Dr. Javadizadeh reflected in April on how the pandemic was impacting his reading life. “I find now that what I want out of reading is both contact and distance, an object both for concentration and (how else to put it?) spacing out. I want something that makes me feel like I do when I listen to those lunar audio loops. Which is to say, both close to a voice and far from its source; securely connected, as though by an invisible cable, to a distant but steady point in space. I’ve always been partial to the function of language that the linguist Roman Jakobson called ‘phatic:’ ‘messages serving to establish, to prolong, or to discontinue communication, to check whether the channel works (“Hello, do you hear me?”), to attract the attention of the interlocutor or to confirm his continued attention.’ For Jakobson, the phatic function was ultimately less interesting than the one he was really trying to define, the ‘poetic,’ but I find myself drawn to that tug at the end of the line. Here I am. Can you hear me?

In April of 2020, Dr. Hicks, whose second book was on contemporary post-apocalyptic fiction, was busy working on an essay that turned out to be more topical than she had anticipated.

Dr. Hicks wrote, “I just wrote a whole article on ‘Disaster Response in Post-2000 American Apocalyptic Literature’ for a Cambridge University Press volume on Apocalyptic Literature in American Literature and Culture. Now of course I wish I could write a post-script. But the point of the article is that Disaster Studies as a field indicates that most people are highly cooperative and compassionate during disasters, rather than taking up cudgels as per many post-apocalyptic visions. I think most of what has happened reflects this tendency for people to be mutually supportive, though the vigilantism toward wealthy people trying to hide out in their vacation homes is an interesting and complicated exception. And the way nations and states are turning on each other is also a wrinkle in the theory ... But there certainly hasn’t been a lot of individualized, opportunistic crime.”

Congratulations to Carson Schatzman ’21 MA, who was elected Vice President for Academic Affairs on the Graduate Student Council Executive Board. He has worked on the council throughout the 2020-2021 academic year.

“I decided to run,” said Schatzman, “because I am interested in the administrative side of education, want to continue developing leadership skills, and have been looking for a way to invest and contribute to a community—what better than the one right in front of me?”

When asked about what he hopes to accomplish, he said, “I’d personally like to help promote inter-departmental discussion, work and relationships. My thought is, connection between departments will encourage a graduate student culture—providing an avenue for social connection, which many grad students feel is lacking (regardless of school, this isn’t just a Villanova issue). More than this personal aspect, I think conversation with students/faculty in other disciplines is an essential part of formal education. Many of us are interested in subjects outside our specialization, and those interests should be fostered to help us become well-rounded thinkers. The best way to do this is by talking with passionate people.”

Spending the first month of the COVID-19 quarantine finishing my MA thesis on post-Good Friday Agreement Northern Irish women’s coming of age narratives provided an outlet into which I could sink all of my pent-up, isolation-induced emotion. More than just that, however, it also reinforced the importance of collectivity and community in a world where such forms of togetherness are often hard to come by. Two of the texts I read for my thesis lend themselves particularly well to this end: Anna Burns’s Milkman, and Lisa McGee’s television show, Derry Girls. They both, directly and indirectly, make the case for community.

Writing about these texts in particular during this time made me think about my research much more holistically than just as a personal intellectual project. Milkman is a story of a young Belfast woman being stalked by a member of the IRA, and as a result, her deepening isolation and estrangement from her community. While it’s fairly clear the novel is set in Belfast during the Troubles, nevertheless, there are no names of people or places. Thus, it manages to speak to both the particularities of “those days” and “that place,” as the narrator often remarks, while maintaining a universalist impulse, so that any reader could pick it up and identify with its themes and problems. Derry Girls is Milkman’s total opposite. It’s a show where Derry itself is the centerpiece, just as much as the girls themselves: Erin, Orla, Michelle, and Clare (plus James, the “wee English fella”). Either way, they both point to the same value: the importance of being present with those you love and care for, whether they’re friendships, family, or even the company of strangers.

I remember being in Dr. Lutes’ class at Driscoll Hall the day we got the email. Suddenly, the gray tablet armchair I usually sat on for class didn’t seem too bad. The fact that my laptop, books, and notes were in constant danger of falling off for want of space became, at that moment, an inconsequential matter. In fact, on the first day of class, my laptop had actually spectacularly tumbled off. Astonishingly enough, it had survived this near-death experience. Distance approximation was never my forte, but that traumatic moment had made me an expert, at least when it came to the boundaries of a tablet arm. That evening, as I settled in, I realized I had formed a bit of history with that chair. It was tied to my engagement with the world of immigrant narratives and histories. With characters, ideas and nations across time. With my professor and my classmates.

Earlier that day, my inbox revealed what everyone knew was coming: classes were going to move online because of the coronavirus. In other words, a rectangular piece of glass (or plastic?) was poised to replace the unobstructed view that I had had of my classmates and teachers. That strange intimacy afforded by simply sharing the same bounded space week after week was to morph into something more … formal. From now on, it wouldn’t do to merely look at the person you were addressing—because what meaning does eye contact hold when you have a whole bunch of faces on a screen? Also, no more tablet arm chairs, which should have been a comforting turn of events.

Maybe we miss the trivial things because those aren’t the only things we miss. These little things are a proxy for the thousand other intangible, hard-to-pinpoint experiences that now seem fixed in an irretrievable past—experiences as mundane as physical proximity and conversation unmediated by technology. It’s a kind of longing that the body itself feels. A kind of ache, even—which is ironic, given that the past is rarely as divine as the present would have us believe.

How else to explain my silly nostalgia for an uncomfortable gray chair?

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