Tonight's Reading Cancelled

Unfortunately, Brenda Shaughnessy is under the weather and will not be able to give tonight's reading. Stay tuned for information on a possible rescheduling.

Masculinities Symposium - January 31

Villanova faculty, graduate and undergraduate students are invited to a one-day symposium on "Masculinities" on Friday, January 31. The event will take place at the Inn at Villanova, starting at 8.30am. Speakers include Villanova English faculty Dr. Travis Foster and Dr. Jean Lutes.

Visit here to pre-register for the symposium.

For the program and other information, please contact kelly-anne.diamond@villanova.edu.

Villanova's 22nd Annual Literary Festival -- The Line Up!

Conference: The Referent of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century -- February 21

Villanova faculty, graduate and undergraduate students are invited to a conference on "The Referent of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century," which will take place in Garey Hall 10A on Friday, February 25. The conference builds on fresh work on reference—or how the text refers to a world outside of the text—in order to rethink the aesthetics and politics of nineteenth-century Irish literature. Responding to a set of shared readings, participants will ask big questions:

What does literature about nineteenth-century Ireland refer to, and what are its habits of reference? Does the referent change for readers across time? Now that old saws about Ireland’s failed realism have been put to bed, what purposes might be served by thinking about Irish referential habits? Does thinking about Ireland and reference strand nineteenth-century Ireland in old paradigms of representation that preclude us from thinking about mediation ? How does the nineteenth-century literature and culture of Ireland refer to our own culture and moment?

The event has been organized by Villanova English faculty member Dr. Mary Mullen and is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the English Department, the Center for Irish Studies, the Provost's Office, and the Center for Teaching and Learning.

To register for the conference and learn more about the program and speakers, visit https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/artsci/irishstudies/conference.html

Submit Your Work: West Chester University Undergraduate Poetry Awards

West Chester University's annual undergraduate poetry awards are now accepting submissions until January 24, 2019. The Iris N. Spencer Poetry Award and Myong Cha Son Haiku Award welcome unpublished, original poems. Winners of both awards will received a cash prize of $1,500. Runners-up will receive $500. The Rhina P. Espaillat Poetry Award is for original poems written in Spanish or for translations of Spanish poems into English. Winners receive $500. See the flyer below for details on how to submit your work. All awards are for undergraduate students only.

WCU has also opened registration for its Poetry Conference, which will be held on April 2-4, 2020 on the WCU Campus. Please visit www.wcupa.edu/poetry for student and non-student rates and other details. The conference offers undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to participate in guided workshops led by some of the nation's top poets (Molly Peacock, Annie Finch, George Green, Juliana Gray, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Steven Kuusisto, and Susan de Sola) while engaging with poets of all ages and diverse backgrounds from all over the country.

Call for Papers: Gender and Women's Studies Student Research Conference - April 3, 2020

The 31st Annual Gender & Women’s Studies Student Research Conference is on Friday, April 3, 2020. It is an exciting opportunity to showcase your work, discuss your interests with students and faculty from Villanova and other area universities, and see the broad range of intellectual disciplines encompassed by Gender and Women’s Studies. Essays and creative work must engage gender, sexuality, or feminist theories. All papers must have been written during Spring or Fall 2019 or written specifically for the conference. Papers submitted for the conference may also be eligible to win one of three cash prizes.

Paper Eligibility, Submission Guidelines, and Prizes information:

http://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/artsci/gws/ecs_conference/papers.html

Submission Deadline: Friday, February 7, 2020

Conference presented by Villanova's Gender & Women's Studies Program and The Greater Philadelphia Women's Studies Consortium. Questions? Email gws@villanova.edu. 

Dr. Kamran Javadizadeh Wins Prestigious Award for Essay on Claudia Rankine's Citizen and Robert Lowell

Huge congratulations to Dr. Kamran Javadizadeh, who has been awarded this year's William Riley Parker Prize for the best article published in PMLA, the leading journal for literary studies! His article “The Atlantic Ocean Breaking on Our Heads: Claudia Rankine, Robert Lowell, and the Whiteness of the Lyric Subject” appeared in the May 2019 issue of PMLA. 

Dr. Javadizadeh will be presented with his awarnd on 11 January 2020, during the association’s annual convention, to be held in Seattle. The members of the selection committee were Elizabeth Bearden (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison); Christopher D. Castiglia (Penn State Univ., University Park), chair; Beth Piatote (Univ. of California, Berkeley); Melissa E. Sanchez (Univ. of Pennsylvania); and John H. Smith (Univ. of California, Irvine).

In their citation the committee wrote: "'The Atlantic Ocean Breaking on Our Heads' rose gracefully from a comparison of a line appearing in poems written by Claudia Rankine and Robert Lowell to a far-reaching and sophisticated argument about lyric subjectivity and whiteness. Based primarily on insightful close readings of texts by Rankine and Lowell, Kamran Javadizadeh’s essay skillfully works those astute interpretations in a broader context involving the racial dynamics of various genres of twentieth-century poetry, particularly lyric verse (confessional and experimental). Javadizadeh’s exceptionally thoughtful essay has important implications beyond the two authors at its center, making a substantial contribution to the field of new lyric studies."

See here to learn more about Dr. Javadizadeh's article.