English and CAIS sponsored reading group: Isabella Hammad's Recognizing the Stranger

Join the English department and the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies for a two-part reading group on Isabella Hammad’s recently published book, Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative. The meetings will take place on Wednesday, November 6 and Thursday, November 21 at 6:00 pm in the English Department Conference Room, 402 SAC. The first meeting will cover Hammad’s Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture delivered on September 28, 2023, and the second meeting will cover “Afterword: On Gaza.” There will be copies of the book available to students who register by October 14. Please register here. Everyone welcome!

Fall '24 Class Visit Flyers

 Our student advisory council will be making visits to classes in the coming weeks to talk about the English major and minor at Villanova. Here are some of the flyers they'll be showing:

SPRING 2025

UPPER-LEVEL ENGLISH COURSES

2003 Intro to Creative Writing TR 8:30-9:45, Cathy Staples

In this introductory course, students will develop as creative writers and readers. We’ll begin with creative non-fiction, drawing upon memory and sense of place, then move on to poetry, engaging imagination and the lyric voice, then conclude with short fiction, honing our storytelling skills.

2004 Writing Creative Non-Fiction TR 2:30-3:45, Adrienne Perry

Creative nonfiction has been described as "true stories well told." Students will write, close read, and workshop "true stories," including travel writing, food writing, and the lyric essay.

2009 Writing the Novella TR 11:30-12:45, Alan Drew

A creative writing workshop course designed for students eager to leap into the complex process of writing a novella or short novel. Students will close-read short novels to analyze elements of craft and workshop sections of their own novel in-progress.

2020 Digital Journalism MW 3:20-4:35, 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.

2022 Writing Through Conflict TR 10:00-11:15, Alan Drew

In this creative writing workshop you will study contemporary Irish/Northern Irish writers while working on your own creative pieces. Over semester break, you will travel to Belfast for a week of seminars and creative writing workshops at the Seamus Heaney Centre.

2024 Scriptwriting MW 1:55-3:10, Michelle Filling-Brown

In this creative writing course, students will study drama and techniques that lead to developing characters, crafting stories, and writing scenes. In the collaborative scriptwriting workshop, students will work as authors, editors, and critics, ultimately each crafting a one-act play.

2025 Making Comics MWF 10:40-11:30, Robert Berry

We will make, understand, and appreciate the storytelling medium of comics. For artists, writers and enthusiasts of all levels; no drawing experience necessary. Through exercises, readings and collaborative assignments, students learn the language of comics and create their own stories.

2070 Legal Writing & Analysis MWF 9:35-10:25, Karen Graziano 

Fundamentals of legal writing and analysis.

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.

2400 Classical Hero in Ancient Lit MW 1:55-3:10, Evan Radcliffe

In this course we delve into some of the most famous and influential works of classical Western literature, including Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, and Virgil. We will discuss the complexities and depth of their explorations of issues such as war, glory, political power, the place of the gods, and tragic loss.

2801 Editing Law M 4:45-6:00 for first 10 weeks of the semester, Karen Graziano

Law is consistently criticized for lacking the ABCs of effective legal writing: accuracy, brevity, and clarity. Using current laws, students will learn how to edit legal writing to improve its readability and advocate more effectively for clients. Communicating and applying skills of English Majors in the workplace.

2994 Reading and Community M 6:15-7:30 for first 10 weeks of the semester, Mary Mullen

Studying the kind of reading that takes place outside of the classroom in book groups and community reads, this course practices reading in community while studying hot new books selected by students in the course.

3160 Fabulous Middle Ages MW 3:20-4:35, Brooke Hunter

The Middle Ages mixed history (historia) and fable (fabula) freely. This course traces the intersections between the fabulous (the fictional and fantastic) and the "real" in medieval narratives about the history, global travel, and the natural world.

3507 Strange Cases: Imagining Health & Illness TR 1:00-2:15, Joseph Drury

Explore literary responses to pivotal developments in medical science and practice from the eighteenth century to the present. Study works that engage with the new ideas about illness, treatment, and disability that arose alongside changing understandings of the human body.

3530 Victorian Doubles MW 4:45-6:00, Mary Mullen

Investigate how Victorian literature represents doubles - self and other, women and men, past and present, public and private - and study changing constructions of gender, industrialization, and imperial expansion in nineteenth-century Britain.

3615 Ulysses TR 2:30-3:45, Megan Quigley

A study of the novels and short stories of James Joyce, with concentration on Ulysses.

4520 American Novels to 1945 TR 2:30-3:45, Jean Lutes

Want to track some of the most influential American stories ever told? In this course you’ll study19ᵗʰ century books inspired by the institution of slavery before turning to extraordinary contemporary novels that build directly upon their literary provocations.

4632 African American Drama TR 11:30-12:45, Crystal Lucky

"The play's the thing" to capture the conscience of not only a king but a nation. Students will read plays written by African Americans including Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, August Wilson, Anna Deavere Smith, and Suzan Lori Parks.

4647 Gender & Sexuality in U.S. Lit TR 4:00-5:15, Yumi Lee

This course examines a fascinating range of contemporary US literary texts to explore the ways that gender and sexuality intersect with race, class and other categories of identity to form our experiences of selfhood, community, national belonging, and power.

4654 25 Poems TR 10:00-11:15, 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.

4655 Contemporary Lit & Film in Translation TR 4:00-5:15, Adrienne Perry

This course taught in English introduces students to contemporary world literature and cinema in translation. The study of these texts as translations equips students with an understanding of how translation allows movement among diverse languages and cultures, including our own.

4702 Authors On & Off the Page TR 4:00-5:15, Lisa Sewell & Tsering Wangmo

Do you love to write? Dream of visiting with authors to discuss their work and the publishing world? This course combines creative writing workshops with literary analysis and the chance to hob-nob with prestigious authors during the Villanova Literary Festival.

4703 21ˢᵗ Century American Apocalypse TR 1:00-2:15, Heather Hicks

This course surveys major contemporary novels depicting American disasters and their aftermath. We'll consider the varieties of apocalypse that are imagined -- including economic collapse, pandemic, "zombie apocalypse," and climate disruption -- in relation to gender, race, and literary form.

5000 George Eliot’s Middlemarch MW 3:20-4:35, Mary Mullen

In this senior seminar we will study George Eliot’s Middlemarch and consider what it teaches us about the form of the novel, literary history, and the canon. We will think about gender, genre, race, and colonialism.

GWS 5000 Feminist Fictions TR 11:30-12:45, Megan Quigley

An interdisciplinary course that focuses on a topic through methodology that requires students to provide input from the research areas of their majors. Open to GWS majors, minors and ENG majors, 

minors.

HON 5440-100 At Stoneleigh Garden: Reading & Writing Children’s Stories, April 11-13, 2025, Cathy Staples 

From Goodnight Moon and The Woman Who Flummoxed the Fairies to Wind in the Willows, Sukey 

and the Mermaid, and Alice in Wonderland—we will read and write our way through Stoneleigh’s 

gardens, meadows, and woods in this one-weekend workshop.

HON 5440-101 At the Barnes: One Credit Poetry Workshop February 7-9, 2025, Cathy Staples

Dr. Barnes’ collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and early Modern paintings will be the centerpiece for this one-weekend poetry writing workshop. From Cezanne’s cardplayers and Picasso’s acrobats to Matisse’s storytelling interiors—we’ll write our way through the galleries.

You can find our English Alumni Careers Booklet here.

Professor Megan Quigley at the "Code Meets Culture" symposium

Pictures from Professor Megan Quigley's presentation at the "Code Meets Culture"--a symposium on the future of AI and the Future of Second Language, Literature, and Culture Pedagogy. 

Ann Marie Jakubowski wins the Fathman Award from the International T. S. Eliot Society!

 

Ann Marie Jakubowski won the Fatham Award, a prize given by the International T. S. Eliot Society at its annual meeting to the best paper presented by an early-career scholar, for her paper "Conversion as Revision: The Retrospective Poetics of Burnt Norton." She is currently a Lilly Postdoctoral Fellow at Valparaiso University, where she teaches literary and humanities courses in the undergrad honors college (Christ College). She graduated from Villanova's Masters program in English in 2017 and received a PhD from Washington University in St. Louis in 2024.

Kylie Horan ('24) wins the 2024 Angelica Garnett Undergraduate Essay Prize from International Virginia Woolf Society

Recent graduate, Kylie Horan, won the 2024 Angelica Garnett Undergraduate Essay Prize from International Virginia Woolf Society for her essay, "Woolf, Will, and the War Bride: Cymbeline and the Figure of Fascist Italy in Mrs. Dalloway.” This essay was the culmination of her Senior Seminar, Woolf and Her Daughters, taught by the brilliant Dr. Megan Quigley. As an English and Italian major, she sought to combine my foci through examining the sole Italian figure in Woolf’s canon: Rezia, Septimus Warren Smith’s war bride. She spent several months researching, drafting, and conferencing weekly with Dr. Quigley; the help of her wonderful colleagues at the Writing Center was instrumental, as well. The essay, as it will appear in the Virginia Woolf Miscellany, is a slightly excerpted form of the edition written for Villanova.

Here is an abstract of the essay: Literary critics have long analyzed Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) as a novel invested in issues of war and feminism. However, they have neglected the nexus point of these two matters: Rezia Warren Smith, the Italian war bride of main character Septimus Warren Smith. This essay centers this historically ignored character, arguing that she, as the embodiment of her nation, introduces the contemporary shadow of Italian fascism into the text. It considers Mrs. Dalloway as a precursor to Woolf’s famous anti-fascist, feminist work, Three Guineas, and Rezia an avatar through which Woolf explores the relationship between feminine bodies and feminized nations under violent, masculine domination. It argues that Woolf revises Shakespeare’s Cymbeline— a play about wartime nationhood quoted frequently throughout the novel— for a post-war Europe, with Rezia replacing heroine Imogen, who, too, stands in for her nation. Through an almost-exact replication of Imogen’s arc, down to a final consumption of a sleeping draught, Woolf draws a clear parallel between the two characters, only breaking away in Rezia’s final moments. Where Imogen-as-England wakes from her sedative, returning prosperity to her kingdom and reflecting England’s safety, Rezia-as-Italy merely fades into unconsciousness, seeing only the foreboding shadow of a man and visions of battlefields: a dark premonition of what Italy, freshly under Mussolini’s control, will come to face. Drawing on a unique collection of sources from Woolf’s diaries and London newspapers to Milanese history and Shakespeare criticism, the International Virginia Woolf Society has proclaimed the essay a work of “original insights… a true contribution to Woolf studies that will excite many readers.”

Just Published: Lauren Shohet on the Shield of Achilles

Dr. Lauren Shohet has just published an article in the journal Anglia titled "Touching the Shield of Achilles: Ekphrasis and/as Re-Mediation." Here is the abstract:

Homer’s treatment of the Matter of Troy illuminates the foundational impossibility of representation in ways that sponsor examination of the semiotic choices, the costs and benefits and tradeoffs, of different practices. Homer’s ekphrastic description of the shield of Achilles highlights a variety of available semiotic systems focused on different media of representation. This article explores Homeric ekphrasis in relation to later theories of media intersection, interaction, and transformation. Not only word, image, music, and dance, but also human perception as such, are subject to mediation.

You can view more information on the article here.

The shield's design as interpreted by Angelo Monticelli, ca. 1820, image courtesy of Wikipedia

Favorite Summer Books!

The start of the semester doesn't have to mean the end of reading for pleasure. Members of the advisory council share their favorite book from the summer to help you build your to-be-read list.

Maria Therese Barry really enjoyed reading The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams over the summer. It was a great historical fiction piece centered around the origins of the Oxford English Dictionary. I also appreciated how it delved into the topic of reviving the words that were originally missed in the Dictionary's first-ever published fascicles and fell out of common use (hence the "lost words").

Ailish Wilson enjoyed Caraval by Stephanie Garber: Scarlett Dragna receives a ticket to Caraval, an enchanted carnival where nothing is what it seems.

Over the Summer, Sonia Singh enjoyed reading The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, which is a sapphic retelling of St. George and the Dragon. If you're looking for a queer fantasy novel, you should add this one to your TBR list!

Katie Lewis enjoyed reading The God of the Woods by Liz Moore. The vivid Adirondack setting and engaging, twisting plot makes this a quintessential summer mystery (with lots of survival tips scattered throughout)!

Bianca Brucker's favorite read this summer would have to be The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hilderbrand. The story takes place in the heart of Nantucket in a magnificent beach themed hotel where there is a lavish restaurant and bar, and all the hotel bathroom tiles are made out of real oyster shells. The novel is full of summer scandals and relationships. Many guests come to the hotel for a break (or to run away) from their day to day lives and somehow their stories start to intertwine. Even the ghost of the hotel has an interesting storyline and experiences a summer she won't forget! 

Amanda McKean recommends The Outsiders. Before seeing the now the Tony award-winning musical, she read the book and watched the movie to round out this classic American novel whose messages and adaptations stand the test of time with its original characters and complex portrayal of the American teenager. 

Over the summer, Mickey Wilcox enjoyed Stephanie McCarter's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. He appreciated how McCarter's new translation portrayed the often immensely one-sided relationships between Gods and mortals, and confronted head-on the sexual violence that marked these relationships. The Metamorphoses is a wonderful encyclopedia of ancient Greek and Roman myth, and is a fun read when reading through a whole book (chapter), or just focusing on a specific mythological tale. 

 

Emily Hanlon enjoyed Writers & Lovers by Lily King.