Dr. Wangmo Presents at Buddhist Studies Lecture Series

On Friday, December 5th, Dr. Tsering Wangmo presented virtually on "Chigdrel and the Politics of Sorrow" as part of The Khyentse Foundation Buddhist Studies Lecture Series, sponsored by Northwestern University.

According to the summary provided by Northwestern, Dr. Wangmo examined "a lesser-known chapter in Tibetan exile history through the story of the Group of Thirteen, a collective of Khampa chieftains and religious leaders who established settlements in India in the mid-1960s with a hope to protect their diverse regional and religious traditions. This decision set them apart from the majority Tibetan refugees who joined the settlements established by the Tibetan government. They were cast as being opponents to Tibetan unity."

This presentation relates to subjects covered more extensively in Dr. Wangmo's recently published book, The Politics of Sorrow. Focusing on the early years of Tibetan exile life in India and Nepal, this book marks a significant change in the fields of nationalism studies, refugee identity and Tibetan historiography.

“My intention was to center Tibetan experiences and to write about history and exile from the perspective of ordinary Tibetans,” Professor Wangmo explains—contrary to the traditional academic approach of treating displaced peoples as research subjects and instead emphasizing their role as co-creators of knowledge.

In support of the book, Professor Wangmo has been publishing widely and traveling extensively this past spring and summer as well. In May, she read at UC Santa Cruz in California. In June, she gave a talk at a conference titled “Succession in Times of Change in the Tibetan World,” which was jointly sponsored by the École française d’Extrême-Orient and Aarhus University as part of the Leadership and Reincarnation of the Dalai Lamas (LEAD) project. And, also in June, Professor Wangmo gave a talk in English to young Tibetans and another talk in Tibetan to local elders in Bir, a village located in the Himalayas in northern India.

Dr. Wangmo presenting over Zoom on Friday, December 5th

Alexis Atwood on Summer Research and "Poetry of Witness"

    Last week, I sat down for a chat with Alexis Atwood ‘26 to discuss how one class from her first semester of courses in the Graduate English program inspired her to pursue a fascinating research topic. Alexis arrived at Villanova last fall and, as a first-year student, took the required ENG8000: Literary Theory with Dr. Heather Hicks, a survey course designed to introduce first-years to a wide variety of theoretical fields and frameworks. She told me how two particular classes in ENG8000—on Vulnerability Studies and Border Studies—helped her build upon her pre-existing scholarly interests and develop them further in a new context. 

    “I’ve always been interested in discourse in particular and the ways that discourse exposes systems of dominance, so I think that's kind of what brought me to Vulnerability Studies," said Alex.  "And then I found that poetry was a potent source to pull from when it came to understanding discourse and the way it exposes hierarchies and hegemony. I've also always been interested in the poetry of Pablo Neruda. He's someone I really enjoy reading…because of the Border Studies class, I was really drawn to this relationship between North and South America, and I felt like there was something to kind of dig into there when it came to vulnerability and how our vulnerability as North Americans might impact the way that we engage with that sort of poetry.”

    Synthesizing these interests together led Alexis to “Poetry of Witness,” or poetry “that comes from people who have experienced extremity, whether it be extreme poverty, exile, or if they’re experiencing severe human rights violations.” Linking her affinity for Latin American poetry with the new methodological approach of vulnerability studies allowed Alexis to “make a connection between the field and the practice of actually reading poetry.”

    Once she realized the potential for her academic intervention, Alexis then had to familiarize herself with the canons of Latin American poetry, Vulnerability Studies, and Poetry of Witness, which she achieved by participating in the Summer Research program. Alexis began by identifying key texts that would be most beneficial to her interests. She told me how an anthology of Poetry of Witness called Against Forgetting, edited by Carolyn Forché, served as an excellent entry into the field. “I started there by reading the introduction and getting an overview of what poetry of witness looks like,” Alexis told me. “After that, my day-to-day looked like reading poetry collections from Latin America, and then reading articles that were supplementary to my topic. I was reading articles about vulnerability studies, but I also started veering off into care ethics, and then I was also thinking about pedagogy…asking questions about how we implement these things into a classroom, so that if a student reads poetry through the lens of vulnerability studies, how do we make them a subject who is aware of human rights violations in a way that would hopefully urge them to be active.” 

    After a long summer filled with lots of reading, Alexis presented her findings in the Summer Research Symposium, where students are invited to share the findings they made over the break. Alexis, who was new to a symposium as large as this, had to manage some initial nerves, noting to me how she was surprised by the size of both the audience and the room itself. In the end, however, everything turned out great. “It was fun, and it was a tiny bit scary. But it was really nice to see everyone else there, and everyone was really supportive. They asked really great questions during my Q&A period, which was really nice.”

    Now, as Alexis’s second year in the program begins to near its end, she’s looking ahead to the field exam. When asked about her decision to opt for the exam instead of writing a thesis, she explained how the former would allow her more time to immerse herself in the various fields she was entering. “There is still so much to read,” said Alexis. “There’s still so much foundational reading to get through. I realized that there were a few different things I would really need to dig into, so I decided to do a field exam to expand my research to focus on poets as public figures and to gain a stronger understanding of vulnerability studies as a whole.”

    Moving forward, Alexis looks to continue developing her research as she pursues a second Master’s degree in Human Rights. “I do kind of look at this as a stepping stone to a larger project,” Alexis told me when asked about her plans for the future beyond Villanova. “I would like to maybe write a book that’s a collection focused on vulnerability and poetry of witness, that's maybe similar to Against Forgetting, but is more focused on care ethics and border studies, and still focused on Latin American poetry. I'm kind of looking at the field exam as something that is helping me to build that foundation to write this longer project that I'll probably be researching for a few years.”

    To close out our interview, I asked Alexis if she had any words of wisdom she'd like to pass on to current first-year students. "I think it's two things. The first is that if you have something you're really interested in, don't deviate from it. I knew what I was interested in, and that thread has led me here. When I look back at my graduate bio, it still reflects what I'm interested in and what I'm doing right now, which is great. But the other part is that you don't need to just focus on your one thing. Every semester, I usually write one paper that is focused on my main topic and another paper that's focused on a more creative topic. That not only keeps me grounded, but it also helps me to explore different things, so I don't get pigeonholed or bored. I would say know what you want or find out what you want to really research and maybe contribute, but also find a fun thing to study as well." —Aria Gray

 

Robots in the University: Can They Help?

 

English Department Roundtable: "Robots in the University: Can They Help?"

The English Department AI Committee brought Villanova faculty and students together for the third AI roundtable, “Robots in the University: Can They Help?” 

Dr. Megan Quigley from the English department, Dr. Adriano Duque from the Spanish Department, and Jonathan Graziola, Manager of CLAS IT discussed their ongoing projects and how emerging technologies are shaping academic spaces.

Taught by Literature Conference Presentations

Villanova English major Ben Marcoulier '27, English MA student Julia Reagan '26, and Dr. Crystal J. Lucky presented together Friday, November 7th at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers 2025 Conference in Old City, Philadelphia. The roundtable highlighted the public humanities project Taught by Literature (https://www.taughtbyliterature.org/), which works to honor the legacy of Black author and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Taught by Literature was founded by Dr. Jean Lutes, Denise Burgher, and Dr. Brigitte Fielder to make Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s work digitally available and to support educators in teaching early Black women intellectuals in their classrooms, from kindergarten to college.

Bringing together undergraduate and graduate students and professors, Taught by Literature invites Black women educators to present their work for a broader audience, engages students in the archives and the process of textual recovery, and works with public school teachers to develop curricular resources. Representing each of these elements of Taught by Literature’s collaborative process, panelists focused on the impact of reading and teaching Black women’s writing and thought from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Dr. Lucky drew on her twenty-five years of advocacy as a diversity consultant at a wide range of secondary schools to promote the power of robust collaboration between university professors and K-12 school districts. Ben Marcoulier shared his summer research at the American Antiquarian Society historicizing Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s short fiction within the social context of its time. You can see the digital exhibition he developed on the short story “The Grievances of the Books” here. Finally, Julia Reagan presented an overview of her work developing secondary school curriculum on Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s WWI-era poem “I Sit and Sew” (available here) and leading a professional development session with School District of Philadelphia teachers.

Photos from the Fall Reception

Thanks to everyone who attended and who helped to make our Fall Reception such a resounding success!

Catching up with our Faculty: Kamran Javadizadeh Edition

This past summer, many of our faculty traveled and gave talks all around the world. We’ll be featuring a few of them in the coming weeks—this time, we’ll be focusing on Dr. Kamran Javadizadeh, who traveled to the UK and spoke about poetry in Oxford and Cambridge.

Professor Javadizadeh was invited to give a lecture on June 5th at the American Literature Research Seminar in Oxford, and he presented on ‘The National Poetry Crisis.’ Dr. Javadizadeh drew from the conclusion to his forthcoming book for his talk, which centered on a poetry festival which had been organized at the Library of Congress in the fall of 1962, and which happened to coincide with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

“After the first day of the conference,” explained Dr. Javadizadeh, “President Kennedy came on television and announced that there were these missiles in Cuba. The Poetry Festival was happening in the Library of Congress, which is right next to the capitol building itself.” The festival’s setting, and its status as “in some ways a kind of state-sponsored event,” led the participants to ask questions: “How does the kind of poetry that was being written in that era accommodate or take the measure of a kind of sudden existential public crisis that’s happening? Does poetry feel irrelevant in a moment like that, or does it feel newly relevant in surprising ways?”

Professor Javadizadeh went on to note that one of the poets who did not attend the conference was Sylvia Plath, who was living in England at the time, and was in the midst of “a great burst of creativity, where she’s writing one or two—sometimes three—amazing poems a day, and is leading into the last months of her life.” Dr. Javadizadeh then read one of Plath’s poems from this time, “Ariel,” as “a poem about the bomb, and about her own metabolizing of anxiety about apocalypse.”

Intriguingly, according to Dr. Javadizadeh, “While the poets at the festival find themselves feeling kind of inadequate to the moment, Plath actually is the one who is carrying the form.”

Dr. Javadizadeh noted that he enjoyed giving the lecture, and that it was “a great event—the room was full of graduate students, other faculty in English, and some interested members of the public.” Afterwards, there was time to help in a ‘viva,’ a dissertation defense for a doctoral student, and “to take in Oxford itself, to visit museums, to check out these pubs that have been there for eight hundred years or whatever.”

In addition, by coincidence, Dr. Javadizadeh was able to meet up with one of his own Villanova students at Oxford, who happened to be there studying abroad. Maria Therese Barry, ’26, noted that “It was such a surreal experience to see Dr. Javadizadeh while I was abroad in Oxford! It felt like worlds colliding that two Villanovans could come across each other in a completely different part of the world. I remember him telling me at the Pre-Registration Reception in the fall of 2024 that he would be speaking there after I shared my news of going abroad, but actually going to the event and hearing him speak is something I will always remember. It was a wonderful opportunity to hear firsthand about his academic research in general, which was especially exciting for me since I usually am not able to hear about my professors' research during classtime.”

Following the Oxford visit, on the 11th of June, Dr. Javadizadeh participated in a one-day symposium, organized by the professors Jess Cotton and Christian Gelder at Cambridge, on “The Aesthetics of the Clinic.” As articulated in the symposium’s initial call for papers, “This one-day symposium draws together scholars working at the intersection of literature, aesthetics and mental health to prompt a discussion on the relationship between psychiatric institutions and the production of literature.” As Dr. Javadizadeh explained, “This was a series of talks, mostly about literary form and its relationship to psychoanalysis, (as well as) art and its relationship to psychotherapeutic practices more broadly speaking. Jess had heard that I was coming to Oxford, and she was wondering if I could give the keynote lecture to the symposium, so I was really thrilled to get to do that.”

Dr. Javadizadeh’s talk was about the poet Robert Lowell and his experience of psychiatric institutionalization, “and the way the language of psychiatry, as Lowell experienced it in the 1950s, came to inform his sense of what autobiographical poetry might look like. My argument,” explained Javadizadeh, “is that, in writing about his inner life, he’s doing so in ways that he’s absorbed rom, among other sources, a kind of psychiatric treatment that he received.”

Thanks to Dr. Javadizadeh for sharing his recollections of his trip, and we look forward to hearing from more of our faculty about their travels!

Photo courtesy of Maria Therese Barry '26

 

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with Jason Rekulak

 Novelist and editor Jason Rekulak captivated his audience with stories about his journey from English graduate to editor and writer in Philadelphia. In conversation with Dr. Joe Drury and Dr. Adrienne Perry at Villanova, Rekulak discussed the success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and its film adaptation, the creative process behind writing books, literary fandom, and the realities of life as a writer and editor. 

The AI Committee Wants You!

If you have been looking for opportunities to join discussions about the use of AI in teaching and student writing, we've found the perfect offer for you! Please come to the second installment in the AI committee’s roundtable series on AI, writing, and creativity on Tuesday, October 28th. But, even better, join the English Department AI Committee! The committee seeks 1-2 students to join them. Time Commitment: 2 meetings a semester (sometimes with cookies) with follow up emails. Email Dr. Megan Quigley if you're interested: Megan.quigley@villanova.edu

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies on October 21!

 

 

We look forward to seeing you at:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Film Screening: Monday, October 20th at 8:00 PM Driscoll 132 (Larson Auditorium)

Conversation with Novelist and Editor Jason Rekulak: Tuesday, October 21st at 4:30 PM Falvey 205.

Lit Fest 2026 Authors Announced

The authors (and one translator!) who will be appearing as part of Lit Fest 2026 have been announced and can be viewed over on the English department's website. 

We hope to see you at the readings!

New Edited Collection from Dr. Shohet

The English Department is proud to share the release of Dr. Lauren Shohet's new edited collection, Queering Early Modern Death in England: Figuration, Representation, Matter. This new collection, edited by Dr. Shohet and Dr. Christine Varnado of the University of Buffalo, analyzes a variety of celebrated texts, including The Duchess of Malfi, The Alchemist, The Spanish Tragedy, The Winter's Tale, Richard III, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, using queer theoretical methodologies to offer fascinating insights regarding early modern conceptualizations of humanity, embodiment, and temporality, among others. Dr. Shohet and Dr. Varnado utilize queer logics to suggest poignant understandings of early modern death as non-dualist, non-linear, a-teleological, and fruitfully muddled, showcasing the fascinating expansiveness of death through a queer lens. A worthy addition to the collection of anyone interested in questions of queerness and death, Queering Early Modern Death in England is a thought-provoking and intellectually stimulating read. We hope you'll share in our excitement and consider purchasing a copy here. Congratulations, Dr. Shohet!

Villanova English GroupMe

Did you know that Villanova English has a GroupMe which is run by our student advisory council? We'd love to have you join!

If you wish to join, please make sure to have a first name, last name, and profile photo available--our administrators don't want to let in bots!

You can join by scanning the QR code below or by visiting this link. 

The Great Catsby Roars Back

By Katy Kessler MA '26

The English Department’s recent 100 Years of The Great Gatsby celebration brought nearly 150 undergraduate students together for a festive evening of jazz, trivia, and literary community. Organized by second-year English graduate student Julia Reagan, the event kicked off with a spirited trivia game where students guessed whether a line was a Taylor Swift lyric or a Gatsby quote. “That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool,” was a particularly challenging one: who would’ve known that Swift’s “Happiness” lyric, “I hope she’ll be a beautiful fool,” was inspired by Fitzgerald!

The night continued with a lively dramatic reading of Gatsby by graduate students Julia, Ryan Miller, Griffyn Leeds, Christopher Supplee, and second-year undergraduate student Alex Holguin. Guests then joined small-group discussions organized by bits of Gatsby trivia where students considered how race plays a role in the novel. Many students reported that this was a dimension that they had never previously considered in their high school discussions of the novel.

After reconvening, Alex Holguin closed the night with a moving reflection on the importance of the humanities. Nearly half of the students in the room reported that they were leaving with a newfound interest in taking an English course.

 

A special thanks to our spectacular readers, as well as those who helped with setup and cleanup: graduate students Jenna Kosnick and Katy Kessler and undergraduate students Allison Haugh, Charlotte Finch, and Jade Sorenson. Together with the guidance of Dr. Lutes and Julia Reagan, the evening was truly a “roaring” success.

Meet the Student Advisory Council: 2025 Edition

Maria Therese Barry: I am a senior English and Humanities double major with a minor in Spanish, and I am from Colorado Springs, Colorado. On campus, I work as a tutor in the Writing Center, and I am also involved with Pastoral Musicians and the committee for Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. I love serving on the advisory council as a way to get to know more fellow English majors and minors, faculty, and staff and to give back to the department that has given me so much!
This summer, I explored some nonfiction and really enjoyed reading J.R.R. Tolkien's letters! I am a big fan of The Lord of the Rings, so it was very interesting and fruitful to learn more about the creative mind behind it all!

Bianca Brucker: I'm a senior English and Peace and Justice major with minors in Writing and Rhetoric and communication from Bel Air, Maryland. On campus I'm an active part of Villanova's Service-Learning community and Villanova Student Theatre! I love being a member of the English Advisory Council because I greatly enjoy the tight-knit and welcoming community of English students and professors.

This summer I finally got around to reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I thought the book was beautifully written and greatly enjoyed how it dealt with the complex themes of grief and identity. I also enjoyed how a majority of the book took place in New York City because I was interning in the city this summer!



Peter Fabietti: My name is Peter Fabietti, and I’m a junior English major with a minor in Italian. On top of being part of the Student Advisory Council, I write for the Opinion section of The Villanovan and serve as a tutor in the Writing Center. I love being an English major because it gives me numerous opportunities to express myself creatively. Every professor I’ve had has been caring, intelligent, and inspiring, and I’m so lucky to be able to call this department my academic home here at Villanova.
I enjoyed reading Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler over the summer. Though, on the surface, it seems quite mundane, the book’s intricate layering of family dynamics makes it incredibly striking. Each chapter made me reflect on the complexities and joys within my own family, and I’m sure it will do the same for you.



Abby Glynn: My name is Abby Glynn, I am a senior English and Communications major with an Art minor. In addition to the Student Advisory Council, I am the Treasurer for Club Lacrosse and am a member of the Club Field Hockey team as well. Being an English major has provided me with the opportunity to meet so many amazing professors, get the chance to attend interesting courses, and gain valuable skills.
Over the summer I was re-reading the Harry Potter series in preparation for a class I am taking right now, Harry Potter: Quests and Questions. I had so much fun reading the series and found myself realizing new things about the books that I hadn’t before. The course with Professor Radcliffe is so interesting and I really enjoy analyzing a series that I loved so much when I was younger!



Katie Lewis: My name is Katie Lewis, and I am a senior from Miami, Florida double-majoring in English and Communication. I have concentrations in Writing & Rhetoric and Journalism. Channeling my love for writing into sports journalism, I am a co-sports editor of The Villanovan and a sports desk intern with The Philadelphia Inquirer. At Villanova, I’m also a member of the Faith & Learning Scholars program and the club tennis team.
A book that I enjoyed reading this summer was
My Friends by Fredrik Backman. He is one of my favorite contemporary authors and I was excited to pick up his latest release shortly after it came out in May. In all of his novels that I’ve read, I love how Backman mixes humor and authenticity with heart-wrenching moments and memorable characters.

Sinéad Masterson: My name is Sinéad, and I am a senior English major from New Haven, Connecticut. I am involved in Villanova’s college radio station WXVU, I work in a restaurant, and I intern at a non-profit that works with refugee women from Afghanistan. I love being an English major because it encourages creativity, challenges me to sharpen my writing skills, and allows me to explore my interest in poetry. This summer I read Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison and lots of poetry by Ada Limón, all of which I loved. I’m very excited to be part of the English Student Advisory Council this year!

Seamus Tracy: Hi all, I'm Seamus! As an amateur novel writer, I study creative writing in the English department. When I'm not reading or writing books I spend my time drawing, playing D&D, or performing improv comedy with Villanova's Ridiculum. Reach out to me not only about the English major or creative writing minor, but also if you have questions about how to advance your career as a creative writer while still being a student!

Ailish Wilson: My name is Ailish, and I'm an English major here at Villanova! I have loved all of my English classes so far, and I appreciate the wide variety, from poetry, to journalism, to classic literature. I have also had such amazing and intelligent professors. As a member of the English major advisory council, I have helped out with events like the Major's Fair and an English Major Game Night. I'm so excited for everything the English advisory council has planned for this year!
This summer, I read Bossypants, Tina Fey's memoir. I really liked her sense of humor and sneak peek into life at SNL!

Thanks to all our student advisory council members! Please feel free to ask them questions about the major or minor!

Fall '25 Class Visit Flyers

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:

SPRING 2026 UPPER-LEVEL ENGLISH COURSES

2003 Intro to Creative Writing TR 1:00-2:15, Alan Drew

Designed for students who wish to experiment with composing several kinds of creative writing: short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.

2006 Writing of Poetry TR 8:30-9:45, Cathy Staples

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 11:30-12:45, 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.

2023 Journalism MWF 12:50-1:40, Kate 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.

2250 Ways of Reading TR 11:30-12:45, Kamran Javadizadeh

An exploration of how we engage, understand, explicate, and enjoy texts of all sorts.

2360 Adaptation: Film as Literature MW 1:00-2:15, Adrienne Perry

The relationship between movies and literature dates back to film's earliest days. Comparing films and texts allows for an explanation of storytelling and the fascinating choices auteurs make. Plot, tone, and symbolism are considered alongside questions of power and representation.

2994 Reading and Community T 6:00-7:15 for first 10 weeks of the semester, Mary Mullen

Studying the kind of reading that takes place outside of the classroom in book groups and community reads, this course practices reading in community while studying hot new books selected by students in the course. Please note: this is a one-credit course.

3350 Milton: Gender and Genre TR 10:00-11:15, Lauren Shohet

The writing of John Milton has fascinated and infuriated English-speaking people for 350 years. We explore why Milton's sometimes radical ideas about conscience, liberty, gender, and marriage remain influential, and how other writers (especially women) have responded to Milton.

3425 British Gothic Fiction TR 4:00-5:15, Joseph Drury

Traces the development of British gothic fiction from the late eighteenth century to today, exploring its themes of violence, sexuality, anxiety and social turmoil alongside its historical contexts and major theoretical approaches to understanding this genre.

3622 Virginia Woolf TR 2:30-3:45, Megan Quigley

Virginia Woolf, novelist, essayist, and diarist, is one of the most influential 20th-Century Writers. Woolf explores the self, modernity, depression, and the joy of an ardent feminist life. We will read Woolf's novels and contemporary debates about form, gender, and sexuality.

3660 Contemporary Literature & Film in India TR 2:30-3:45, Tsering Wangmo

India produces some of the most innovative and engrossing literature in the world, while also releasing more films than any other nation. Through both forms, we'll explore debates in contemporary India concerning border tensions, caste, gender, fantasy, and imperial histories.

4010 Early Textual Bodies MW 3:20-4:35, Kimberly Takahata

This course asks: how can we read about early American bodies, and how are bodies legible? We will chart how Indigenous, Black, and settler persons used developing forms and genres to navigate identity in texts from sixteenth- through nineteenth- century America.

4624 Crime Fiction and Gender MWF 9:35-10:25, Jean Lutes

This course studies crime and detective fiction as an intellectually rich phenomenon preoccupied by gender/sexuality. It examines how crime narratives from the nineteenth century to the present critique socioeconomic realities and address fundamental questions about the nature of knowledge.

4646 Race and Ethnicity: American Novel MW 4:45-6:00, Yumi Lee

This course examines a fascinating range of contemporary US literary texts to explore the ways that gender and sexuality intersect with race, class and other categories of identity to form our experiences of selfhood, community, national belonging, and power.

4702 Authors On & Off the Page TR 4:00-5:15, Alan Drew & Adrienne Perry

Do you love to write? Dream of visiting with authors to discuss their work and the publishing world? This course combines creative writing workshops with literary analysis and the chance to hob-nob with prestigious authors during the Villanova Literary Festival.

5000 Melville MW 1:55-3:10, Travis Foster

Encounter 19th-century America through its most challenging writer. From the high seas of Moby-Dick to the urban claustrophobia of “Bartleby” and the moral fog of Benito Cereno, we'll explore Melville’s prophetic visions and relentless critique of American exceptionalism. The course culminates with the somber poetic examination of the Civil War, Battle-Pieces, and an original research project positioning Melville as a vital voice on the nation’s ongoing crises.

5000 Adaptation: Page, Stage, Film TR 11:30-12:45, Lauren Shohet

How and why do artists recycle old stories? In this seminar, we’ll explore ways that inherited texts move into different media, settings, and contexts: myth into film, poem into novel, medieval Scotland into twentieth-century South Africa. Together, we will study some theories of adaptation (how is cultural adaptation like/unlike genetic evolution? Is the book always better than the movie?) and consider a variety of adaptive projects (the Coen brothers Odyssey movie O Brother, Where Art Thou; Nina MacLaughlin’s contemporary feminist retellings of Ovid; and a range of ways Macbeth has been retold on stage, screen, and page). For your capstone paper, each of you will revisit a text you’ve studied before (or always wanted to), then research and write about its afterlives (or its heritage).

Sneak Peek: Upper-Level English Courses to be Offered in Spring 2026

We hope you enjoy this sneak peek of upcoming English course offerings. We look forward to sharing more about these courses with you at the fall pre-registration reception on Friday, October 25th!

2003 Intro to Creative Writing TR 1:00-2:15, Alan Drew

Designed for students who wish to experiment with composing several kinds of creative writing: short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.

2006 Writing of Poetry TR 8:30-9:45, Cathy Staples

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 11:30-12:45, 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.

2023 Journalism MWF 12:50-1:40, Kate 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.

2250 Ways of Reading TR 11:30-12:45, Kamran Javadizadeh

An exploration of how we engage, understand, explicate, and enjoy texts of all sorts.

2360 Adaptation: Film as Literature MW 1:00-2:15, Adrienne Perry

The relationship between movies and literature dates back to film's earliest days. Comparing films and texts allows for an explanation of storytelling and the fascinating choices auteurs make. Plot, tone, and symbolism are considered alongside questions of power and representation.

2994 Reading and Community T 6:00-7:15 for first 10 weeks of the semester, Mary Mullen

Studying the kind of reading that takes place outside of the classroom in book groups and community reads, this course practices reading in community while studying hot new books selected by students in the course. Please note: this is a one-credit course.

3350 Milton: Gender and Genre TR 10:00-11:15, Lauren Shohet

The writing of John Milton has fascinated and infuriated English-speaking people for 350 years. We explore why Milton's sometimes radical ideas about conscience, liberty, gender, and marriage remain influential, and how other writers (especially women) have responded to Milton.

3425 British Gothic Fiction TR 4:00-5:15, Joseph Drury

Traces the development of British gothic fiction from the late eighteenth century to today, exploring its themes of violence, sexuality, anxiety and social turmoil alongside its historical contexts and major theoretical approaches to understanding this genre.

3622 Virginia Woolf TR 2:30-3:45, Megan Quigley

Virginia Woolf, novelist, essayist, and diarist, is one of the most influential 20th-Century Writers. Woolf explores the self, modernity, depression, and the joy of an ardent feminist life. We will read Woolf's novels and contemporary debates about form, gender, and sexuality.

3660 Contemporary Literature & Film in India TR 2:30-3:45, Tsering Wangmo

India produces some of the most innovative and engrossing literature in the world, while also releasing more films than any other nation. Through both forms, we'll explore debates in contemporary India concerning border tensions, caste, gender, fantasy, and imperial histories.

4010 Early Textual Bodies MW 3:20-4:35, Kimberly Takahata

This course asks: how can we read about early American bodies, and how are bodies legible? We will chart how Indigenous, Black, and settler persons used developing forms and genres to navigate identity in texts from sixteenth- through nineteenth- century America.

4624 Crime Fiction and Gender MWF 9:35-10:25, Jean Lutes

This course studies crime and detective fiction as an intellectually rich phenomenon preoccupied by gender/sexuality. It examines how crime narratives from the nineteenth century to the present critique socioeconomic realities and address fundamental questions about the nature of knowledge.

4646 Race and Ethnicity: American Novel MW 4:45-6:00, Yumi Lee

This course examines a fascinating range of contemporary US literary texts to explore the ways that gender and sexuality intersect with race, class and other categories of identity to form our experiences of selfhood, community, national belonging, and power.

4702 Authors On & Off the Page TR 4:00-5:15, Alan Drew & Adrienne Perry

Do you love to write? Dream of visiting with authors to discuss their work and the publishing world? This course combines creative writing workshops with literary analysis and the chance to hob-nob with prestigious authors during the Villanova Literary Festival.

5000 Melville MW 1:55-3:10, Travis Foster

Encounter 19th-century America through its most challenging writer. From the high seas of Moby-Dick to the urban claustrophobia of “Bartleby” and the moral fog of Benito Cereno, we'll explore Melville’s prophetic visions and relentless critique of American exceptionalism. The course culminates with the somber poetic examination of the Civil War, Battle-Pieces, and an original research project positioning Melville as a vital voice on the nation’s ongoing crises.

5000 Adaptation: Page, Stage, Film TR 11:30-12:45, Lauren Shohet

How and why do artists recycle old stories? In this seminar, we’ll explore ways that inherited texts move into different media, settings, and contexts: myth into film, poem into novel, medieval Scotland into twentieth-century South Africa. Together, we will study some theories of adaptation (how is cultural adaptation like/unlike genetic evolution? Is the book always better than the movie?) and consider a variety of adaptive projects (the Coen brothers Odyssey movie O Brother, Where Art Thou; Nina MacLaughlin’s contemporary feminist retellings of Ovid; and a range of ways Macbeth has been retold on stage, screen, and page). For your capstone paper, each of you will revisit a text you’ve studied before (or always wanted to), then research and write about its afterlives (or its heritage).

Journalism Today

 

Join us in Falvey Library on Tuesday, September 25th at 4 pm for an exciting conversation with Emma Pettit, VU alum and Senior Reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education, followed by a reception in the English Department from 5:30 to 7 pm. All are invited to attend, and no prior RSVP is required. We hope to see you there!

"All About Bagels" is back with an additional treat! This semester, you can enjoy the best bagels around along with Dr. Yumi Lee's expert writing support. All faculty, undergraduate, and graduate students are invited to drop in for a write-in session, 10-11:30 am: bring a writing project, sit together, set a timer, write, and repeat. You can still grab a bagel without writing, too. See dates below for bagels and opportunities to write together.  

 

 

RIP VU English Alum Jim Murray

We are saddened to hear of the passing of Villanova English alumnus Jim Murray '60, who passed away on Monday morning at the age of 87. As noted in his obituary in the New York Times, Murray "was the general manager of the Philadelphia Eagles when the team reached the Super Bowl in 1981, and also helped found the first Ronald McDonald House to aid the families of seriously ill children" in Philadelphia in the 1970s. 

Per the Eagles' website, "Murray became the Eagles' general manager in 1974 and helped guide the team to the NFC Championship in the 1980 season as Philadelphia made its first-ever Super Bowl appearance against the Raiders in Super Bowl XV." Murray also helped launch the Eagles Fly for Leukemia initiative.

Murray studied, played, and later worked at Villanova. Per the New York Times, "At Villanova University, where he graduated in 1960 with a bachelor’s degree in English, he served as manager of the baseball team... He returned to Philadelphia to become sports information director at Villanova in 1966."

Although the Ronald McDonald House started with one location in Philadelphia, it now offers 1,000 Programs in 62 countries. The Philadelphia house celebrated its 50th Anniversary last year.

You can read more about Jim Murray here. 

Next Week: AI Roundtable

Next week, on Tuesday, September 9th, from 6-7 p.m. in Falvey Library 205, Villanova English, Honors, and the Writing Center will co-sponsor a roundtable discussion: Who Writes Better: Robots or Me?

The discussion will feature Professors Megan Quigley, Kimberly Takahata, and Stefan Perun (Associate Director for Digital Learning Pedagogy).

In keeping with the theme of this roundtable, here is what Microsoft Co-Pilot has to say about Megan Quigley (the following may or may not be true):

Professor Megan Quigley is an Associate Professor of English at Villanova University, where she is also affiliated with Irish Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies. Her academic focus is on British and Irish literary modernism, and she has made significant contributions to the study of authors like T.S. Eliot, Henry James, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf.

She is the author of the book Modernist Fiction and Vagueness: Philosophy, Form, and Language, which explores the intersection of literary modernism and philosophical concepts of vagueness. Additionally, she co-edited Eliot Now, a collection of revisionary approaches to the works of T.S. Eliot.

Quigley’s scholarship has been supported by prestigious fellowships from institutions such as the Harry Ransom Center, the Huntington Library, and the Beinecke Library. She was also a Visiting Fellow at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford during the 2019–2020 academic year and has lectured multiple times at the T.S. Eliot International Summer School.

Her current book project, The Love Song of Modernism, delves into modernism and fanfiction, reflecting her interest in how contemporary cultural movements like #MeToo influence literary interpretation and pedagogy.

Student Advisory Council Meeting: September 12.

 
Join the English department's Student Advisory Council! The Student Advisory Council plays a crucial role in making the English department a welcoming community. Members serve as consultants for the faculty and as peer advisers for new majors. They suggest programming ideas, help promote the major to prospective and undeclared students throughout the academic year. It's a wonderful opportunity to get involved, build relations, and shape our community at Villanova. For more about past members, visit the English department blog. Anyone who is interested in getting involved is welcome to attend the meeting and be part of the Advisory Council. There's no application, no election: we'd love to see you. The first meeting of the semester will take place on Friday, September 12 at 3:00 pm in the English department office, SAC 402. There will be cookies! If you are planning to attend or have questions about the Advisory Council, email Professor Tsering Wangmo at Tsering.wangmo@villanova.edu