Student Bios

Jonah Davis attended undergrad at Amherst College and studied English there, writing a critical thesis on the poetry of Frank O’Hara and how O’Hara’s speaker uses the concepts of space and time to draw the reader into a kind of personal relationship. He has worked at the Office of Senator Cory Booker as an intern, at Harper’s Magazine as the art intern (where he selected contemporary artwork that would be published in the next issue of the Magazine), and he currently works at Duff Painting, LLC . He's interested in studying Early Modern poetry at Villanova, with an emphasis on John Milton and his work, specifically Paradise Lost . His main interests outside academics are sports; He's an avid New Jersey Devils fan and also follows the Phillies and Eagles. Hockey is his main interest, but so is baseball. In his free time he likes reading in his favorite coffee shops around his home of Mount Laurel, NJ, and he also plays soccer.  

Deidra Cali recently graduated magna cum laude from Misericordia University (Dallas, PA) with a BA in English and a minor in psychology. Her favorite areas of study are 19th and 20th century American literature, which she hopes to continue to focus on while at Villanova. Other primary interests include explorations of gender, feminism, and queerness in literature. Her senior thesis—centered around the newfound genre of dark academia and how gender, feminism, and queerness entwined in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and M.L. Rio’s If We Were Villains —acted as a perfect combination of her many literature loves. In her time at Misericordia, she was a head tutor at the university’s Writing Center, where she was able to put her love for editing into practice, as she thoroughly enjoyed editing papers from various disciplines. As an avid and amateur poet, she was also involved with Misericordia’s annual journal, Instress , an arts journal that publishes poetry and other art mediums from M...

In the spring of 2021, Ethan Shea graduated summa cum laude from Fordham University with a B.A. in English and Film after completing a double major in both subjects. Ethan’s broad interest in storytelling led him to the interdisciplinary field of adaptation studies, where he conducted research on the process of adapting literature to the screen in the midst of ever-changing social and cultural contexts. His background in classical piano performance continues to inform his studies, as stories told through music showed Ethan at a young age how all forms of art have symbiotic relationships with each other. During his time at Fordham University, Ethan was a Resident Assistant (RA) for first-year residents. As an RA, he enjoyed hosting Super Smash Bros . tournaments and The Bachelor watch parties. In his free time, Ethan enjoys long-distance running, and he is currently training for the 2021 Philadelphia Marathon. Before moving to Villanova, Ethan was a key holder at New York Running Com...

The first of his family to attend college, Alex Matkowsky graduated summa cum laude with his BA in English from Rowan University in 2020. He was humbled to have been asked to serve as research assistant to the department’s senior English professor Dr. Cindy Vitto in his final semester. Working alongside her, he applied an analytical rendition of Caroline Levine’s New Formalism to Chaucer’s “Man of Law’s Tale” to evaluate hierarchical significances. An avid fan of British Medievalism, Alex’s research interests include the literary form/content of Old English texts and their influence on Early Medieval ideologies, Marie de France, and more. Alex is also passionate about educating others, serving a semester and the subsequent year as an intern at the nonprofit Hopeworks Camden. What began as a for-credit internship developed into enthusiastic volunteerism; he constructed and managed various academic games in the dorm referred to as “The CRIB” and tutored young adults struggling with wr...