already in! 

Kirkus Reviews calls it "A terrific crime novel with an explosive climax, the book dares to find a level of empathy with its young perpetrators, connecting the dots between being frightened and “walking around in the dark” and turning to hate."

In turn, Publisher's Weekly concludes, "This socially complex police procedural, with its issues that remain all too relevant today, deserves a wide audience."

Why Read Ulysses 100 years on featuring Professor Megan Quigley--Tuesday, April 26

 This Tuesday, April 26th at 6 EST, hear Megan Quigley, Paul Saint-Amour,Sean Latham, Bonnie Roos, and some amazing students discuss Why Read Ulysses 100 Years on, hosted by The Rosenbach.

Registration

• This is a FREE virtual program held on Zoom. Please check your spam folder for the Zoom link.
• Registration opens for Delancey Society members on March 2, for members on March 9, and for the general public on March 16.
• If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email rsvp@rosenbach.org.

Why Read Ulysses 100 Years On?   “An illiterate, underbred book it seems to me: the book of a self-taught working man, & we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, & ultimately nauseating.”–Virginia Woolf (16 August 1922)   In our era of information saturation, political, social, and environmental upheaval, why read Ulysses? In this roundtable, students, scholars, and popular readers reflect on the relevance of Ulysses in 2022, one hundred years after its publication. Each participant aims to connect one episode or character to a specific pressing concern today. Censorship, immigration, self-government, Anti-Semitism, sexual, artistic, and religious freedoms–if these were the concerns of 1922, what are the topics that Ulysses urgently speaks to today?

About the Panelists  Megan Quigley is the author of Modernist Fiction and Vagueness: Philosophy, Form, and Language (Cambridge University Press, 2015) as well as articles on Henry James, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and #MeToo and Modernism. She is co-editing the forthcoming volume Eliot Now (Bloomsbury 2022) in time for the centenary of The Waste Land. She is an Associate Professor of English at Villanova University.      Paul Saint-Amour is the author, most recently, of Tense Future: Modernism, Total War, Encyclopedic Form (Oxford University Press, 2015) and the co-editor, with Jessica Berman, of the Modernist Latitudes series at Columbia University Press. He currently chairs the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania.    Sean Latham‘s teaching and research focus on modern literature and culture with a particular focus on major figures like James Joyce and Bob Dylan. He is the author or editor of nine books that explore topics like snobbery, genre fiction, libel law, and modernism. Latham also serves as Editor of the James Joyce Quarterly and Director of the TU Institute for Bob Dylan Studies. Currently, he is at work on a book that explores Dylan creative life.

Stoneleigh Garden's Field Notes Feature Writing by Villanova English Students

Stoneleigh Garden's Field Notes are out, featuring all fourteen students in the Nature Writing Workshop. Professor Cathy Staples's introduction to their work reads:

"Villanova’s Nature Writing Workshop takes place almost exclusively out of doors. Last  fall, students read and wrote their way through the gardens, meadows, and woods of Stoneleigh: a natural garden. Over the next two weeks, in honor of National Poetry Month, this blog will feature student work from Nature Writing Workshop 2021.

You’ll find some pieces are grounded in well-loved spots–the stand of white pines, the view from the porch, the bog garden. Other pieces have been composed under the influence of the garden and within the mind-set it awakens."

Futures of American Studies Book Discussion on Professor Travis Foster's book: April 27, 2022 5:00 pm

 On April 27, 2022 at 5:00 pm, The Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth College will host a public webinar featuring a conversation between Colleen Glenney Boggs and Travis M. Foster on Professor Foster's book: Genre and White Supremacy in the Postemancipation United States. You can register for this event here.

Black Pre-Law Student Association goes to Washington D.C.

 The English department helped support a recent trip to Washington D.C. by the Black Pre-Law Student Association, designed completely by leaders of the executive board, as they utilized their own vision and connections to curate each aspect of this trip. 

From the executive board:

"Upon arrival in Washington, DC, we checked into our lodging at The Club Quarters Hotel, which had beautiful views of national landmarks including the White House and Capitol. Our group organized a visit to McGuireWoods LLP, a prestigious law firm where we utilized our connection with Villanova alum, Andrew Southerling, who serves as a partner at the firm. Within our visit, we had the opportunity to sit among McGuireWoods LLP partners, associates, and attorneys. Members of our club were granted access to unparalleled networking opportunities with individuals well-established within their respective legal professions and had the opportunity to ask questions and receive genuine answers. We were lucky enough to receive a visit from the chair of the firm, Jon Harmon, who gave perspective to our group of how as a black man, he was able to navigate the nature of and become successful in his field. The opportunity to meet with legal associates, partners, and the chair of a law firm in a private conversational setting was an opportunity that many of our underrepresented students had never been exposed to, and our team was more than happy to arrange.

Following our visit to McGuireWoods LLP, members of our organization also had the opportunity to receive a private tour from the George Washington Law School chapter of the Black Law Student Association. Our members were able to learn detailed information about the admissions process and what each law school looks for in a competitive candidate for their institution. The knowledge and skills gained by this experience were invaluable for our prospective law school students.

The following day, our group partnered with an Urban Agriculture Enterprise to perform community service. During our time of service, we were able to help revitalize a community garden to provide access to fresh produce and vegetables to the inner-city communities of Washington, DC. This outreach initiative taught our members the importance of not only serving as legal advocates for the voiceless but also, the importance of tangibly serving in the community. Villanova’s devotion to Caritas is one that the Black Pre-Law Student Association holds to a high regard, as we recognize how service is synonymous with being a Villanovan and were happy to give back to our community.

Our trip was closed out with a private networking dinner at Lyle’s in Dupont Circle. Our group had the opportunity to connect with the founder of our organization, Adetola Ajayi, who currently works as an Associate at Cadwalader, Wickersham, & Taft LLP and Earl Quermorllue, a Villanova alum who now attends Howard Law School, and is an incoming summer associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP. During this dinner, our group had the opportunity to reflect on the trip and seek authentic advice from Alums related to how minority students can be successful in legal spaces."

"In Between States" by Professor Kamran Javadizadeh

 

Professor Kamran Javadizadeh reviews Somaz Sharif's new collection of poetry, Customs, in The New York Review of Books. Read the complete review here.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson Pride Day --April 11, 6 pm online!

 Honor author and activist, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, through a round table discussing Dunbar-Nelson as a queer Black woman and the challenges of recovering Black LGBTQ+ History! Featuring English major Kashae Garland, Dr. Brigette Fielder, Denise Burgher and English professor Dr. Jean Lutes.

 

Professor Travis Foster: Friendship and Masculinity through the Lens of a 19th-century Black Photographer

Professor Travis Foster will participate in a New York Public Library Doc Chat episode on Thursday, April 14 at 3:30 pm to discuss the daguerreotype below.

From the website: 

Doc Chat is a program series that digs deep into the stories behind the Library’s most interesting collections and highlights ways that educators can incorporate them into the classroom.

In Episode 52, Schomburg Center curator Dalila Scruggs and literary scholar Travis M. Foster focus on a daguerreotype of two unidentified white men by African American photographer, abolitionist, and businessman Augustus Washington. Scruggs and Foster will discuss Washington's studio practice and examine the gender dynamics behind the tender intimacy exhibited by the men in this 150 year-old photograph.

Educators, scholars, students, and all primary source lovers are welcome to join this lively conversation. Each 30-minute episode takes place online.

Register HERE, and explore all upcoming Doc Chat episodes HERE. 

Professor Travis Foster presents research at C19 Conference

Professor Travis Foster presented a paper titled, "Effemanicies" at the Nineteenth-Century Femininities panel at the 2022 C19 Conference in Coral Gables, Florida.

Polar Voyaging and the Humanities--Tuesday, April 19th, 2022, at 4:00 PM

Please join us on Tuesday, April 19 at 4 p.m. via Zoom for “Polar Voyaging and the Humanities” with Hester Blum, PhD, Professor of English at Penn State.

In the summer of 2019 Blum was the lone humanities scholar on a scientific expedition tracking climate change in the Northwest Passage. Drawn from her experience on the Arctic icebreaker (and on an Antarctic expedition), as well as her research on nineteenth-century polar expeditions, Blum's talk offers a meditation on ice as a measure for visualizing, writing about, mourning, and mediating the state of the climate in an age of ecological and institutional crisis.

This event is offered in support of Falvey Memorial Library’s current exhibit "That Fairyland of Ice": Polar Exploration in Mind and Memory and is included alongside Earth Week events.

This ACS-approved event is co-sponsored by Falvey Memorial Library, the Office of Sustainability, the Department of Geography and the Environment, the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest, and the Department of English. It is free and open to all!

REGISTER HERE