Medallion of Excellence

The Edward McGrath Medallion, the English Department’s Medallion of Excellence, is awarded to one graduating senior each year. The 2009 Medallion of Excellence winner is Joe R. Gonzalez.

Previous Winners:

2008 - Angela S. Allen
2007 - Emily M. Trovato
2006 - Thomas Emerson
2005 - Kathryn M. Rutigliano
2004 - John Durnin
2003 - Mari Grace Crosby
2002 - Michael Foley
2001 - Kristin Suga
2000 - Christine Anderson
1999 - Thomas McKinley
1998 - John Giordano and Megan Norcia
1997 - Lisa Tomaszewski
1996 - Mark Spoonauer
1995 - Kelly Beissel

English majors have also been honored with the Saint Thomas More Award, the Medallion of Excellence for the Honors Program:

2006 - Molly Grace
2001 - Corinne Welsh
1999 - Maria Sadowski

The Jerome J. Fischer Memorial Award

The Jerome J. Fischer Memorial Award is given annually to the most distinguished undergraduate essay written in a Villanova English course. The Fischer Award honors Jerome J. Fischer, who taught nineteenth-century British literature courses, as well as a variety of other courses, at Villanova from 1947 until his retirement in 1983. He died in 1984.  (For details about the 2009 essay competition, click here.)

Jamie Kapalko wrote her award winning essay entitled, "We Who Write No Novels: The Women of the Brotherhood in Ellison's Invisible Man," for Prof. Crystal Lucky's class on Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Jamie is an English major with a certificate in Honors and a Concentration in Writing and Rhetoric. She graduated in December of 2008 summa cum laude. She was a Connelly-Delouvrier scholar and studied abroad during the fall of 2007 in a small Italian town called Ferrara. She has been inducted into the academic honor societies of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi. While at Villanova she wrote a very popular sports column for the Villanovan for two years. Jamie is from Belmar, NJ, and is currently pursuing a career in journalism.

Previous Winners:

2008 - Daniel E. Trucil
2007 - Emily Trovato
2006 - Stephen Cornell
2005 - Kristy Wessman
2004 - Mark Napolitano
2003 - Valerie Kate Fernandez
2002 - Rebecca Corcoran
2001 - Michael Foley
2000 - Corinne Welsh
1999 - Jennifer Joyce
1998 - Cara LaColla
1997 - Chris Eagle
1996 - Wendy Anne Tucker
1995 - [not given out]
1994 - Michael DiRuggiero
1993 - Rosemary Scalo
1992 - Mary Kovalchick
1991 - Peter Naccarato
1990 - Sarah Pines
1989 - Anne Marie Ryan
1988 - Jon Lemole
1987 - Jill Stevens

The Margaret Powell Esmonde Memorial Award

The Margaret Powell Esmonde Memorial Award is given annually to the most distinguished graduate essay written in a Villanova English course. The Esmonde Award honors Margaret Powell Esmonde, who taught at Villanova from 1974 until her death in 1983. She was a specialist in Renaissance literature who also taught courses in science fiction and children’s literature.  (For details about the 2008 essay competition, click here.)

Don James McLaughlin, the 2009 winner, is in his second year at Villanova University, earning a MA in English. He graduated from Harding University with a BA in English in 2006. Currently, he lives with his partner, Benjamin Brown, in Center City, Philadelphia, where he is writing a thesis on the impact of evolutionary thought on regional fiction by women writers during the early twentieth century. Don James wrote "'My self-possession flares up for a second': Authorial Anxiety in Two Poems by T. S. Eliot," for Prof. Megan Quigley last fall when he took her "Modernism and Manifesto" course. Last year, Villanova University awarded him a Graduate Student Summer Research Fellowship to do archival research on Eudora Welty in Jackson, Mississippi. He is writing a series of essays inspired by this research, one of which he presented at SCMLA conference in San Antonio last November. He will present another paper from this series at the ALA conference in Boston this May. He hopes to enter a Ph.D. program during the fall semester of 2010.

Previous Winners:

2008 - John Breedlove
2008 - Rebecca Steffy
2007 - Rebecca Burnett
2006 - Karen Y. Lee
2005 - Marc Napolitano
2004 - Victor Sensenig
2003 - Deborah Gross
2002 - Brian Sweeney
2001 - Patricia Crouch
2000 - Laura Giuliani
1999 - Sharon Cournoyer
1998 - Marc Schuster
1997 - Mary Ann Quigley
1996 - Robert Duggan, Jr.
1995 - Gale White
1994 - Gale White
1993 - Daniel Hipp
1992 - Helen Goff
1991 - Sr. Elaine Marie Glanz, I.H.M.
1990 - Katrien Conlan
1989 - Janet Wallin
1988 - Anne Gallagher
1987 - Gregory Sullivan
1986 - Ellen Wilmot

Senior Class Poet

The Senior Class Poet is chosen each year on the basis of a portfolio judged by an outside poet.

The Senior Class Poet for 2009 is Danielle Robert. Two of her poems follow.

Persephone, Across the Styx
In the underground, a wish becomes a need.
Like Ceres, it clings and will not relent until
the dead have silenced it. The king of all-
it is his desire that stops my breath and
keeps me hidden.
It is he- my Elysian fields.

Once my mother tried to rescue me from love.
She spoke of the miseries of the underground
and would not go. Though the earth was fertile,
she was not and so forced me to leave him. She
cursed my womb which held his seed. For this,
I hated her.

Yet she had taught me how to nurse a coal
with my palm, how to wish the dead to live.
No matter how I tried, I could not laugh among
those with coins for eyes or bring myself
to kiss them on the mouths.
I gave him winter and kept the rest of me.

The me with tambourines for hands and pretty
notes for teeth, reborn in Spring and Summer
and Fall, this me is dead and frozen now. She
will not dance again. The winter calls and he
speaks to me in wind, icy whipping past.
It is time once again to die.

Now after years of endless seasons,
I have grown tired of the starts of things.
What once changed, now remains the same
and no beat or pulse moves my soul in ecstasy.
Seven months to go; I am caught in a crux-
I would die to return home, to Hades.

The Heraldic
Like the Atlantic, you could return and recede,
and it would be your destiny
It is not you, but I, who knows you shall proceed.

I am the grey morning, in the evening, the burning sea.
You could count to infinity on your fingers,
and like the Atlantic, you would still return and recede.

If it is nature's will to keep us, she is certain to succeed.
When I ask you to trust me, you can doubtless believe-
Despite our quiet burdens, we will rise and proceed.

You could dash yourself against the rocks, but love, heed
me now, a heart can countless times break.
You are like the Atlantic- it always returns and recedes

to the places we don't think of, to lives we will not lead.
Never faltering in its inquiry, it batters in your veins.
I have met a man who knows when not to proceed.

It is in your bones to break upon my shores, it is unanimously
agreed.
But oh how those bones would break so easily were it not for me.
Like the Atlantic, you never fail to return and recede,
But, my dear, it is not you, but I who says when to proceed.

Previous Winners:

2008 - Brian Mehler
2007 - Lauren Linkowski
2006 - Patrick Bering
2005 - John Tecklenburg
2004 - Cecilia Barr
2003 - Jennifer Zeltman
2002 - Sarah Carley
2001 - Christopher Steib
2000 - Ted Poecker
1999 - Kim Davis

The Literary Experience Essay Award

The Literary Experience Essay Award is given each semester to the best papers written for English 1050.

The Spring 2008 winner is Kailee Fowler. Her winning essay, “The Beat of Diane DiPrima's Feminist Principles throughout La Loba" was written fProf. Cecilia Ready's class.

The Fall 2008 winner is Greg Cappa for "The Con of Cohn” [Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises] written for Prof. Jody Ross' class.

Previous winners:

Fall 2007 - C J Hodukavich
Spring 2007 - Marissa Zator
Fall 2006 - Jennifer Latz
Spring 2006 - Christina Park
Fall 2005 - Stephanie Cody
Spring 2005 - Christian Skonier
Fall 2004 - John Zurbach
Spring 2004 - Emily Trovato and Kerri White
Fall 2003 - Nadia Nauss
Spring 2003 - Monica Borgone
Fall 2002 - Adrienne Sanetrik
Spring 2002 - Elizabeth Micklow
Fall 2001 - Matt Nespoli
Spring 2001 - Matt Varga
Fall 2000 - Michael Knerr and Ryan Zitnay
Spring 2000 - Andrea Flood
Fall 1999 - Kate Schramm
Spring 1999 - Jocelyn Trufant
Fall 1998 - Megan Knecht

English Honor Society 2009

Lauren P. Acquavella
Alyssa M. Bieler
Brigid M. Black
Paige W. Blauer-Jones
Ana-Gabriela Bornancini
Marissa A. Bulger
Kaitlin M. Carlin
Camille M. Carlisle
Thomas S. Celona
Marilyn M. Chenoweth
Sinead C. Cloughley
Marissa A. Crespo
Nicole A. Cross
Colleen M. Curry
Danielle E. Dubow
Julianne E. Dudley
Molly K. Fitzpatrick
Laura K. Freeman
Allison M. Friedman
Joe R. Gonzalez
Christine M. Guerrini
Amanda E. Hanley
Samantha A. Harding
Kathleen M. Hudik
Georgianna Hunt
Robert L. Keller
Erica L. Kemp
Jenny Lee
Elizabeth L. Milarcik
Andrew T. Miles
Christopher J. Mongelli
Lily F. Nelson
Danielle N. Robert
Brian G. Roe
Lynsey A. Santimays
Kelly T. Scherer
John Christian G. Skonier
Lisa M. Tanzosh
Charlotte E. Thurston
Emily A. Triebwasser
Shanna J. Wagenheim
Megan F. Welch
Erica L. Wenger
Heather K. West
Douglas J. Wisneiski

 

Phi Beta Kappa English Majors

2009

2008

2007

2006

Megan M. Adzima
Monica K. Borgone
Allison Ford
Charles Girard
Aimee M. Laussen
Nadia E. Nauss
Jessica L. Remo
Jillian C. Wohlfarth
Emily M. Trovato

2005

Jennifer Heger
Jacqueline Lebowitz
Juliet Mazer-Schmidt

2004

Cecelia Barr
Marc Napolitano
Matthew O’Malley
Krista Pietrangelo