Coming soon! Villanova undergrad English major Jenine Hazlewood will be presenting to the school district of Philadelphia on the topic of "What were they made for? A Timeline of the 'Black Barbie' Doll."
This free virtual professional development workshop will take place on March 16 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. To learn more and to register, please visit the virtual form.
Villanova’s Ellipsis Literary Magazine is seeking submissions! Everyone is encouraged to submit: undergraduates and graduates as well as professors and staff within the Villanova community. We accept a wide host of traditional and non-traditional media from writing, poetry, and art to embroidery, text messages, memes, and anything else with aesthetic value, humor, personal meaning, or, perhaps, a touch of the bizarre.
Simply submit your work to ellipsis@villlanova.edu, and we’ll consider it for this year’s edition. Our deadline for submissions is March 20th.
Our student advisory council will be making visits to classes in the coming weeks to talk about the English major and minor at Villanova. Here are some of the flyers they'll be showing:
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Fall 2024 UPPER-LEVEL ENGLISH COURSES
2003 Intro to Creative Writing TR 11:30-12:45, Tsering Wangmo
Designed for students who wish to experiment with composing several kinds of creative writing: short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.
2006 The Writing of Poetry, MW 3:20 – 4:35, Lisa Sewell
Instruction in poetry writing, including how to craft imagery, figurative language, sound, line, and rhythm, as well as traditional and contemporary forms. Students read widely and write lyric, narrative and experimental poems that are shared in a supportive workshop setting.
2013 Writing of Memoir TR 4:00-5:15, Tsering Wangmo
Memoir is an opportunity to understand life. This writing workshop provides students with practical skills in reading and writing about the events, memories, places that inform their lives.
2017 Writing Detective Fiction TR 10:00-11:15, Alan Drew
Do you love detective fiction? Have you always wanted to write your own "whodunit?" In this course, you'll read and analyze classic and contemporary detective fiction while working to produce, workshop, and polish your own creative work.
2018 Nature Writing Workshop TR 2:30-3:45, Cathy Staples
The natural world will be a source for the creative non-fiction, poetry, and fiction pieces students will write in this class. Through readings, field trips, writing exercises, and workshops students will learn to sharpen their language and see more deeply.
2023 Journalism TR 1:00-2:15, Kathryn Szumanski
Introduces students to key techniques of news gathering and news writing. We will also explore the principles and rules that guide the writing of news pieces, editorials, and features.
2043 Pop Culture & Resistance MW 3:20-4:35, Karyn Hollis
An analysis of notable works of art, music, literature, video and social media created by people of various international, ethnic and minoritized groups to publicize situations of importance to their communities.
2061 Editing & Publishing MW 1:55-3:10, Adrienne Perry
Literary publishing in a diverse, compelling field involving both art and commerce. This hands-on class explores the economic, social, and artistic forces that shape contemporary literature. Grapple with what it means to "make culture" while honing editorial skills.
2250 Ways of Reading TR 10:00-11:15, Michael Dowdy
An exploration of how we engage, understand, explicate, and enjoy texts of all sorts.
2304 Contemporary World Lit & Environment MW 4:45-6:00, Lisa Sewell
The study of global contemporary fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and film that focuses on the environment, climate change, social justice and the future of nature.
2306 Harry Potter: Quests/Questions MWF 10:40-11:30, Evan Radcliffe
In this course we will use the tools of literary analysis to discuss all seven Harry Potter novels. Central topics will include how the series evolves; Rowling’s use of novelistic form, character and characterization, and literary models; and the books’ representations of gender, class, and other social issues.
3150 Chaucer MW 1:55-3:10, Brooke Hunter
This course introduces the work of Geoffrey Chaucer through a reading of his lively collection of stories and storytellers, The Canterbury Tales. Through its devout stories, explicit comedies, and probing romances, we will explore medieval society, Chaucer's insights on subjectivity, and influential medieval genres.
3181 Irish Epics TR 8:30-9:45, Joseph Lennon
A study of Irish literature from its origins in the world of Celtic mythology, epic and saga through the development of Anglo-Irish literature.
3550 Victorian Publics & Populations MW 3:20-4:35, Mary Mullen
Reading nineteenth-century literature with an eye to who was reading, what they were reading, and how this reading shaped political debates, we'll consider the Victorian Britain's burgeoning print culture, mass movements, colonial publics, and emergent demographic thinking.
3620 Modernism & Fanfiction TR 2:30-3:45, Megan Quigley
This class studies the surprise connections between literary modernism, the early 20th-century experimental literature that explored taboo language, new ideas about empire, sexuality, race and technology, and contemporary fanfiction. We will read fanfiction, bio fiction, and early 20th-century classics and write analytical essays and fanfic of our own.
4000 American Literary Traditions I TR 1:00-2:15, Kimberly Takahata
What makes literature “American”? Who gets to decide? This course examines how literary traditions developed and changed in nineteenth-century America, with a particular focus on race, citizenship, colonialism, and history-making.
4646 Representation Matters: Race & Ethnicity in Cont. America TR 4:00-5:15, Yumi Lee
Canonical texts that treat questions of race and ethnicity. Focus on the critical role of language and literature in constructing and deconstructing racial categories.
4651 Lives of the Undocumented TR 1:00-2:15, Tsering Wangmo
The lived experiences of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. told in their own words through memoir, fiction, poetry, graphic novel, testimony, creative and critical essays.
4652 Letters, Texts, & Twitter TR 10:00-11:15, Kamran Javadizadeh
How does writing bring together distant lovers, friends, family? We'll read letters, the digital forms (social media, instant messaging) that have replaced them, and their representation in novels, poems, and essays to explore how intimacy forms across distance.
4690 Motherhood & Reproductive Fictions TR 11:30-12:45, Jean Lutes
What power do mothers have? Who has the power to define motherhood? This course examines
U.S. narratives of motherhood from the nineteenth century to the present, with special attention
to issues of reproductive justice. Race, ethnicity, class, and religion will be central to our
discussions.
4704 Borders in Latinx Literature TR 8:30-9:45, Michael Dowdy
How do borders impact our lives, and how might they be imagined differently? This course examines how “the border” shapes Latinx literatures, from the U.S.-Mexico national boundary to alternative sites and conceptions of borders, including texts by Latinx writers from various national origins and in multiple genres.
4705 Literature of Addiction & Recovery MWF 10:40-11:30, Travis Foster
This community-based course for Villanova students and incarcerated men will use literature to explore the causes and experience of addiction in addition to the routes taken toward recovery.
On Fridays, students will leave Villanova for SCI Chester at 9:00 a.m. and return to campus by noon. All registered students will be required to attend a spring semester orientation and to complete clearance forms necessary for entrance into the prison.
5000 Black Diaspora & Identity MW 1:55-3:10, Chiji Akoma
This course investigates the notion of Blackness, principally as it is represented in fiction. Using Blackness as an identity category, we’ll examine how writers across the Diaspora spectrum, principally, Africa, the Americas, and Europe, delineate the place of Africa in the formation of Diaspora culture and identity. But beyond the black particularities of the texts, the seminar invites students to consider ideas of hybridity, multi-ethnicity, nationalism, and ways in which one’s “received” culture intersect with “perceived” culture as templates for identity formation.
HON 5440-100 Poets in the Gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Weekend of Oct. 25-27, 2024, Cathy Staples
The workshop begins on Friday in the Honors seminar room with exercises in memory and observation. On Saturday morning, we’ll take the train into Philadelphia and spend the day at PMA on the parkway. We will write our way through the galleries, using the paintings as well as sculpture and installation as entry points for new poems. On Sunday, we’ll gather to share new work over coffee, tea, French toast, & banana bread.
You can find our English Alumni Careers Booklet here.
On February 21st, VU English Professor Kimberly Takahata moderated a discussion on approaches to including and teaching Lenape materials in the classroom, featuring Adam DePaul, the Chief of Education and tribal storykeeper of the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania.
This discussion followed a panel on the impact of Land Acknowledgements at academic institutions and why they are merely a starting point to supporting indigenous communities. The panelists included Adam DePaul, Chief of Education and Tribal Storykeeper; Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania; as well as Modonna Kongal, Meg Martin, and Autumn Coard from N.I.S.A, the Native Indigenous Students Association. Elisha Chi, a white settler descendant of the Iñupiat of the Bering Straits region, moderated the panel.
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| Kimberly Takahata and Adam DePaul |
Professor Jean Lutes has co-authored an article that investigates a fascinating unpublished manuscript by turn-of-the-century African-American author Alice Dunbar-Nelson. The article appears in American Literary History, Volume 36, Issue 1, Summer 2024, and is titled"An Unpublished Tale about African American Poetry: Alice Dunbar-Nelson's 'The Grievances of the Books' (1897)."
The article acknowledges three Villanova students who helped to transcribe the unpublished manuscript that Professor Lutes and her co-writer, Professor Sandra A. Zagarell, wrote about: Current English major Jenine Hazlewood, '26; current master's student Matthew Villanueva, MA '24; and recent English major graduate Adrianna Ogando, '23.
Here's an excerpt from the article that provides a flavor of Dunbar-Nelson's original piece:
In April 1897, an ambitious young author drafted a hallucinatory narrative that was never published. Its unnamed narrator falls asleep and dreams that real-life books and newspaper clippings by African American poets come alive. They call a convention, appoint her chair of a grievance committee, and task her with “listening to our complaints and suggesting remedies for our ills” (7). Meticulously written in graceful cursive with occasional strikeouts on 37 pages of unlined note paper, “The Grievances of the Books” is a funny, demanding, self-consciously literary mash-up that veers among reciting poetry, documenting authorial infighting, gently spoofing the formal political conventions organized to resist racial oppression, and lamenting the small readership for poems by African Americans. Taking readers on a breakneck tour of Black-authored poetry in the US, the narrative quotes from 13 published poems and refers to two others. Although it includes many poems published in the 1890s, “Grievances” stretches back to Phillis Wheatley’s publishing debut in 1773 and cites several antebellum verses. It ends, abruptly, with an indignant standoff between bound books and frayed clippings. As the narrator puts it in the manuscript’s final line, “the Grievances were never finished” (26).
You can read more from the article here.
Congratulations to Professor Lutes and to these students!
On February 22, 2024 at 5:00 p.m., Professor Kimberly Takahata will give a talk titled “Not Witnessing John Gabriel Stedman's A Narrative of a Five Years Expedition.” It will take place in the grad lounge (Fisher Bennett Hall 330) at the University of Pennsylvania's English department.
BIPOC Writing Hangouts are Back! The monthly BIPOC writing hangouts are for Villanova community members—students, staff, faculty, and alumni—who identify as people of color. You do not need to have any creative writing experience! Pizza, prompts, and company will be provided at our hangouts hosted by BIPOC faculty in the English Department. This semester, we will meet on February 21, March 20, and April 17. Come join us! If you would like more information, you can email Kimberly Takahata at kimberly.takahata@villanova.edu.
The first meeting of the semester will take place on Wednesday, February 21 from 6:00-7:30 p.m. in SAC 402, the English department conference room.
Villanova English Department Essay Awards, 2023-24
If you have a piece of work that you're especially proud of, please consider submitting it for consideration for one of these awards.
The Margaret Powell Esmonde Memorial Award, which comes with a prize of $250, is given to the most distinguished scholarly or critical essay written by a graduate student in a Villanova English course within the last 12 months.
The Jerome J. Fischer Memorial Awards, which come with a prize of $250, are given to the most distinguished scholarly or critical essays written by an undergraduate student at Villanova within the last 12 months.
Submissions for the Fischer Award must have been written either for a Villanova English course (all except ENG 1975) or for a Villanova Honors course (1842 level or higher) taught by a member of the Villanova English faculty. It is permissible to revise or expand papers beyond what was submitted for the course. Submissions may be excerpted from a senior Honors thesis.
The Core Literature and Writing Seminar Essay Award, which also comes with a prize of $250, is given to the most distinguished critical essay written for a Villanova Core Literature and Writing Seminar (ENG 1975) in the previous calendar year (i.e. in Spring or Fall 2023).
Format
• In addition to their essay, students should include a cover page including the course and professor for which the paper was written, as well as their email and a local mailing address
• Students should also submit the essay assignment or an approximation of the assignment.
• Essays should be formatted in Times New Roman 12 (or equivalent font) and double-spaced.
• For the Fischer Award, papers up to 6 pages will be considered separately from papers that are 6-15 pages. Longer papers are expected to engage scholarly sources.
• Essays should be formatted in MLA or Chicago Style.
• Only one submission per award is allowed.
• Judges are looking for argumentative originality and rigor, elegance of writing, and interpretive incisiveness. Submissions should be carefully proofread.
The deadline for submissions is Friday, March 14, 2024. Submissions should be emailed as an attachment to Professor Joseph Drury.
For previous winners, as well as information about Jerome J. Fischer, see our department Awards page.
In addition...
The George D. Murphy, Ph.D. & Honors/English Awards in Creative Writing
The contests are open to all Villanova undergraduates and will be judged anonymously by a panel of Villanova faculty and Philadelphia area writers. Winners will receive a $250 cash award and will be honored and the Department of English awards reception on Friday, April 26.
Guidelines
Entries must be typed. For poetry submit no more than five poems (ten page maximum). Prose entries should be no more than twenty-five pages. The name of the author should only appear on the cover letter and should not appear on the work itself.
The cover letter should include:
Name, address, phone number, major, email and titles of the poems or prose piece.
Email entries as a Word Document to Alan Drew and Lisa Sewell.
George D. Murphy, Ph.D. received his B.A. (1949) and M.A. (1951) in English from Notre Dame University and his Ph.D. in American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania in 1964. He joined Villanova’s English Department in 1954 and retired in 2000 after 46 years of service. His scholarly publications focused on American writers of the 20th Century. While at Villanova, he was known for his exquisite sense of humor and a singular gift for recalling and recounting a host of humorous tales. While an undergraduate at Notre Dame, he was on the editorial board of its literary magazine—The Juggler of Notre Dame— and contributed a number of poems, short stories, and critical essays. He returned to creative writing at the end of his life as a way of coping with grief over his wife’s death and produced many first-rate poems.
Deadline: Friday, March 8th
