Professor Kamran Javadizadeh Participates in Stonington Literary Festival Honoring Poet James Merrill

Professor Kamran Javadizadeh recently participated in the Stonington Literary Festival, a three-day event that took place from October 2-4 and celebrated the poet James Merrill and his work. Since Merrill's death in 1996, his former home in Stonington, Connecticut has played host to a writers-in-residence program, in which Professor Javadizeh participated in 2022.

For this year's festival, which marked the centennial of Merrill's birth in 1926, Professor Javadizadeh and other former writers-in-residence were invited back to participate in panels, readings, and other events such as musical performances and tours.

Professor Javadizadeh served as the moderator for the "Poetic Afterlives" panel featuring poets Ange Mlinko and Rosanna Warren in which the group discussed Merrill's legacy. In a follow-up email, Professor Javadizadeh told me about the scope of the conversation. "A hot topic for us was how Merrill’s reputation as an urbane, technically virtuosic, witty poet made him unusual as a model for younger poets," Professor Javadizadeh said. "There was a large and lively audience--I thought it was a great event."

The final event of the festival was a group reading by the former writers-in-residence of Merrill's book of poems, Water Street, the first book he wrote upon moving to Stonington. Professor Javadizadeh read the final poem in the collection, "A Tenancy." A recording of the entire reading was posted to youtube and is available here.

More information about the event and James Merrill's work is available at the Merill House website.

Professor Kamran Javadizadeh reads James Merrill's poem "A Tenancy."

- by Nikola Stojcic MA '28

Villanova Student Theatre Presents The Great Gatsby

Villanova Student Theatre's upcoming production of The Great Gatsby is almost here! The show will run from 11/5-11/14 and has several students in the English department involved, including: Will Jeffery ('27) as Nick Carraway, Vix McCoy ('27) as Ms. McKee, Annabel Everitt ('27) as Daisy Buchanan, Yasmina Szymczak ('29) as the Assistant Stage Manager, and Charlotte Insley ('27) on stage crew. 

Annabel Everitt shared with Dr. Jean Lutes: 

"I think all English students would enjoy this show. Gatsby is a North American classic that so many students have read and loved. This is a great opportunity to relax and enjoy a well-loved story before finals, especially now that we are in the thick of fall. 'Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall'."

Below is the show's poster and a QR code for more information (audience members are asked to please wear green): 

Ruth Anolik on the Uses of Horror in the New York Times

A lesson on "The Uses of Horror" devised by Dr. Ruth Anolik for her English 1975 class at Villanova was recently featured in The New York Times. The lesson was featured in the newspaper's online Learning Network section, which highlights resources for instructors wanting to use work from the Times in their classrooms. 

Dr. Anolik's lesson asks "What is horror for?" and draws from an essay by Stephen Graham Jones called “You’re Anxious. You’re Afraid. And I Have Just the Solution," which was published in 2021. 

Per the Times:

"Ruth Bienstock Anolik says that the premise of her course is that horror entertainment serves to reflect and amplify real fears and dangers in the surrounding culture. She writes that the claim the essay makes — that horror can also offer solace — shows her students 'the intellectual benefits of argument, because it provides a counterargument to the dominant message of my course.' And, she says, because it is well organized and lucidly written, it also offers her students an accessible model of excellent writing."

You can read more about how Dr. Anolik employs the essay in her course on the Times website, and you can read a description of Dr. Anolik's 1975 course, "The Cultural Uses of Horror and Terror," in our fall 2026 English 1975 course descriptions.

Retrieved from the New York Times

Dr. Lauren Shohet's Plenary Address: "What is my Archive?"

Dr. Lauren Shohet gave the plenary address at the Conference on John Milton, a biennial gathering of Miltonists from all over the word which was held this year in Provo, Utah. Her talk, entitled "What is my archive?" suggested we think about "archive" as a term that encompasses not only collections of rare books or documents, but also digital archives and also--more abstractly--whatever texts researchers deem relevant for studying a particular problem. 

From Britannica

During this talk, Dr. Shohet proposed that re-considering a problem's "archive" can create fresh questions (especially useful, she said, for junior researchers), then explored the multi-temporal, mutual constitution of archived item, finding aid, and researcher that constellate in the process of archival research.   

Dr. Tsering Wangmo Attends Middle Ground: Nepal Literature Festival

Dr. Tsering Wangmo was invited to the Nepal Literature Festival organized by Middle Ground in Berlin, Germany last week. Dr. Wangmo read poems with fellow poet, Mukahang Limbu, on the panel "Listening to What Endures." Read the description for more information on their writing in conversation here: https://www.hkw.de/en/programme/middle-ground-nepal-literature-festival/listening-to-what-endures  

Dr. Wangmo also moderated a reading and discussion, "Rethinking Geographies of the Disquiet" with three women writers from the Himalayan region: Manjushree Thapa, Farah Bashir, and Tsering Yangzom Lama. More information of the event can be found here: https://www.hkw.de/en/programme/middle-ground-nepal-literature-festival/rethinking-geographies-of-the-disquiet 

Congratulations Dr. Wangmo on both events and your invitation! 

~ by Juliana Catania MA '28

New Podcasts Coming Soon

A new season of the Villanova English podcast is coming soon! In the meantime, why not catch up with our most recent episode, an interview about early American and Indigenous literatures with Professor Kimberly Takahata? You can listen to the podcast using the links above, or subscribe on Apple, Amazon, Spotify, or other major podcatchers so you never miss an episode!

Why Don't You Just Call Up the Poetry Phone?

 By Alexis Stakem MA '28

Some people see the liberal arts and STEM fields as being in constant conflict. However, Bryan Serinese ‘91 BA is a Villanova University alum who embodies the melding of these two broad fields.

Last spring, Serinese reached out to Villanova’s English department to gift us a poetry phone. The poetry phone is an old rotary phone that has been rewired to play the dialer/listener/caller one of 333 poems upon dialing any three-digit number – a clear physical representation of intermingling between technology, poetry, and performance art. 

Serinese with the Poetry Phone in Villanova's English Department office

Serinese’s father worked for Bell Labs, now AT&T, and they built their first computer together in 1976. While at Villanova, Serinese also minored in computer science, which at the time was a relatively small department, housed in the basement of Mendel Hall. Self-effacingly, he says to have chosen, or “downgraded,” to computer science he “couldn’t hack [it in] electrical engineering.”

Now a Project Manager at Agilent Technologies, a company responsible for developing biology research supplies, Serinese helps individuals communicate their ideas to a broad array of audiences, all with various levels of technical and background knowledge. 

As he explains, “Someone [will have] an idea, and they don’t know how to express it because they’re so focused on the idea and they have such a specific background… I can help them explain it and document it for someone who has zero background in that.”

Being able to articulate another person’s feelings, ideas, or worldviews are what Serinese consider to be the greatest benefit of studying literature. 

“[Poetry] is about what’s not being said and the intentional interpretation you have to bring to it… It’s always about the words. My interpretation or the connotation I bring to a word may be different from the poet or may be different from you. So, I think that’s the beauty of it. Everyone brings something different.”

Beyond the poetry phone itself, Serinese has continued to interact with art throughout different periods of his life, whether that be in an experiential role or as the creator. He has written a zombie musical for his children titled, Carl’s School for the Apocalypse. Carl’s School lives on through the poetry phone, in fact – dial 888 to hear “Zombie Love” and 666 to hear “I Found My Purpose in the Apocalypse,” both of which are songs written and produced for the musical. Serinese has also attended Burning Man several times over,  and in one instance was led out of a whiteout by means of a hardcore rock and roll band’s continued playing. 

“This guy’s playing rock and roll in the whiteout and just not stopping. They were our beacon. He's jamming out on heavy metal guitar, and… we come up and [now] we’re like 5 feet in front of them. [When] we finally saw them, we were like ‘Thank you, thank you.’”

The cover for Carl's School for Zombie Self-Defense 

Serinese’s creative, communicative, and technological life has given him a great perspective on a liberal arts education, and he advises current students that, “You certainly didn’t waste your time because you will continue using these skills in your personal life... Keep that faith in [a liberal arts degree], just keep telling yourself that. Other people will tell you too, and those are the ones you want to listen to.”