DEI: What We're Reading Now

Some time ago, our department put out a list of Reading Recommendations for those wishing to learn more about Black Lives Matter. With the aim of expanding on that effort, our DEI committee would like to provide an update on some of the works that we are currently reading or have recently read that touch on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion:

We're interested in reading books that change, challenge, and expand our thinking on what's happening in our lives and in the world around us. We hope you'll find some exciting or intriguing titles on this list. For those interested in reading specifically about white supremacy, policing, and racial justice, we encourage you to revisit our earlier list of recommended titles. You may also want to explore Falvey Library's diversity and inclusion subject guide.

ADRIENNE PERRY: I’m reading bell hooks Ain’t I a Woman, which she began writing in her early twenties and first published in 1981. This book has been on our shelves for years, but I decided to pick it up recently because I wanted to read more of hooks’ work given her passing at the end of 2021, but also because I’ve found her writings about teaching and love so galvanizing. I also want to center my reading around scholars, artists, and writers of color, particularly Black women. Ain’t I a Woman feels really relevant now, as it has me thinking about feminisms and the “long” “arc of the moral universe.” 

TRAVIS Foster:I just finished Alexis Hall’s A Lady for a Duke. It’s a Bridgerton-esque romance novel with a trans heroine. I picked it up for a novel that gives its protagonist complex humanity and a happy ending, something too often missing from contemporary depictions and transphobic stereotypes. And I love the cover!

JEAN LUTES What I’m reading … 

Annie Proulx’s Fen, Bog, and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and its Role in the Climate Crisis (2022) –  because Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss made me want to learn more about peat. (I know, a book made me want to read another book –but what do you expect?) It’s relevant to me now because of my moral panic about climate change and how we’re not doing nearly enough about it.

Farah Jasmine Griffin’s Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature (2021) – because a friend recommended it, because it’s uplifting, and because I’ve been excited to learn more about the long history of what Gholdy Muhammad calls “historically responsive literacy” in Black communities. It’s relevant to me now because of the problem of mass incarceration and ongoing police violence against racial minorities.

YUMI LEE: I’m currently reading Joan is Okay by Weike Wang (2022) – it’s a novel told from the perspective of Joan, a Chinese-American woman living in New York City and working as a doctor in the ICU at a hospital just before the COVID pandemic hits. It hits on so many relevant issues – what it’s like to grow up different from those around you, power dynamics in the workplace, familial conflict, anti-Asian violence – but what drew me in the most was the utterly unique voice of the narrator Joan, who is charismatic, funny, wise, and bold. Highly recommend!

CHARLOTTE DAVIDSON: I’m currently reading The Dating Divide: Race and Dating in the Era of Online Romance by Celeste Vaughan Curington, Jennifer H. Lundquist, and Ken-you Lin. This book takes a look at “digital-sexual racism,” a form of racism that takes place in the online sphere, amplified by the idea that people can hide behind a mask. It takes a theoretical and historical look at how different racial groups are affected by this online dating, but also how dating is very gendered. The authors researched different dating websites and how people of different racial backgrounds, sexual identities, and genders are affected by this modern form of dating. It touches a lot on how early policy in America, specifically anti-miscegenation laws, slavery, and heteronormativity, can explain why, even though the internet is a useful place to expose oneself to many different people, racism and sexism still impede on the online dating experience. It also touches on stereotyping and how that influences the chatting that takes place on these dating sites. I think this is a wonderful book for college students to read. As students turn 18, online dating becomes a lot more popular amongst one’s peers and social circles. It is important to understand the ideas that shape one's dating experience, as well as the history of what dating has looked like in America for people outside of a hegemonic group. 

MARY MULLEN: I’ve been reading and re-reading a lot of Edward Said’s criticism and political writing these days to think about Palestine and the difficulty of representing Palestinian peoples’ experiences under occupation. I’ve especially liked returning to After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives (1986) which reflects on photos by Jean Mohr. On Said’s suggestion, these photos were exhibited at the 1983 International Conference on the Question of Palestine. But the participating states refused to allow any writing to accompany them: there could be pictures but no explanatory text. After negotiations, the UN eventually allowed the name of the location of the photograph to be included as long as there was no other text. After the Last Sky thus offers insight about Palestine, Palestinian people, and occupation but also about the politics of language more broadly. When I finish reading Said, I hope to turn to Suad Amiry’s Mother of Strangers (2022)--a novel set in the cosmopolitan city of Jaffa between 1947 and 1951, and thus narrating the Nakba or Palestinian Catastrophe. I also have been meaning to watch Farha on Netflix.

LISA SEWELL: I’ve been reading The Love Songs of WEB Du Bois by Honoree Fanon Jeffers and I can’t recommend it enough. It is a long, deeply imagined, beautifully written/constructed and utterly absorbing novel that tracks and bravely tries to think through the complex legacies of settler colonialism, the slave trade, reconstruction, segregation and the civil rights and Black power movements on the lives and “souls” of Black people. The story moves between the past and the present and is partly told through the eyes of Ailey Pearl Garfield as she tries to negotiate and understand her own identity as she learns about and investigates her ancestral roots, which include free and enslaved Blacks, Creek tribal leaders, as well as Scottish and other white colonialists. It’s a big, satisfying read but also harrowing as Jeffers does not shy away from difficult subjects like the unremitting violence of plantation life, the complexities of colorism and intra-racial racism, and the silence around domestic sexual abuse. It also takes a deep dive into the history of historically Black colleges and universities, and developments in Black intellectual life. I’m making it sound really dry, but it’s not! Ailey is a funny, vulnerable and utterly human guide that I fell in love with. 

Faculty Spotlight: Professor Lauren Shohet

 By Keenlyn Kilgore and Juliana Perri

Dr. Lauren Shohet, a beloved English professor, sat down with two of her former students to talk about her experience at Villanova University as a professor, researcher, and member of the Villanova English community. In addition to her work at Villanova, Dr. Shohet is Subject Editor for Literature and Drama in English for Routledge On-lineResources. 

So what made one of the university’s most loved professors decide  to teach? For one, conducting. Dr. Shohet experienced a novelty in high school when she was introduced to the world of conducting. For her, conducting choirs was a position of leadership that she now equates with being at the front of a classroom. Then, she helped guide others by providing the proper procedures with a baton. Now, she does the same with her students, providing them with the foundations they need to thrive. Dr. Shohet loves seeing her students come into their own, taking what they learn from her and independently applying it elsewhere. 

Dr. Shohet’s draw to teaching gathered momentum  when she became an undergraduate teaching assistant at Oberlin College. There, she worked independently four days a week with a group of ten beginning language learners. Only cementing her desire to one day become a professor, Dr. Shohet not only found the work to be incredibly energizing, but also loved getting to know people and creating a community in the classroom setting. 

Speaking of community, one of Dr. Shohet’s favorite parts of the Villanova English program is the mutual love for reading and writing that permeates every classroom. Colleagues and students alike are binded by this commonality, which is truly at the core of the English department. 

Over the years of her impressive career as a professor, Dr. Shohet says that technology has drastically changed the teaching and learning experience, mostly for the better. Mainly, it has allowed for more efficient communication and a more effective organization of materials. Students now spend less time on mechanics and lower-ordered diversions/preoccupations, and therefore have a greater capacity to engage with the coursework. While Villanova students today find Blackboard tedious and faulty at times, Dr. Shohet points out that it alleviates many stressors that would otherwise be present.

If Dr. Shohet could give any advice to her younger self or other aspiring educators, it is to remember that the classroom is a place for learning both by the student and the professor. Hoping to ease some of the expectations of perfection or omniscience that is placed on professors, she says even professors can get something wrong, forget something, or not be able to do something. What’s important is creating “a community of people doing their best.” 

Like other professors at Villanova, Dr. Shohet is completing her own research while simultaneously teaching in the classroom. One long-term project that Dr. Shohet is excited about is her soon-to-be-published book about John Milton’s Eve and the idea of media and mediation. In our heavily mediated world, Dr. Shohet wishes to demonstrate the ways Paradise Lost answers some of contemporary society’s most urgent questions, as well as discuss the affordances and dangers of such a mediated world. 

Dr. Shohet is also co-editing a collection that comes out of seminars regarding death, collaborating with Christine Varnado, an assistant professor of gender and sexuality studies at SUNY Buffalo. Their work seeks to determine what is queer about early-modern death, as well as to answer questions about non-binary death. Dr. Shohet looks at some of the traditional, Renaissance, and Christian ways that say death isn't so final in an effort to deconstruct the notion of death. IVF, ventilators, and vegetative states are all examples of the ways death is not as absolute as one might think; an animal raised for the slaughter may not truly be alive, but in fact, in some ways already dead. Augustine says that life rather should be called death than life if you aren’t fully open to God. In these cases, a one-dimensional definition of death egregiously ignores the complex realities of death. 

Dr. Shohet has taught a range of classes from Foundations of Literature to Narrative Television. In the fall, she will be teaching that Narrative Television class on Mondays and Wednesdays at 4:45-6:00, if you want to check it out!

Jackie Carroll's One-Woman Show--"Nova Nice"

 Senior English major, Jackie Carroll, wrote and will perform a one-woman show in Garey Hall's black box on April 27th and 28th. It runs for about 30 minutes and starts at 6pm. 

Jackie will perform poems, short fiction, and short non-fiction, and English majors might be interested in seeing a show that is, in part, about bringing written words to the stage.

Free admission but RSVP here.

Professor Megan Quigley, "Kenner as an Eliot Fan"

Professor Megan Quigley recently published "Kenner as an Eliot Fan" at Nonsite.org. It is her first scholarly piece on fanfiction. It "works to break down the border between scholarship and fandom, impersonality and attachment, objective annotation and invested interpretation." Read the full article here.

Bookstore Expedition: Saturday, April 15 at 3:00 pm

Join the English department for an expedition to Main Point Books on Saturday, April 15 at 3:00 pm. We’ll meet at Rosie’s Cafe at the train station at 3:00 (tickets paid for by the English department), take the 3:13 train to Wayne, browse all the great books. Those who want to can grab coffee afterward at Gryphon Cafe. If you have questions, email Dr. Mary Mullen at Mary.l.mullen@villanova.edu. RSVP here by Thursday, April 13.