Catching up with Lauren Shohet

Dr. Lauren Shohet has been crisscrossing the country lately presenting on Shakespeare, Milton, AI, and more, so we thought it would be a good time to catch up with her and discuss her teaching and scholarship.

To begin with, Dr. Shohet gave a lecture at the Huntington Library on January 31st on “(In)Visibility and Mediation: Milton’s Eve,” in which she also discussed vanitas paintings (more on this later). Then, in February, she attended the Renaissance Society of America conference in San Francisco, where she gave a talk as part of the book history discussion group. In addition, while in San Francisco, Dr. Shohet also presided over Milton Society events. Finally, in early April, she attended the Shakespeare Association Conference in Denver and presented on Shakespeare and AI.

Regarding mediation and Milton’s Eve, Dr. Shohet explained that she is in the middle of a long project that examines mediation in Paradise Lost--as she put it, “What it is for angels and for the Son of God, to be mediators between God the Father and humans” Dr. Shohet explained that she is interested in communication as a form of mediation, in how any kind of communication is a kind of translation, and how to “get an idea from one mind to another mind.”

“So, my claim,” said Dr. Shohet, “is that mediation is inherent to the creaturely condition, whether you're looking before or after a fall, and that the importance of mediation makes us think differently about Eve's association throughout the epic with mediation. So we're, I think, more accustomed to seeing the ways that Adam's more direct access to God and to knowledge and to language diminishes Eve—which I think is true. But I also think that the epic shows that mediation is essential for being a creature in relationship—also of the most exalted kinds of relationship with the divine, with the world, with other people—and that Eve's expertise in mediation makes her an admirable and useful resource.”

Regarding the medieval vanitas paintings, Dr. Shohet explained that she is interested in a passage in Paradise Lost in which Eve examines her reflection in a pool and notes that the pool “to me seemd another Skie.” Although traditionally viewed as an instance of Eve looking for Heaven in the wrong place, Dr. Shohet is more interested in the idea that “When she says that the pool, to me, seemed another sky, she's aware of the fact that she's perceiving, and that her perception might not be the only perception, or might not be complete.”

Dr. Shohet then noticed that the image of Eve looking into the pool recalls a 17th century tradition of vanitas paintings, in which ephemeral things (like hourglasses and bubbles, but also scientific instruments and books) are contrasted with the divine and eternal (usually a skull is also present to remind us of our own mortality). “So I started thinking,” noted Dr. Shohet, “about how Eve looking in the pool reminded me of a lot of these vanitas paintings, some of which are by women artists, many of which do feature women. Because the viewer who's worried about Eve maybe being vain or narcissistic, or not understanding quite where to look for heaven, detects a little skull in that pool, detects mortality in that gaze.”

During her next trip, to the Renaissance Society of America conference in San Francisco, Dr. Shohet spoke about Paradise Lost and network theory, which she finds to be “a really intriguing way to think about medium.” As Dr. Shohet explained it, “Instead of thinking about signs and signifieds, or thing and word, I'm interested in these reciprocal, distributed ways that meanings are created by unpredictable constellations of different entities. And those entities can be matter, they can be word, they can be interpretive protocols, they can be allusion.” With regard to Paradise Lost, Dr. Shohet discussed network theory in relation to figurative language, “as something that pulls together all kinds of different frames of reference, and then, what guidance does the reader get in thinking about how to make meaning out of it?”

Finally, at the Shakespeare Association Conference in Denver, Dr. Shohet presented on Shakespeare and AI in the context of Othello. Her presentation focused on the way search algorithms and large language models depend on our input to make meaning; as Dr. Shohet put it, “What AI does is predict the statistically likeliest next word.” Meanwhile, “In the play Othello, the vice figure Iago manages to completely mess with the protagonist Othello's sense of who he is, who other people are, how he knows what's true, and what meaning is, by just repeating little bits of his speech back to him… If you ever had someone just repeat the last word of every sentence you speak back to you with a question mark, it's really unsettling… So, my paper's about ways you can ask students to use the play as a usefully unfamiliar context where they can evaluate how search algorithms and social media feeds draw on what they think should come next to manipulate them. And then, on the other hand, how they can use their own experience of, say, social media feeds, to get deeper inside the operations of the play.”

At the end of our interview, I asked Dr. Shohet for her general thoughts about AI.

“I am worried about AI,” she said, “…and I think it's a really great opportunity to denaturalize our fantasies that we had non-iterative ways of knowing things before. You know, knowledge is always constructed, and it's constructed iteratively through feedback you get on performing a hypothesis, and then you perform it again. Just watching AI do that lets us say, ‘oh, that's how gender's constructed.’ That's how, right? You experiment with something, you reiterate it, you try it again. And that, conversely, becoming critical consumers of how that works in one arena can carry over to the other, and we can just ask more questions, both with and without AI.”

Vanitas by Antonio de Pereda

Book Club and Bookstore Expedition

 Join the Reading and Community Class for a Book Club and Bookstore Expedition!

Reading and Community may be over, but our community reading isn’t! Join us to read Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646858/atmosphere-a-gma-book-club-pick-by-taylor-jenkins-reid/) on Tuesday nights from 5:30-6:30 in Garey Hall B03. We will read roughly the first 100 pages (if you are reading on a e-reader and want to know where to stop reading, email Dr. Mullen at mary.l.mullen@villanova.edu). Everyone is welcome.

We will also go to Main Point Books on Sunday, April 19 at 10:30. We will browse books, maybe buy a few, and then grab coffee and talk about good reads! If you are interested in attending, RSVP here: https://forms.gle/TdHfB8SZWG78GfFA7

Professor Mary Mullen published co-edited volume: Race, Violence, and Form: Reframing Nineteenth-Century

 

             

Although people often think humanities research is conducted by individuals, it is always collaborative. For Professor Mary Mullen, there is no greater pleasure than thinking with other people and refining research and writing with them. Professor Mullen's recently published co-edited volume, with Professor Renee Fox, titled Race, Violence, and Form: Reframing Nineteenth-Century Ireland, is the product of several collaborative conversations at the University of Notre Dame, Villanova University, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. The volume is dedicated to Sara Maurer, Mary's undergraduate professor, mentor, and friend, who dreamed up ideas behind the book. 

For more about this important volume, see this recent blog post from Liverpool University Press.

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.

Alumni Spotlight: Superintendent Dr. MaryJo Yannacone

 

        When Dr. MaryJo Yannacone, Villanova BS ‘90, MA ‘94, and Superintendent of Springfield Township School District, entered my Zoom call midday on a quiet Friday afternoon, she had already dealt with a litany of complicated problems and situations, including but not limited to handling a weather-induced facilities breakdown, attending a regional superintendents meeting, running a business meeting, addressing a student matter, and, the cherry on top, being notified of an active water main break affecting one of the district’s buildings mere minutes before our conversation began. Dr. Yannacone, however, radiated such a present, attentive calmness that I had no idea any of this was going on until I asked her what a typical day in her life as a superintendent looks like. 

         “There's no predictability about the day,” she explained. “You can schedule your calendar for meetings, school visits, and other activities, but the truth is, day to day, it's very different. And that's one of the things I really like about the job.” 

        Dr. Yannacone began her career as a teacher in 1990, first at Penncrest High School, and then at Marple Newtown High School in Delaware County. She later moved to Strath Haven High School in 2003, taking on the role of Assistant Principal before then serving as Principal from 2005 to 2018. In the same year, she began her new position as Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction, finally assuming the role of Superintendent in 2020. 

        While a career in administration was not one Dr. Yannacone expected for herself, attending Villanova as an undergraduate and a graduate student seemed fated. Growing up in the area, she was strongly encouraged by her father, a fervent Wildcat who graduated in 1958, to consider the university. “From the time I was a little kid,” Dr. Yannacone said, “we were on Villanova's campus for alumni events, for football games, for basketball games. My father had season tickets to Villanova men's basketball from when I was a little girl, so I grew up on the campus.” Initially, that familiarity worked against Dr. Yannacone’s interest in the university. “My father was so pro-Villanova that I wanted to go really anywhere else, so when I was applying, I actually looked at every other school in the region. I looked at St. Joe's, which was blasphemy at the time to my father. I went up to Boston College. My parents let me apply to the University of Pennsylvania. But in the end, Villanova had the program that I wanted. It had a great reputation, I loved the campus, and so it was a perfect fit for me.” 

        After completing her Bachelor’s in Education, Dr. Yannacone decided to pursue a Master’s degree in English at Villanova. She told me how she “had a great experience in the undergraduate English department” thanks to “some outstanding teachers,” including the department’s own Dr. Evan Radcliffe and Dr. Crystal Lucky. “I just felt at home there. I felt very comfortable at the university.” 

        One key focus of Dr. Yannacone’s earlier work in her Master’s program was a canon-expanding exploration of Central and South American women’s literature. “I really wanted to push the boundaries of what the canon presumed was what we should be reading,” she explained, “because even though I love the classics and I enjoyed all of my studies, I really wanted broader exposure to underrepresented voices. I found myself sort of trying to squeak out those margins of what we consider the canon quite a bit in my courses.” 

        Her focus on uplifting marginalized voices would become a core tenet of her work, not just as an academic but also as an educator and administrator. Dr. Yannacone credits her time at Villanova with introducing her to a level of diversity she had not experienced before. “I spent all of my early years in Catholic school. And at the time, diversity in my Catholic school was, ‘Are you Italian or Irish?’ So I had very little exposure as a younger child to, first of all, poverty. I grew up in Rosetree Media, and I was very privileged as a child financially. I also grew up in a racially homogenous community, and so when I got to Villanova, it was the first time that I had exposure to a more diverse population.” 

        Challenging the sociopolitical barriers that create these material inequities became a guiding mission for Dr. Yannacone. She told me how many of her friends expected to work at Cardinal O’Hara—her alma mater and a private high school—as she began her teaching career, but she chose a different path. “I really do believe in public education and wanted to see what I could do in making a commitment to it, exposing myself to a broader group of students and community members. That's where I really learned a lot about the resource imbalances in public schools compared to parochial schools, and in urban schools compared to suburban and rural schools.” 

        “There's an old saying,” Dr. Yannacone continued, “that education is the great equalizer. Public education is the great equalizer. It's why in this country we have public education, the idea that we wanted an informed citizenry. And so I bought into that wholly and just thought about what I can do as an educator and eventually as an educational leader to make that more of a reality than it is.” Dr. Yannacone’s career as an educator always involved her contributing as much as possible to her students, though not always in the ways she expected. Early in her tenure at Marple Newtown High School, she began coaching several extracurricular sports teams, including track and field, tennis, and basketball. “It was busy, but I loved it. I loved working with students. I loved the balance of seeing students in the classroom and then seeing them out on the track [or on the field].” With some nudging from a close colleague, Dr. Yannacone doubled down further on her various leadership roles, becoming a grad-level chair, a position she held for twelve years until she left Marple Newtown to move into administration. 

        Becoming an assistant principal was not a move Dr. Yannacone foresaw for herself when envisioning her career as a teacher back at Villanova, nor was it an opportunity she saw coming when she was offered the job. “The assistant principal at the time said to me, ‘MaryJo, I’m leaving at the end of the month, and they’re going to make you assistant principal,’ and I said, ‘I’m not even certified!’” She then went into the principal’s office, stunned by their offer and wondering why she had been considered for the position in the first place. “He said, ‘You have natural leadership qualities. We know you don’t have the degree yet, but we’re going to get you emergency certified.’ I had just written a course, Women’s Literature of the Americas, for the spring, and I was coaching track. So I said, ‘Look, I’ll do it if I can still teach that hour of the day and I can still coach. I’ll stay late to get my paperwork done, but I’ll try it.’” 

        Dr. Yannacone did more than just try; she thrived, so much so that she was invited to return as assistant principal the following school year. However, wanting to keep learning about teaching, she said no. “I went back into the classroom, and I’m so glad I did, because in the years between that one semester of emergency certification and becoming an assistant principal in a neighboring district, I was the union president for two years. I talked to elementary, middle, and high school teachers, and I really got to understand the ins and outs of the challenges for different people. It made me a better school leader.”    

        While Dr. Yannacone makes it look easy, handling such a wide range of responsibilities daily and managing such a diverse collective of professionals is no small feat. When asked how she manages to seemingly flow from role to role at the drop of a hat and hold space for such a wide variety of concerns all at once, she explained that it all comes down to being a skilled listener. “All of these different perspectives play into the health of a school community…It’s not just teachers; it’s school psychologists, food service workers, custodial services, bus drivers, administrators. There are so many departments with varying viewpoints about what’s a priority, where we should be putting our energies, our finances…I feel like the top use of my time is spending time with people, hearing about their experiences, and learning their perspectives.” 

        Dr. Yannacone also shared some advice for graduate students considering pursuing a career in education. First and foremost, she emphasized the importance of starting as soon as you can, even arguing that teaching while still pursuing a graduate degree should be considered an advantage. “I’m glad that I was working and studying concurrently, because it allowed me to immediately put into practice what I was studying…It’s not to say it wasn’t difficult. It was. But it doesn’t get less challenging when you have a family, are raising children, or are cultivating a marriage. I think the best thing you can do is get out there and live life, and part of that is getting to work and bringing what you’re living into your perspective on what you’re studying.” 

        Finally, as our conversation wound down, I asked Dr. Yannacone what advice she would’ve given to her younger self, just starting in education. After a brief pause, she began. “There’s a mindset I encountered when I was young that, if you’re really bright, you should go into medicine, law, finance, all these other fields, because you’re not going to make any money as a teacher, but I have never felt, through my entire educational career, that I lacked for anything. What I still hear today is that the reason why we have a teaching shortage is that we don’t make teaching attractive from a financial standpoint, but in every other way, it’s enough.” 

    “The most important thing about my entire career is that it’s had meaning…I say every year at our convocation to the 500 people who work in my district, ‘Your jobs are the most important jobs on the planet. There's nothing that's more important. It's feeding children. It's busing children. It's educating children. It's providing counseling support for children. It's leading children. We're doing the most important work.’ And so I don’t know of any other profession that has more meaning. I don’t know why you’d do anything else.”

—Aria Gray

Tsering Wangmo at the Brooklyn Museum

Dr. Tsering Wangmo braved the weather this past weekend in order to facilitate a packed poetry workshop at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. Professor Wangmo's workshop was part of a series, titled "I See You Face to Face," named in honor of Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," referencing that Whitman once worked at the Brooklyn Apprentices' Library, which ultimately became the Brooklyn Museum. The series of workshops takes place in art galleries within the museum, allowing poets to draw from the art they see around them in crafting their verse. 

Dr. Wangmo's workshop took place in the Rubin Museum Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room. According to the Brooklyn Museum's website, "The Rubin Museum Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room presents more than 100 artworks and ritual objects as they would be displayed in an elaborate Tibetan Buddhist household shrine—a space used for devotional prayer, offerings, and rituals. Scroll paintings (thangkas), sculptures, ritual implements, and musical instruments dating from the 12th to 21st century are arranged on traditional Tibetan furniture according to their use in Tibetan Buddhist practices... The design incorporates elements of Tibetan architecture and the color schemes of traditional Tibetan homes, offering visitors the opportunity to experience Tibetan religious art in its cultural context." The workshop began with an overview of the space and its art, before transitioning into an opportunity to write poetry inspired by the surroundings. 

Dr. Wangmo's most recent book is The Politics of Sorrow, and her books of poetry include Revolute and My Rice Tastes Like the Lake.

Ellipsis Magazine Wants Your Art!

Ellipsis Magazine 

By Margaux Barrett 

Ellipsis Magazine has a long relationship with the English department: Tia Parisi, former president of Ellipsis, minored in Creative Writing. Margaux Barrett, current president, is an English and Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience double-major. 

Ellipsis Magazine is Villanova University’s premier art and literary publication. Formerly known as Arthology, the organization transitioned during 2020 under the leadership of its then-president Tia Parisi ‘21. The goal of the transition was to create a platform where Villanovans across all majors, not just those artistic-minded, would feel encouraged to share their stories. 

Now in its seventh year, the magazine has been receiving more submissions than ever before. When asked what could be driving this increase, the current president, Margaux Barrett ‘26, explained, “It’s a combination of factors. I think there’s been a resurgence of physical and visual media with young people—especially in the face of AI. Plus, we have a wonderful community. Lots of great and talented people. We’ve been really lucky.”

This February, the magazine is gearing up for the design of its 2025-2026 edition, planning to be released campus-wide in late March. The deadline for student submissions is February 27th. Poems, paintings, photographs, sketches, as well as other multi-media work are accepted. 

To submit your work, please email ellipsis@villanova.edu and include your name, graduation year, and title of work. You can also follow Ellipsis Magazine on Instagram at @vuellipsis to stay updated on the organization’s events and publications.