Department of English
On the Books
Undergraduate Alumni Newsletter

Letter from the Chair


Welcome to the third annual newsletter for English majors, minors and alumni! It’s meant to keep you in touch with what’s happening with current students and alumni, individual faculty members and the department as a whole.


This year’s newsletter introduces you to an exciting new course on Asian American literature taught by Yumi Lee, PhD. We’re also pleased to share a follow-up story on the cutting-edge production of The Spanish Tragedy made possible by Professor Alice Dailey, PhD, English; Associate Professor Chelsea Phillips, MFA, PhD, Theatre and Studio Art; and their remarkable students. Other stories feature recent publications by English alumna Jamie Kapalko ’09 CLAS and Gina Buonaguro ’96 CLAS, as well as the journalism career of Emma Pettit ’16 CLAS. As you’ll see below, the newsletter also includes many other recent achievements by students, faculty and alumni!


I hope you enjoy this newsletter, and please stay in touch with us. Let us know what you’re up to, and of course contact me or Mike Malloy if you have any items for the next edition of this newsletter!


Best,

Heather Hicks, PhD

Professor and Chair of English

Get Involved

Villanova University English 75th Anniversary Merch


Want to support our students and bedeck yourself in the height of fashion at the same time? The Villanova English Department is selling t-shirts and fleeces with cool designs marking the undergraduate major’s 75th anniversary on campus, and we’ll be using the proceeds to support current undergraduate students’ academic needs. For more information or to place an order, please email Mike Malloy. We accept cash or check—through the mail or in person at our office on campus.

Villanova English Podcast, "In Theory"


The English podcast, "In Theory," soldiers on; please keep an eye out for new episodes! You can check out the podcast on our blog, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And if you’re looking for still more Villanova English audio, check out the podcast by Kamran Javadizadeh, PhD, as well!

Faculty News

Course Spotlight: Villanova’s First Asian American Literature Course

By Katie Lewis ’26 CLAS


What does it mean to be Asian American? This is the central question asked by Professor AJ Yumi Lee, PhD, in a new undergraduate English course as of spring 2024, Introduction to Asian American Literature. The course explores how literature has represented and shaped Asian American identity since the 20th century. The course is the first to be offered by the English Department that focuses entirely on Asian American literature.

“There is growing interest in this field because students want to see themselves reflected in the curriculum,” said Dr. Lee. “It’s also reflective of larger trends in academia. It’s exciting to be in this moment at Villanova that reflects what is happening nationally and especially on college campuses across the East Coast.” 


Read the full story on Villanova English’s blog

Legacies of Revenge: The Spanish Tragedy in Performance and Context

By Melody Gleason ’25 MA 


In fall 2023 and spring 2024, English Professor Alice Dailey, PhD, and Associate Professor of Theatre Chelsea Phillips, MFA, PhD, along with a group of students from various programs and departments worked together to examine the theme of revenge and justice as a tragic element. The first half of this project started as a class in the fall 2023 semester called “Legacies of Revenge – Across Time, Space, Genre and Media.” The course engaged both graduate and undergraduate students from multiple disciplines including English majors, minors and theatre majors. Students in the course studied narratives of revenge across a plethora of entertainment media. The class especially focused on the play The Spanish Tragedy written in the 1580s. 


Learn more about Villanova’s production of The Spanish Tragedy.

Faculty Publications and Honors

Alice Dailey, PhD, Mother of Stories: An Elegy. New York: Fordham Press, 2024.


Joseph Drury, PhD, “Haywood’s Whimsical Adventures: The Rococo and the Novel.” The Eighteenth-Century Novel and the Arts, edited by Jakub Lipski and M-C. Newbould, Edinburgh University Press, 2024, pp. 195-210. 


“Humans, Machines, Automatons.” The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Literatures in English, edited by Suvir Kaul, Nicole Aljoe, and Sarah Eron, Routledge, 2023, pp 527-40. 


“Afterword: On the Uses of the History of Technology for Literary Studies and Vice Versa.” British Literature and Technology, 1600-1830, edited by Kristin M. Girten and Aaron R. Hanlon, Bucknell University Press, 2023, pp. 164-176. 


Dr. Drury also won a Short-Term Fellowship at the Winterthur Museum and Library for 2023-24.


Travis Foster, PhD, "White Supremacist Submission." TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 3-4, 2023, pp. 426-448. (Honorable mention, 1921 Prize, tenured category; awarded annually by the American Literature Society to the year’s best published essays on any topic related to American literature.) 


Dr. Foster was also invited to present work from his new book project, Girl-Boy: The Racialization of Trans Feminine Childhood, at the Rosenbach Library in Philadelphia and the University of Mississippi in Oxford, as well as starting a new role as book reviews editor for Legacy: The Journal of American Women Writers.


Heather Hicks, PhD, “‘Stripped of These Things They Were Kin’: Tracking Judith Butler’s Post-9/11 Conception of Vulnerability in Recent Apocalyptic Fiction.” Contemporary Vulnerabilities, edited by Pier Paolo Piciucco, Nuova Trauben, 223, 197-216.


Joseph Lennon, PhD, was invited to present on “Seed Sharing: Sustainability, Culture, and Irish Soft Power” for the Boston College Irish Studies Annual Adele Dalsimer Lecture. He was also invited to speak and direct a symposium with Susan Kelly vonMedicus, hosted by Prince Albert of Monaco, at the Princess Grace Irish Library on “Sustainability in Irish Culture.”


Jean M. Lutes, PhD, and Sandra A. Zagarell, PhD, "An Unpublished Tale about African American Poetry: Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s 'The Grievances of the Books' (1897)," American Literary History, Volume 36, Issue 1, Spring 2024, Pages 51–73, https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajad158.


Megan Quigley, PhD, and David E. Chinitz, PhD, editors. Eliot Now. London: Bloomsbury, 2024.


Megan Quigley and David E. Chinitz. “Mature Fans Steal: Eliot’s Fictions.” Eliot Now. Ed Megan Quigley & David E. Chinitz. London: Bloomsbury, August 2024.


Lauren Shohet, PhD, “Touching the Shield of Achilles: Ekphrasis and/as Re-Mediation,” Anglia 142, 3 (Fall 2024): 1-16. 


Dr. Shohet is also the subject editor for “Literature and Drama in English” for Routledge Online Resources: The Renaissance World


Kimberly Takahata, PhD, “Reading with Powhatan Ancestral Remains in Robert Beverley’s The History and Present State of Virginia.” Early American Literature, vol. 59, no. 1, 2024, pp. 69–94. "Mutual Aid in Early America: A Roundtable. INSURRECT!, https://www.insurrecthistory.com/archives/vczgaj59ytbdhctoedf54foq5x4f68


Dr. Takahata was also invited to present "Not Witnessing John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative, of a Five Years Expedition" at the University of Pennsylvania's Restoration to Victorian Studies Reading Group.


Tsering Wangmo, PhD, The Politics of Sorrow. New York: Columbia University Press, 2025. https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-politics-of-sorrow/9780231212472.

Student News

75th Anniversary and Book-Giving Event

On May 2, 2024, the English Department gathered to celebrate 75 years of the English major as well as our graduating seniors. On our blog, you can find pictures from the party as well as a list of the books faculty gave graduating seniors and their reasoning. We are so proud of you all! 


Congrats to our First Department Funding Recipients!


This past spring marked the beginning of a new chapter for the English Department here at Villanova, as we are now able to provide competitive book scholarships and other funds to support both academic and professional experiences that emphasize exploration and growth. 


We are pleased to be able to share the names of some of our first recipients of these funds: Isabel Choi '25 CLAS, Catherine Messier '24 CLAS and Kai Williams '25 CLAS. Isabel received funds to support a writing internship, Catherine received funds to support studying abroad in Oxford, and Kai received funds for studying abroad and an internship in London. Congratulations to these students!

Kai Williams '25 CLAS in London

We received these funds from a generous donor who wishes to remain anonymous. We are deeply thankful to them.

English Major Earns Falvey Scholar Award


Congratulations to Catherine Messier ’24 CLAS, who was a 2024 Falvey Scholar Award Winner! The Falvey Scholars award is an annual program established by Falvey Library and the Center for Research and Fellowships to recognize exceptional undergraduate research by senior-level students at Villanova.

Alumni News

English Alumna Publishes Courtside Rom-Com

Jamie Harrow ’09 CLAS recently published her debut novel One on One with Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House. The book details a budding romance between co-workers at a college who are drawn together by the school’s basketball team.


“Even though I wrote my book 10+ years after graduating, my Villanova experience has been invaluable to me,” says Harrow. “I did a concentration in Writing and Rhetoric, and Jeff Silverman and Karyn Hollis both provided a lot of guidance and support to me. Their encouragement has stuck with me for over a decade. Of course, I also learned a ton about books and reading from my classes in the English Department and Honors Program, and writing a sports column for The Villanovan was great practice for writing a book that’s partly about sports.”

Alumna Covers English (and More) for The Chronicle of Higher Education



Emma Pettit ’16 CLAS is a reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education who covers how political groups, agendas and ideas appear on college campuses. Pettit recently reported on tensions in an English department, so we thought it would be a good time to revisit a piece that appeared on our blog back in 2019, written by Audrey Gibson ’20 CLAS.

Alumna Novelist Wins First Place at the 2023 Chaucer Awards


Gina Buonaguro ’96 CLAS was awarded a first-place prize from the 2023 Chaucer Awards for her historical fiction novel, The Virgins of Venice. As Buonaguro wrote on her website, “I am beyond thrilled by this award and by this honor! After spending years researching, writing, editing, and marketing, it is so gratifying to have my work recognized independently.” Congrats!

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