Just Published! Dr. Mary Mullen on the Irish Famine and Fast Days in Victorian Fiction

It's been a busy month for Dr. Mary Mullen: not only has Edinburgh University Press just published her book Novel Institutions, but her article, "'A Great Public Transaction: Fast Days, Famine, and the British State,"" was just published in the journal Victorian Studies. 

The article considers the National Day of Fast and Humiliation, observed in 1847 on the occasion of the Irish Famine. Dr. Mullen studies the literature that fast days produced—poems, pamphlets, newspaper articles, political cartoons—as well as how fast days become a narrative device in fictional narratives like Elizabeth Gaskell’s Lois the Witch (1859) and historical accounts like Charles Trevelyan’s The Irish Crisis (1848). Ultimately, she suggests that fast days help us think about conceptions of the public in Victorian Britain. Although fast-day literature works to foster public unity during times of heightened social divisions, it ultimately distinguishes between publics and populations: groups of people that find expression through the state and groups of people that are managed by the state. Trevelyan’s The Irish Crisis reveals the inherent violence of this distinction. Through his representation of the fast day, Trevelyan works to integrate Ireland into a British public in order to justify the devastating population loss of the Famine.

Just Published! Dr. Mary Mullen's book Novel Institutions

Congratulations to Dr. Mary Mullen, whose book Novel Institutions: Anachronism, Irish Novels, and Nineteenth-Century Realism, was just published by Edinburgh University Press.

Dr. Mullen's book examines anachronisms in realist writing from the colonial periphery to redefine British realism and rethink the politics of institutions. Paying unprecedented attention to nineteenth-century Irish novels, it demonstrates how institutions constrain social relationships in the present and limit our sense of political possibilities in the future. It argues that we cannot escape institutions, but we can refuse the narrow political future that they work to secure.

To learm more, read Dr. Mullen's blog post about her book on the Edinburgh UP website.

Professional and Student Literary Editors Discuss How To Get Published

On Wednesday night, students had a chance to hear authors and editors talk about their experiences with the publication process. Author Robin Black shared her experience of having a short story turned down, only to have another journal pick the story up and praise it later. The lesson for Black: persistence matters. Rejection isn’t about whether we’re a “good” writer; it’s about finding a good fit.

Tia Parisi, editor of Villanova literary magazine Ellipsis, spoke about assuming that every move an author makes is intentional and the need to break down barriers between author and editor, as well as our assumptions about whether we have something valuable to contribute to a literary journal. 

The editor Travis Kurowski reminded the audience that there are a lot of ways to see our name in print—from blogs to journals. The goal of publishing, Kurowski suggested, is to create publics, places of community where literature can be celebrated and shared.

Pictured (left to right): Dr. Adrienne Perry, Travis Kurowski, and Tia Parisi.

Dr. Crystal Lucky Gives Convocation Address at Mills College

Earlier this month, Villanova English faculty member Dr. Crystal Lucky, who is currently serving as Dean of Baccalaureate Studies, was invited to deliver the Convocation address at Mills College in Oakland, CA. Dr. Lucky spoke about her current research project, Relentless Hearts: A Journey of Time, Love, and Remembrance, which tells the story of Michael and Debbie Africa (with their son Michael Jr.), the first two members of MOVE 9, who were released from prison last year, having served 40-year sentences for the death of a Philadelphia police officer during a standoff with police in 1978.

Located in Oakland, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mills College is a nationally renowned independent liberal arts college for women and gender non-binary students, with graduate programs for all genders. Ranked one of the top-tier regional universities in the West by U.S. News & World Report, Mills is also recognized as one of the Best 385 Colleges in the nation by The Princeton Review. 

Just Published! Dr. Tsering Wangmo on the "Tibetan Question"

Congratulations to Dr. Tsering Wangmo, whose article, "Dialectics of Sovereignty, Compromise, and Equality in the Discourse on the 'Tibetan Question,'" was just published in the journal boundary 2.

In her article, Dr. Wangmo observes that since 1950, the Chinese government has determined the status and position of Tibetans, but it has not won the battle for Tibetans’ hearts and minds. On the contrary, ongoing Tibetan resistance under Chinese rule points to serious fissures in the Chinese state’s ideological and cultural project of “liberating” Tibet. Wang Hui’s article “The ‘Tibetan Question’ East and West: Orientalism, Regional Ethnic Autonomy, and the Politics of Dignity” analyzes the March 2008 “riots” in and around Lhasa in order to understand the impediments to a real solution to the crisis in Tibet. Although Wang Hui offers productive ways of moving beyond the status quo, Dr. Wangmo suggests that his analysis of Tibet is limited by multiple ideological contradictions that ultimately fail to lift Tibet out of the advanced/backward binary that typifies late nineteenth-century orientalism.

Dr. Wangmo also travelled to Columbia University in New York last week to give a talk at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. Her presentation, entitled "Reenacting Homecoming," discussed literature produced by Tibetan refugees and exiles in the 1960s-70s and their relation to place. She looked at literature as a logbook of events where the function of memory was not simply to recollect but to attempt to recover and to recreate the meaning of place outside the lost territory, and spoke of the function of literature in relation to the production of history and nation in exile.

Just Published! Dr. Jean Lutes on Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop

Congratulations to Dr. Jean Lutes, whose article, "Legendary Affect: Intimacies in Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop," was just published in the latest issue of the journal Studies in the Novel. 

Dr. Lutes's essay uses affect theory to better understand Willa Cather’s master experiment with legend in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). Treating emotions not as interior to individuals but as dynamic impressions within social networks, she connects the novel’s deliberate, nondramatic continuity of feeling to Cather’s understanding of the legend as a genre. The novel articulates the value of legends repeatedly, and Cather viewed Archbishop itself as a legend. The novel’s serene, inexorable narrative of incomplete intimacies celebrates bonds of faith and love, even as it documents failures of understanding and the weaknesses of personal attachments as a form of resistance to oppression. Discovering what she calls “legendary affect” at work does not absolve Archbishop from complicity with racist regimes and colonial enterprises, and the speed with which the text moves on can act as a silencing mechanism. Yet its resolute pace allows Cather to register some of the most elusive and disturbing dimensions of cross-cultural encounters.

The essay evolved from research Dr. Lutes conducted with the help of her First-Year Match student Amanda Gerstenfeld, now a senior English major and a member of the department's Student Advisory Council.

Villanova English Major and Faculty Member in Local News

Check out this report about Friday's climate change demonstration in the Delaware County Daily Times, featuring comments by Villanova English professor Dr. Jean Lutes and senior English major, Molly Bonini.