Tonight: VU Poetry Club

The first meeting of the newly-revived Villanova Poetry Club will be held tonight at 7 pm in Bartley 036. There will be pizza. Bring something you wrote--or don't! All are welcome.

Coming Up: Augustine and AI, a Panel Conversation

Coming Soon! Augustine and AI Panel discussion, on Monday, January 26th at 6 p.m. in Falvey 205. Featuring as a special guest Villanova MA alum el friedman, along with Villanova faculty. Organized by the English department AI committee.

"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.  

 

 

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.

Bookstore expedition: April 26 at 2:00 pm

Join the English Department for a Bookstore Expedition to Main Point Books on Saturday, April 26 at 2:00 pm. We will browse and buy books and discuss them afterward over coffee. If you are interested in attending, please complete this google form. If you have questions, email Mary Mullen at Mary.l.mullen@villanova.edu. All welcome!

Megan Quigley, Eliot Now, and Modernism Now, April 25

To celebrate the recent publication of Eliot Now and to discuss the field of literary modernism/s at this historical moment, there is a one day conference at CUNY on April 25th.

Among other events, the conference will start with a roundtable on Eliot Now, with several of its contributors (Sumita Chakraborty, Anthony Cuda, Julia Daniel, Frances Dickey), and Professor Megan Quigley and her co-editor, David Chinitz.

The plenary is an exciting talk by Paul Saint-Amour (U Penn) entitled, “ Joyce, Roth, Hannaham, The Mythical Method Revisited,” which Megan Quigley will moderate.

 

The event is organized by Ria Banerjee (CUNY) and will also have a panel called “Radical Eliot,” which will focus on her new book, Drafty Houses in Forster, Eliot, and Woolf (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) as well as Patrick Query’s Freedom is Not Enough (SUNY Press).

All NYC area 20th-century lit scholars and grad students are invited! Please come!

Lisa Sewell Reading on April 10

 Our very own Lisa Sewell will be reading, along with Ethel Rackin, at Main Point Books, on Thursday, April 10th, in celebration of National Poetry Month. We hope you will be able to make it!

Pre-Registration Reception, Friday March 14

The spring pre-registration reception will take place on Friday, March 14 from 1:00 to 2:30 pm in the SAC East Courtyard. Email Amanda Eliades to RSVP (and note any dietary restrictions).

Monday 2/24: 5th Annual Villanova English Online Career Panel

Four former Villanova English majors will discuss the work they do, the paths they took to their current jobs, and how their English studies contributed to their careers. The speakers will be Lawrence Flynn '17, Teaching Associate and MFA Candidate in Fiction at UMass Amherst; Lindsay Gallagher '22, Investment Banking Analyst at Barclays; Kashae Garland '22, Paralegal at The Faries Firm, Inc. and J.D. Candidate; and Amanda Gerstenfeld '20, Editorial Assistant at Yale University Press. Please register for the Zoom event here.

Dr. Greta LaFleur on Wednesday, February 19

On Wednesday, February 19 at 5:30 pm in Falvey 205 Dr. Greta LaFleur of Yale University will give a talk titled, "Beyond the Natural: Engineering Sexual Diversity in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century North America." The event is sponsored by the English Department and Program in Gender and Women's Studies.

 

Tues, Nov. 12: Black Boys, Dolls, and Textual Histories: Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s “His Heart’s Desire” (1900)

Coming up on Tuesday, November 12th...

This virtual forum features Jean Lutes, Denise Burgher, Trinity Rogers, and Brigitte Fielder of Taught by Literature, a collaborative digital humanities project that re-centers Black women writers, beginning with the work of African American author and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson. The speakers will use Dunbar-Nelson’s short story, “His Heart’s Desire” (1900) to explore the challenges scholars face in recovering little-known African American texts when confronted by multiple textual variants, manuscripts without dates, and a readership unfamiliar with an author’s work.  A remarkable short story about a boy who wants a doll, “His Heart’s Desire” is one of twelve short stories Dunbar-Nelson wrote in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries about children living in a poor urban neighborhood. The stories were inspired by her work teaching Black kindergarteners at the White Rose Mission in New York City.  

Lutes, Burgher, Rogers, and Fielder will discuss Taught by Literature’s comprehensive digital resource for educators based on two different versions of Dunbar-Nelson’s story──the original written during the 1890s and published in a 1900 newspaper and a revision published at a later date──as well as its significance for the histories of boyhood, race, and material culture.

You can learn more and register for this virtual event here.

Dark Academia Game Night: Friday, October 25

The English Department Student Advisory Council is hosting a Dark Academia Game Night on Friday, October 25 from 7:00-9:00 pm in Bartley 2001. Come enjoy fun games and snacks! Open to all interested and declared English majors, minors, and friends.  

English Department Pre-Registration Reception

Join the English department for the Pre-Registration Reception, which will take place on Friday, October 25^th from 11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m., in the SAC East Courtyard. This will be a chance to join faculty and fellow students as we discuss our very cool line-up of Spring 2025 courses over lunch. There will be a raffle of books and Villanova English swag; students will talk about their recent internships; and there will be a fun craft project for those of you who are so-inclined. This is an ACS-approved cultural event, and all are welcome! 

Please RSVP to Amanda Eliades by writing to her at amanda.eliades@villanova.edu 

English and CAIS sponsored reading group: Isabella Hammad's Recognizing the Stranger

Join the English department and the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies for a two-part reading group on Isabella Hammad’s recently published book, Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative. The meetings will take place on Wednesday, November 6 and Thursday, November 21 at 6:00 pm in the English Department Conference Room, 402 SAC. The first meeting will cover Hammad’s Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture delivered on September 28, 2023, and the second meeting will cover “Afterword: On Gaza.” There will be copies of the book available to students who register by October 14. Please register here. Everyone welcome!

Join the English Department for St. Thomas of Villanova Day of Service!

The English Department Student Advisory Council had the brilliant idea of participating in the St. Thomas of Villanova Day of Service on Saturday, September 7 as a group. To join our group, please sign up here by Wednesday, August 28.

This is a great opportunity to meet other students taking or interested in taking classes through the English department. Join the fun!!

Professor Megan Quigley to speak at Villanova AI Symposium

 Mark your calendars! Professor Megan Quigley will speak at the "Code Meets Culture"--a symposium on the future of AI and the Future of Second Language, Literature, and Culture Pedagogy. The symposium will take place on Thursday, September 25 and Friday, September 26 in Dougherty Hall West Lounge. More information about the symposium as well as a schedule can be found here.

Bookstore Expedition: Saturday, April 20 at 1:30

 Back by popular demand! Students from the Reading and Community course will be making an expedition to Main Point Books to browse and buy books on Saturday, April 20, at 1:30 pm. If you are interested in joining in the fun, RSVP here. Build your stack of summer reads!

Attend the Spanish Tragedy for Free

Calling all theater lovers...

Current Villanova students AND alumni/ae can attend The Spanish Tragedy symposium for free!

In academic year 2023-24, Villanova University faculty Dr. Chelsea Phillips (Theater) and Dr. Alice Dailey (English) launched a year-long interdisciplinary exploration of Thomas Kyd’s seminal Renaissance revenge play, The Spanish Tragedy (1582). This extended pedagogical, scholarly, and creative endeavor began with a combined undergraduate-graduate course taught in fall 2023 titled “Legacies of Revenge.” It culminates in a production of The Spanish Tragedy co-directed by Dailey and Phillips and staged in Villanova’s new John and Joan Mullen Center for the Performing Arts in April 2024, along with a coinciding scholarly symposium on April 19-20, 2024. Through both academic study and performance, The Spanish Tragedy Project seeks to foster engagement with the play as at once an historical and contemporary artifact and to deepen our understanding of the play’s place in revenge discourses, which continue to proliferate in popular culture.

The symposium includes a performance of the play!

For more information and to register, visit the project's website.

You can read more about the project elsewhere on the Villanova English blog.

Wednesday, April 10: Writing for Social Change: Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail

This event will feature a short discussion of Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail (2017)—an award-winning Palestinian novel that narrates two historical moments to show the haunting and all-too-ordinary nature of colonial violence—followed by a speculative creative writing exercise, inspired by Shibli, where we practice writing for social change. There will be pizza! 

Wednesday, April 10 from 7:30 to 8:30 pm in Falvey 205. ACS approved.

Legacies of Revenge: The Spanish Tragedy in Performance & Context

By Melody Gleason

Over the past two semesters, Dr. Dailey, Dr. Chelsea Phillips from the Theater department, and a group of students from various programs and departments have been working together to examine the theme of revenge and justice as a tragic element. The first half of this project started as class in the fall 2023 semester called, Legacies of Revenge – Across Time, Space, Genre, & Media. The course engaged both graduate and undergraduate students from multiple disciplines including English majors, minors, and theatre majors. Students in the course studied narratives of revenge across a plethora of entertainment mediums: from classical drama, to contemporary fiction, to modern film. The class especially focused on the play, The Spanish Tragedy written in the 1580s. 

Dr. Dailey describes The Spanish Tragedy as “the precursor to Hamlet and to a whole extensive revenge tragedy genre that enters the Elizabethan Theater scene through the Spanish tragedies. So it’s an enormously influential, important play, but it’s very rarely performed.” 

 Lucky for us, The Spanish Tragedy is being put on here at Villanova this April! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see an incredible work of tragic drama put on by your peers, colleagues, and friends at Villanova. This is Dr. Dailey’s fourth collaborative production at Villanova but her first full-on theatrical production within the theater department. It also serves as an honorary second part to the fall course, as most of the students are now helping to put on this production. Many different people from different areas of Villanova are coming together to work on this project. 

Dr. Dailey notes, “I think part of what’s been really cool about it is that we have a lot of skill sets represented and a lot of different kinds of creativity, different ranges of experience, but I think it’s very clear to the cast that we need everybody and that the show is dependent on the skills of a range of people. What has been conveyed to us is that it’s kind of bringing people together in an exciting way and helping them to appreciate what these other populations of people at Villanova have to offer.” 

This interdisciplinary approach is one of the greatest aspects of the production as not many other academic and creative endeavors on campus provide such an opportunity to work with others outside of your field of study.

Sam Phillips, an English MA student said, “I feel like all education should be like that. Not a lot of people fully experience it, but I think one of the things that's important about literature studies, especially as they keep getting put into question, what is English and how do how do English studies stay alive is: who do you have to talk to? and where does that go? And a lot of that has to do with also the same questions that theaters are asking: how do we stay alive? How do we get money? How do we get people? And the sensationalization, the bringing together different voices, this kind of collaborative nature is the root of art that seems to get forgotten about.” 

So what exactly is the play about? Villanova’s Theatre website reads:

“Before Game of Thrones, before Kill Bill, before Carrie – even before Hamlet – there was The Spanish Tragedy, the great-granddaddy of modern revenge tales. Deprived of justice for the murder of his son, the loyal courtier Hieronimo abandons legal redress and, joined by the canny and resolute Bel-Imperia, sets out to seek blood for blood. With its intricate plotting and bold theatricality, Thomas Kyd’s timeless tragedy speaks to our present moment with its unflinching look at judicial inequity, legacies of violence and the all-too-persistent seduction of vengeance.” 

The Spanish tragedy merges some classical dramatic material, Senecan tragedy, and that kind of material where plots are ignited by these extended revenge cycles. It's a place where a bunch of those things come together with a ghost and kind of give birth to, on the Elizabethan stage, something like the ghost of Hamlet's father. The Spanish tragedy introduces revenge as a tragic motive. 

If you’re not a fan of classical drama, don’t let that deter you. 

“There’s some contemporary influence and we’re not making it super faithful to the period which I like. I think it's going to be an interesting artistic creation as a whole, not just like going to an old play” - Anabella Norlund, English MA student. 

Overall, as English MA student Mahtab Chaudhry tells us, it is a “very fun, very violent, very bloody,” and significant piece of early 16th century drama that should be fun to see. 

You can read more about the production and get your tickets now at this link! Tickets are already going quickly so get them while you can!