A New Chapter: Women Writing Northern Ireland Now

Tuesday, Nov. 28, at 6 p.m.; Topper Theater, Villanova University

“The Villanova Center for Irish Studies, in partnership with the Consul General of Ireland in New York, will welcome award-winning women writers from Northern Ireland to campus for an engaging literary panel discussion and readings around the topics of women’s rights, the sectarian divide, and social class.” Panelists include: Lucy Caldwell, Jan Carson, and Michelle Gallen. Moderated by Yvonne Cassidy.

This ACS-approved event is presented in partnership with Columbia University, NYU, and Georgetown University, with support from the Government of Ireland and Northern Ireland Bureau. Co-sponsored by: Falvey Library, Department of English, Department of History, Department of Political Science, Department of Global & Interdisciplinary Studies, Gender & Women’s Studies, Center for Peace & Justice Education, Creative Writing Program, the Writing Center, St. Joseph’s University Irish Studies Program, the Irish Diaspora Center of Philadelphia, and the Irish American Business Chamber & Network, Inc.

Register here.

Please join us on Thursday, April 13 at 4 p.m. in Falvey Library’s Speakers’ Corner for a Scholarship@Villanova talk featuring Alessandra Seggi, PhD, Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology and Criminology. Dr. Seggi will present a talk titled “Youth and Suicide in American Cinema: All the Silence We Don’t Talk About.“

A large project, which culminated in the publication of Youth and Suicide in American Cinema: Context, Causes, and Consequences (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), examined the portrayal of youth and suicide in American films (N=187) from 1900 to 2019, with particular attention to the context, causes and consequences of suicide. It also teased out insidious yet fascinating social dynamics around suicidality involving both the suicidal individual and their friends and family. The analysis concluded that the portrayal of youth and suicide in film is controversial, or at least unbalanced, inconsistent, limited, and at times simplistic. Other times it can be stifling in its brutal honesty, yet rich and thought-provoking. Hence, rather than obliterate or block certain content from reaching audiences, or suggest certain reactions to audiences, young audiences need to think for themselves and question the media.

A proactive approach for audiences to interpret film messages can help youth—a media literacy strategy to embrace as active social players, while watching these films. This is a tool for empowering audiences, and helping them watch and analyze films as engaged citizens, and ultimately “for strengthening young people’s participation in civic and political life” (Hobbs, 2011, p. 421–422). Indeed, only when audiences are able to tease apart the varied, nuanced, transient, complex media messages, are they able to negotiate meaning for themselves, act as engaged social players, and perhaps begin to comprehend suicidality, and “heal the hearts or settle the minds of those left behind in its dreadful wake” (Jamison, 1999, p. 18).

Importantly, silence, by intruding into several interactions, dramatically alters them. Yet, it rarely gets talked about. So, for example, the physical and emotional consequences of suicidality on the suicidal individual are almost never tackled in film. The consequences of suicidality on the bereaved are even more infrequent object of conversation. There are yet other ways for silence to complicate relationships and affect someone’s suicidality. Silence hides complicity, when not voicing our concerns when we have some, or not speaking up in front of injustice, or not seeking help when in a crisis. It also demonstrates how we become complicit in perpetuating injustice, how we might aggravate our condition, or how we might perpetuate a life in suicidal mode, as well as perpetuating the path of least resistance. Only a few films, notably Captain Fantastic, Permanent Record, and Surviving Family, offer a vivid depiction of the desolation that friends and family experience after a suicide. Beyond the Lights shows how being embedded in a web of social relationships can offer the suicidal individual mixed messages—on the one hand, suicidality is not to be talked about; on the other, asking for and receiving help are essential steps in one’s recovery. A few other exceptional films from different eras and with varying styles, such as A Girl Like Her, Something Wild and Full Metal Jacket, showcase how silence exacerbates the consequences of trauma.

This ACS-approved event, co-sponsored by Falvey Library, the Department of Sociology and Criminology and the Department of Communication, is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

References:

Hobbs, R. (2011). The state of media literacy: A response to Potter. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 55(3), 419–430.

Jamison, K. R. (1999). Night falls fast: Understanding suicide. Vintage Books.

Villanova faculty, staff, students and friends are cordially invited to join us on Monday, March 20, from 4-5:30 p.m. in Falvey Library’s Speakers’ Corner for a presentation by Robin Adams, DPhil, titled “Shadow of a Taxman: Who Funded the Irish Revolution (1919-21)?”

Adams will discuss his recently published book Shadow of a Taxman (Oxford, 2022) which “investigates how the unrecognized Irish Republic’s money was solicited, collected, transmitted, and safeguarded, as well as who the financial backers were and what might have influenced their decision to contribute.”

Dr. Robin Adams is a Leverhulme Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast. He graduated from Oxford University with a DPhil in economic and social history in 2019. His doctoral research, on the funding of the Irish Revolution, won the Economic History Society’s Thirsk-Feinstein prize for best dissertation in economic or social history and the Economic History Association’s Gerschenkron prize for best dissertation in economic history focusing outside North America. His first monograph, Shadow of a Taxman: Who Funded the Irish Revolution? was published by Oxford University Press in 2022. The same year, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

This event, co-sponsored by the Center for Irish Studies and Falvey Library, is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

Dig Deeper to Learn more about the Irish History and Culture:

• The Irish Revolution: A Global History Mannion, Patrick (Editor), McGarry, Fearghal (Editor)
• Women and the Irisih Revolution: Feminism, Activism, Violence  Connolly, Linda, 1971- (Editor)
• Atlas of the Irish Revolution  Crowley, John, 1966- (Editor), Ó Drisceoil, Donal (Editor), Murphy, Michael, 1966 February 3- (Editor), Borgonovo, John (Editor), Hogan, Nick (Editor), Roche, Charles (Cartographer, Researcher), O’Keeffe, Hélène (Researcher)
• Browse the McGarrity Collection, which consists of around 3,000 monographs focusing on Irish history, literature, folklore, description and travel, music, and Irish – American history.
• Explore the Irish Studies Research Guide to find a robust assortment of related resources like books, book chapters, academic journals, newspapers and magazines, primary sources, encyclopedias, handbooks, companions, and biographical information. The guide also has helpful tools for citation management.
• Contact Jutta Seibert, Director of Research Services and Scholarly Engagement,  subject librarian for Irish Studies, for research consultations, instruction, curricular support, and purchase requests related to Irish Studies.

How to Do Things with Dead People: History, Technology, and Temporality from Shakespeare to Warhol

Alice Dailey, PhD.

Please join us on Wednesday, Nov. 9 from 7:30-8:30 p.m. in Falvey Library’s Room 205 for an event titled “Alice Dailey’s How To Do Things with Dead People: History, Technology, and Temporality from Shakespeare to Warhol, A Conversation and Celebration.” You can also REGISTER HERE to join virtually on the evening of the event.

Together Alice Dailey, PhD, Professor, Department of English, Villanova University;  Peter Holland PhD, McMeel Family Professor in Shakespeare Studies, University Of Notre Dame; and Melissa Sanchez, PhD, Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania will discuss Alice Dailey’s recently published book, How to Do Things with Dead People: History, Technology, and Temporality from Shakespeare to Warhol (Cornell University Press, 2022).

How to Do Things with Dead People: History, Technology, and Temporality from Shakespeare to Warhol studies human contrivances for representing and relating to the dead. Dailey takes as her principal objects of inquiry Shakespeare’s English history plays, describing them as reproductive mechanisms by which living replicas of dead historical figures are regenerated in the present and re-killed. Considering the plays in these terms exposes their affinity with a transhistorical array of technologies for producing, reproducing, and interacting with dead things—technologies such as literary doppelgängers, photography, ventriloquist puppetry, X-ray imaging, glitch art, capital punishment machines, and cloning.

This ACS-approved event is co-sponsored by the Department of English and Falvey Library. Light refreshments will be served.

Drama and Civility: James Shirley in the Age of Charles III

Please join us for the 2022 Outstanding Faculty Research Award Lecture featuring recipient Lauren Shohet, PhD, on Tuesday, Nov. 15 at 1 p.m. in Falvey Library’s room 205.

Dr. Shohet, Professor, Department of English, will give a presentation that highlights the extensive research that led her to win the coveted Outstanding Faculty Research Award in 2022. Her talk is titled “Drama and Civility: James Shirley in the Age of Charles III.”

Lauren Shohet, PhD.

James Shirley (1596-1666) was a dramatist who lived through much drama. Working first in the opulent orbit of King Charles I and in Ireland, then in civil spaces after the king was beheaded, then in the revival of London playhouses after the Restoration of Charles II, Shirley consistently explored ways that writing, performing, and reading plays could promote inclusive, good-humored conversation across sometimes bitter social, economic, and political divides.

Following the talk there will be short Q&A and light refreshments. This ACS-approved event, co-sponsored by Falvey Library and the Office of the Provost, is free and open to the public. Be sure to join us to honor this remarkable awardee!

You can learn more about the Outstanding Faculty Research Award here: https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/provost/awards/research.html

Speaker Information:

Lauren Shohet, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of English at Villanova University. She earned a BA at Oberlin College, a BMus at Oberlin College Conservatory, an MA and PhD at Brown University.

Dr. Shohet’s teaching areas include Early-Modern poetry and drama, Milton, Shakespeare, History of Material Texts, Digital Humanities, Adaptation and Genre Studies.

Some of Dr. Shohet’s recent publications include: “Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and the Idea of the Interface.” (Routledge Companion to the Interface, ed. Paul Budra and Clifford Werier, 2022); “Mediation, Media, and Milton’s Eve” (Milton Studies 63.1, 2021); Gathering Force: Early Modern British Literature in Transition 1557-1623 (co-editor with Kristen Poole, Cambridge University Press, 2019); and Temporality, Genre, and Experience in the Age of Shakespeare: Forms of Time (ed., . Bloomsbury/Arden, 2018).

See Dr. Shohet’s Website for a full listing of her publications and other accomplishments: http://laurenshohet.com/

T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”

In 1922, The Dial magazine published a strange new poem called “The Waste Land.” Join us on Wednesday, Nov. 16, from 4-5:30 p.m. in Falvey Library’s room 205 to celebrate 100 years of T.S. Eliot’s modernist masterpiece. Villanova English professors Kamran Javadizadeh, PhD, and Megan Quigley, PhD, will give the poem a dramatic reading and toast it with tea and sheet cake! Tarot readings, games of chess, and existential angst will be served.

This ACS-approved event is co-sponsored by the Department of English and Falvey Library.

Please join us on Friday, Nov. 4 from 2-3 p.m. in Falvey Memorial Library’s Room 205 for a Scholarship@Villanova event featuring Alan Drew, MFA, associate professor of English, and director of Villanova University’s Creative Writing Program. Drew will be talking about his recently published book, The Recruit: A Novel (Random House, 2022) in conversation with Jean Lutes, PhD, Professor of English, Luckow Family Endowed Chair in English Literature.

The Recruit follows Detective Benjamin Wade and forensic expert Natasha Betencourt as they try to connect a series of strange and unsettling crimes in Rancho Santa Elena, Southern California, in 1987. Ben soon discovers that a gang of youths may be responsible for the crimes and focuses in on their latest recruit, hoping that he will lead to uncovering the leader and mastermind of the operation. Ultimately, what they uncover is an extensive and powerful network of white supremacists and so much more.

The Recruit is Drew’s third book. His other works include Shadow Man (Random House, 2017) and Gardens of Water (Random House, 2008). Drew received his MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. In addition to teaching English classes and directing Villanova University’s Creative Writing Program, he is the director of the Villanova Literary Festival.

This ACS-approved event is co-sponsored by the Department of English, the Creative Writing Program, and Falvey Memorial Library. Light refreshments will be served.

It’s Open Access Week 2021! According to Peter Suber, Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication, Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, and Senior Researcher at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, “Open Access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder.”

Falvey Memorial Library supports OA as it lowers costs for students among many other benefits. Learn more about this important initiative here.

In honor of Open Access week, you are invited to join Michael Pagano, PhD, The Robert J. and Mary Ellen Darretta Endowed Chair in Finance, Professor, Finance & Real Estate, TODAY, Wednesday, Oct. 27, from 1:30-2:15 p.m. for a virtual talk on authoring the open access textbook Liquidity, Markets & Trading in Action: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. This book will be of interest to finance, economics, and information technology faculty, and includes a TraderEx simulation and ancillary instructor materials. Dr. Pagano will explain the thought process that went into publishing OA, describe the authoring experience, and touch on the OA funding model that made it possible. A description of programs that support OA publishing at Villanova will be included.

Please REGISTER HERE.

This event is open to the Villanova community and faculty everywhere interested in open access publishing.

Other Open Access Initiatives:

Open Educational Resources (OER) Faculty Adoption Grant

Faculty interested in course adoptions should consider applying for the Open Educational Resources (OER) Faculty Adoption Grant. Designed to encourage faculty to select free, openly licensed textbooks as primary course materials, applications for the grant will be accepted until Saturday, Oct. 30. Faculty members will be required to adopt an OER textbook for a new/existing course taught in spring 2022. The 2021 recipients of the OER Faculty Adoption Grant, Valentina DeNardis, PhD, and Jeanne Liedtka, JD, will save students an estimated $10,000 in one semester while they experiment with new ways of teaching.

Open Access Week Interactive Tabling (Oct. 25-Oct. 29)

Villanova students are invited to stop by Falvey Memorial Library’s first floor this week (Monday, Oct. 25- Friday, Oct. 29) to participate in interactive tabling. The Affordable Materials Project Committee (AMP) is hoping to gather helpful feedback on how much students are spending on textbooks, what strategies they use to cope with expensive course materials, and feelings about costs.

Open Access Guide

This guide was initially created by Anne Walkenhorst, under the direction of Sarah Wipperman, as part of her duties as Scholarly Communications & Digital Archiving Intern in Spring 2021.

Please contact Linda Hauck, Business Librarian, for more information on AMP and open access opportunities.

Regina Duffy is a Communication and Marketing Program Manager at Falvey Memorial Library.