Sneak Peek! Fall 2026 Upper-Level English Courses

We hope to see you in some of these exciting courses in the fall:

Fall 2026 UPPER-LEVEL ENGLISH COURSES

2003 Intro to Creative Writing TR 8:30-9:45, Tsering Wangmo
Designed for students who wish to experiment with composing several kinds of creative writing: short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.

2005 Writing the Short Story MW 3:20-4:35, Alan Drew
In this writing workshop course, we will explore setting, point of view, characterization, plot and other craft elements that make short stories run. We will read influential authors and give feedback to one another to foster our growth as writers.

2006 Writing of Poetry TR 4:00-5:15
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.

2017 Writing Detective Fiction MW 1:55-3:10, Alan Drew
Do you love detective fiction? Have you always wanted to write your own "whodunit?" In this course, you'll read and analyze classic and contemporary detective fiction while working to produce, workshop, and polish your own creative work.

2018 Nature Writing Workshop TR 11:30-12:45, Cathy Staples
The natural world will be a source for the creative non-fiction, poetry, and fiction pieces students will write in this class. Through readings, field trips, writing exercises, and workshops students will learn to sharpen their language and see more deeply.

2020 Digital Journalism MWF 10:40-11:30, Lara Rutherford-Morrison
Introduces students to the fundamentals of journalism, with an emphasis on digital media. Class will focus on the ins and outs of digital journalism as a practice, with students gaining hands-on experience within a variety of media platforms.

2061 Editing & Publishing MWF 12:50-1:40, Adrienne Perry
Literary publishing in a diverse, compelling field involving both art and commerce. This hands- on class explores the economic, social, and artistic forces that shape contemporary literature. Grapple with what it means to "make culture" while honing editorial skills.

2250, Ways of Reading TR 10:00-11:15, Michael Dowdy
An exploration of how we engage, understand, explicate, and enjoy texts of all sorts.

2306 Harry Potter: Quests/Questions MWF 10:40-11:30, Evan Radcliffe
In this course we will use the tools of literary analysis to discuss all seven Harry Potter novels. Central topics will include how the series evolves; Rowling’s use of novelistic form, character and characterization, and literary models; and the books’ representations of gender, class, and other social issues.

2790 Rewriting Genres of White Supremacy TR 2:30-3:45, Mary Mullen
"Rewriting Genres of White Supremacy" centers literature by Indigenous, Black, and white American writers to consider some of the most pressing concerns of our contemporary moment. Alongside visual images, historically grounded modules on the construction of race, and a critical dialogic component, the course supports all students in their exploration of racial and social hierarchies through the powerful expressions of key nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century writers, including Leslie Marman Silko, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Herman Melville.

2991 English Majors in the Workplace M 3:20-4:35 for first 10 weeks of the semester, Michelle Filling-Brown
This course supports students in thinking critically about their identities and goals within the field of English while deepening their understanding of the diverse career and post-baccalaureate options available to English majors. Students will develop practical skills such as résumé writing, cover letter preparation, and interviewing strategies.
Note: this is a one-credit course.

3001 Foundational Literature in English 1 TR 11:30-12:45, Lauren Shohet
Influential British literature from beginnings to 1750, tracing key ideas, power relations, and genres that still impact literature in English, and Anglophone culture, today. Relationships between writing and political change, media history, gender, spirituality, the environment, oppression and liberation.

3150 Chaucer TR 1:00-2:15, Brooke Hunter
This course introduces the work of Geoffrey Chaucer through a reading of his lively collection of stories and storytellers, The Canterbury Tales. Through its devout stories, explicit comedies, and probing romances, we will explore medieval society, Chaucer's insights on subjectivity, and influential medieval genres.

3650 African Drama MW 4:45-6:00, Chiji Akoma
Examination of the aesthetics, politics, and practices of the theatre and drama in Africa. Focused on written plays, course explores drama performances on stage, television, and movies. Introduces students to role-playing and small-scale adaptation of texts to American contexts.

4500 Black Atlantic MW 3:20-4:35, Travis Foster
Explore how the transatlantic slave trade reshaped Europe, Africa, and the Americas. This course analyzes Black diasporic culture and resistance—from 17th-century institutionalized culture and resistance—from 17th-century slavery and the Haitian Revolution to modern mass incarceration - using literature to revisit the silenced past.

4590 U.S. Independence at 250 TR 4:00-5:15, Kimberly Takahata
This class—held during a big birthday year for the United States—will examine US founding documents alongside historical contemporaries and recent rewritings of early American literature. We will ask: how does the United States and US writers define independence, and how have those definitions changed over time?

4642 Fictions of Motherhood TR 8:30-9:45, Jean Lutes
What power do mothers have? Who has the power to define motherhood? You will examine U.S. narratives of motherhood from the nineteenth century to the present, with special attention to definitions of reproductive justice.

4654 25 Poems TR 11:30-12:45, Kamran Javadizadeh
To be alive today is to feel distracted. This course offers us the chance to slow down. We read just one short poem per class meeting and learn how to give it our full attention, in writing and in conversation.

4651 Undocumented Americans TR 10:00-11:15, Tsering Wangmo
What does it mean to be "undocumented?" In this course, we will learn about belonging and citizenship from critical essays and memoirs written by "undocumented Americans."

5000 Climate Fiction TR 2:30-3:45, Heather Hicks
This course will examine critically acclaimed works of climate fiction, considering the major environmental challenges they identify, the literary forms they deploy, and the positive change they might bring about.

Villanova English Flyers

Our students and faculty regularly present the department to prospective majors throughout the year. Here are some of the materials they use. 

Fall 2026 UPPER-LEVEL ENGLISH COURSES

2003 Intro to Creative Writing TR 8:30-9:45, Tsering Wangmo
Designed for students who wish to experiment with composing several kinds of creative writing: short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.

2005 Writing the Short Story MW 3:20-4:35, Alan Drew
In this writing workshop course, we will explore setting, point of view, characterization, plot and other craft elements that make short stories run. We will read influential authors and give feedback to one another to foster our growth as writers.

2006 Writing of Poetry TR 4:00-5:15
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.

2017 Writing Detective Fiction MW 1:55-3:10, Alan Drew
Do you love detective fiction? Have you always wanted to write your own "whodunit?" In this course, you'll read and analyze classic and contemporary detective fiction while working to produce, workshop, and polish your own creative work.

2018 Nature Writing Workshop TR 11:30-12:45, Cathy Staples
The natural world will be a source for the creative non-fiction, poetry, and fiction pieces students will write in this class. Through readings, field trips, writing exercises, and workshops students will learn to sharpen their language and see more deeply.

2020 Digital Journalism MWF 10:40-11:30, Lara Rutherford-Morrison
Introduces students to the fundamentals of journalism, with an emphasis on digital media. Class will focus on the ins and outs of digital journalism as a practice, with students gaining hands-on experience within a variety of media platforms.

2061 Editing & Publishing MWF 12:50-1:40, Adrienne Perry
Literary publishing in a diverse, compelling field involving both art and commerce. This hands- on class explores the economic, social, and artistic forces that shape contemporary literature. Grapple with what it means to "make culture" while honing editorial skills.

2250, Ways of Reading TR 10:00-11:15, Michael Dowdy
An exploration of how we engage, understand, explicate, and enjoy texts of all sorts.

2306 Harry Potter: Quests/Questions MWF 10:40-11:30, Evan Radcliffe
In this course we will use the tools of literary analysis to discuss all seven Harry Potter novels. Central topics will include how the series evolves; Rowling’s use of novelistic form, character and characterization, and literary models; and the books’ representations of gender, class, and other social issues.

2790 Rewriting Genres of White Supremacy TR 2:30-3:45, Mary Mullen
"Rewriting Genres of White Supremacy" centers literature by Indigenous, Black, and white American writers to consider some of the most pressing concerns of our contemporary moment. Alongside visual images, historically grounded modules on the construction of race, and a critical dialogic component, the course supports all students in their exploration of racial and social hierarchies through the powerful expressions of key nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century writers, including Leslie Marman Silko, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Herman Melville.

2991 English Majors in the Workplace M 3:20-4:35 for first 10 weeks of the semester, Michelle Filling-Brown
This course supports students in thinking critically about their identities and goals within the field of English while deepening their understanding of the diverse career and post-baccalaureate options available to English majors. Students will develop practical skills such as résumé writing, cover letter preparation, and interviewing strategies.
Note: this is a one-credit course.

3001 Foundational Literature in English 1 TR 11:30-12:45, Lauren Shohet
Influential British literature from beginnings to 1750, tracing key ideas, power relations, and genres that still impact literature in English, and Anglophone culture, today. Relationships between writing and political change, media history, gender, spirituality, the environment, oppression and liberation.

3150 Chaucer TR 1:00-2:15, Brooke Hunter
This course introduces the work of Geoffrey Chaucer through a reading of his lively collection of stories and storytellers, The Canterbury Tales. Through its devout stories, explicit comedies, and probing romances, we will explore medieval society, Chaucer's insights on subjectivity, and influential medieval genres.

3650 African Drama MW 4:45-6:00, Chiji Akoma
Examination of the aesthetics, politics, and practices of the theatre and drama in Africa. Focused on written plays, course explores drama performances on stage, television, and movies. Introduces students to role-playing and small-scale adaptation of texts to American contexts.

4500 Black Atlantic MW 3:20-4:35, Travis Foster
Explore how the transatlantic slave trade reshaped Europe, Africa, and the Americas. This course analyzes Black diasporic culture and resistance—from 17th-century institutionalized culture and resistance—from 17th-century slavery and the Haitian Revolution to modern mass incarceration - using literature to revisit the silenced past.

4590 U.S. Independence at 250 TR 4:00-5:15, Kimberly Takahata
This class—held during a big birthday year for the United States—will examine US founding documents alongside historical contemporaries and recent rewritings of early American literature. We will ask: how does the United States and US writers define independence, and how have those definitions changed over time?

4642 Fictions of Motherhood TR 8:30-9:45, Jean Lutes
What power do mothers have? Who has the power to define motherhood? You will examine U.S. narratives of motherhood from the nineteenth century to the present, with special attention to definitions of reproductive justice.

4654 25 Poems TR 11:30-12:45, Kamran Javadizadeh
To be alive today is to feel distracted. This course offers us the chance to slow down. We read just one short poem per class meeting and learn how to give it our full attention, in writing and in conversation.

4651 Undocumented Americans TR 10:00-11:15, Tsering Wangmo
What does it mean to be "undocumented?" In this course, we will learn about belonging and citizenship from critical essays and memoirs written by "undocumented Americans."

5000 Climate Fiction TR 2:30-3:45, Heather Hicks
This course will examine critically acclaimed works of climate fiction, considering the major environmental challenges they identify, the literary forms they deploy, and the positive change they might bring about.

VU Faculty at the MLA in Toronto

While everyone else was being festive, English professors were busy at the Modern Languages Association Conference in Toronto in January. Professor Kamran Javadizadeh, the chair of the executive committee for the MLA’s Poetry and Poetics Forum, chaired two panels on poetry. Professor Megan Quigley delivered a paper entitled “Modernist Impersonality in the Age of AI,” and was an official mentor for other faculty at the conference! Per Dr. Quigley, "It was cold but wonderful."

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.

Listen Back to the Natural Lands Reading!

As has become a tradition, students in Professor Cathy Staples's Nature Writing course once again presented this past December as part of the Natural Lands’ Outdoors Online: Prose and Poetry with Villanova Student Writers event. Many of the students' works are inspired by the nearby Stoneleigh Natural Gardens, which we encourage Villanova students to visit. You can view a recording of this event here.

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