Welcome to the blog for the Villanova English department! Visit often for updates on department events, guest speakers, faculty and student accomplishments, and reviews and musings from professors and undergraduates alike.

Friday, September 26, 2025

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



Thursday, September 25, 2025

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.



Wednesday, September 24, 2025

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.



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).

Thursday, September 18, 2025

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).



Wednesday, September 17, 2025

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!

Friday, September 12, 2025




"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.  
 




 

Tuesday, September 9, 2025

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

Tuesday, September 2, 2025

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.