Course Schedules

Registration Info and Updates

Registration opens today, 3/20. Below are a few registration notes. This list will be updated as necessary during the registration window:

  • UPDATE: 506 History of Poetic Forms is now active on the summer schedule. The summer ENGL 506 History of Poetic Forms course is not appearing on the schedule. That is an error and will be fixed today, asap, so expect 506 to appear on the schedule soon.
  • ENGL 500 is permit locked per the information shared in this earlier post. In order to receive a permit to register for the 500 course, you must (1) be on track to complete your MA degree prior to fall 2024, and (2) receive a permit from the program director by contacting cloots@mercy.edu.
  • ENGL 599 Master’s Thesis doesn’t appear on the schedule, since the way you register for the tutorial is unique. Consult this post for instructions and guidance for getting into a 599. After reading that post, contact cloots@mercy.edu with any further questions.
  • Summer registration has been brisk right from the start (one class is already full with registration having been opened for just two hours). The 506 course will appear soon to provide more options. Depending on demand, we might schedule another course. The way students can signal whether or not another course is needed is by getting on the waitlist for full courses. If those waitlists climb to the point where we can see that a lot of students are waiting for seats, then another course will appear. If those waitlists don’t fill, then that signals to us that the existing schedule is adequate and has absorbed the expected amount of summer students.
Annual Grad Student Symposium

2023 GRADUATE ENGLISH SYMPOSIUM; LIVE ONLINE SATURDAY APRIL 29; CFP DEADLINE APRIL 8

On Saturday April 29 the MA program will be hosting its annual “Writing Image Text” or “W.I.T.” Graduate English Symposium. The event will be held live online through Zoom. We will begin at noon, eastern time. The event will likely run for three hours, or so, but the end-time will only come into focus once we know how many MA students will be presenting.

This call for papers (CFP) is limited to current students in the program. Active students who want to attend but not present, as well as alumni, prospective students, faculty, family, guests, etc., are all very welcome and encouraged to attend as audience members. The deadline for responding to this CFP and declaring as a presenter is the end of Saturday, April 8.

The symposium is a casual mini-conference at which active MA English students can read aloud a scholarly or creative work. A paper that you’ve written for any of your MA courses would do just fine. Full instructions and guidance for presenting will be shared with presenters after April 8. The symposium is also a community event at which you might see/meet fellow grad students, program professors, alumni, and others in the MA community.

Graduate students and professional scholars often attend and read at local, regional, national, and international conferences, so this symposium provides a friendly small-scale introduction to the conference experience. And for anyone who reads a paper, it becomes a line-item that you can list under the scholarship section on your CV (click here to read more about the CV).

Anyone planning to attend this year’s WIT symposium, as presenter or audience member, please let me know by sending an email no later than the end of Saturday, April 8, to cloots@mercy.edu. For all emails please use the subject line: WIT Symposium 2023. Presenters please also, in your email, let me know the title of the work you will present. I need this info in order to appropriately organize the event and create the program. I need non-presenters to RSVP as well so that I know everyone to whom I will need to send Zoom login info before 4/29.

You can read about some of our previous symposiums on the blog here, and here, and here, and here. On behalf of the MA faculty: we hope to see you all there! Please contact cloots@mercy.edu if you have any questions about any of this.

Course Schedules

Summer and Fall 2023 Schedules

UPDATE: General registration for summer and fall is currently set to begin on March 20 at 9am eastern.

Update 3/10: Change to summer schedule: ENGL 515 Literacy & Cultural Diversity is replaced with ENGL 506 History of Poetic Forms.

Update 3/1: The fall English 515 course description has been updated.

Update 2/28: The fall English 515 Latin American Lit description has been updated with more specific info about the live zoom component.

Update 2/24: students can take multiple instances of courses numbered 514, 515, 540, and 560, as long as the courses running by those numbers are different. So for example you could take ENGL 540 Ulysses and ENGL 540 Fairy Tales because these are two different courses.

Update 2/21: to learn about how to enroll in an ENGL 599 master’s thesis tutorial, which every student must take during their final semester in the program, click here.

Summer and fall 2023 registration will open soon. We’re running three graduate English courses this summer and six in the fall (many students don’t take courses over the summer, which is one reason why summer schedules are always smaller than fall and spring schedules). Each course will have 15 seats, so students interested in taking any of these courses should be online as soon as registration opens to claim seats in your preferred courses.

Please note that if you’re using any of the dubious “schedule planning” tools recently launched in Connect, courses running by the numbers 514, 515, 540, and 560 won’t show up there by the unique titles shown below or listed in Connect itself. They’ll instead show up with generic titles such as “topics in British Literature” or some such thing. Ignore those generic titles, as they don’t necessarily bespeak the nature of the course actually running by that number. Use the numbers, titles, and descriptions below as your guide.

The descriptions below are subject to change.

SUMMER 2023

  • ENGL 506 – History of Poetic Forms (Dr. Kilpatrick)

The course will study the major forms and conventions of poetry that have developed from classical models to the present. Wherever possible, particular poems from different historical contexts will be compared and analyzed to demonstrate how these forms and conventions have developed and been adapted to specific personal, ideological, or cultural pressures. (Fulfills the Writing & Literary Forms requirement or an elective.)

  • ENGL 540 – Fairy Tales (Dr. Boria Sax)

This course looks at the discovery, history, intellectual interpretation, and literary adaption of fairy tales. Such tales have been variously viewed as, among other things, a font of primeval wisdom, a guide to growing up, or a response to the stresses of modernity; and students will consider such views while exploring what else fairy tales might be, and why else fairy tales might exist. The semester will begin with a study of classic collections of fairy tales such as those of Perrault and Grimm; will examine permutations of fairy tales over time; and will conclude with a discussion of the continuing popularity of fairy tales in contemporary films such as Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Universal Studios’ Shrek. (Fulfills an elective by default. Can fulfill a Literature Group 2 requirement upon request.)

  • ENGL 560 – Murder, Mystery & Suspense (Dr. Sean Dugan)

The genre of the murder-mystery novel is often viewed as “escapist “or “diversionary,” but in addition to it being entertaining, for many, the genre rather offers insights into societal values and attitudes including racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. This course will trace the development of the murder-mystery genre from the 19th century to present-day, with a focus on, among many other things, the question of why stories of this genre are so interesting to so many people. (Fulfills either a Literature Group 1 requirement or an elective.)

FALL 2023

  • ENGL 500 – Theory & Practice of Lit Criticism (Dr. David Kilpatrick)

An introduction to some of the major movements and figures of the theory of criticism. The question “what is literature?” is a primary concern of this course. Such an inquiry necessarily engages other, closely affiliated signifiers such as work/text, writing, reading, interpretation, and signification itself. After brief encounters with ancient antecedents and seminal moderns, influential contemporary approaches to the question concerning literature and its cultural significance are engaged. An assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of current trends in the practice of literary criticism, and their theoretical groundwork, is the ultimate objective of this course.

NOTE: All students must complete ENGL 500. The course runs once each fall semester, so if you’re aiming to graduate at the end of fall 2023, spring 2024, or summer 2024 and have not yet completed 500, you must enroll in this course for fall 2023. The next instance of the course will be fall 2024. For this reason this course is registration-locked and requires a permit from the Program Director. Anyone not on pace to graduate in the semesters noted above can request a permit but will only be given one if seats remain after everyone who must have the course during this fall 2024 instance gets a seat. All students who need or want a permit for 500 should contact cloots@mercy.edu to request one.

  • ENGL 507 – Narrative Strategies in the Novel (Dr. David Fritz)

This course studies the novel and various narrative methods used in the novel over the centuries and across the British and American traditions. 3 credits. (Fulfills either the Writing & Literary Forms field requirement or an elective.)

  • ENGL 515 – Latin American Literature (Dr. Celia Reissig-Vasile)

*THIS 515 CLASS INCLUDES A REQUIRED WEEKLY LIVE ZOOM SESSION ON THURSDAY NIGHTS, 7:00-8:20pm EASTERN*

Our theme this semester will be Protest and Resistance in Latin American Literature. Literature in Latin America has long been a vehicle for explorations of interpretations of social history and cultural identity. Latin American literature has gained international respect for its ability to present social criticism through works of imaginative creation. The Latin American writer uses language to engage readers in the polemics and complexities of the Latin American experience; literature in Latin America is thus not just art, it is also social commentary. In this course we will examine a variety of mediums of protest and resistance in Latin American literature. We will examine texts by the Mexican writer Nellie Campobello, the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, the Argentine writer Luisa Valenzuela, and the Cuban filmmaker Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. We will also focus on examining the relationships between aesthetics, politics, and history. (Fulfills an elective by default, but can fulfill a Literature Group 1 requirement upon request.)

*NOTE: In response to a significant segment of our students indicating that they wanted online-zoom options on the schedule, we are running this Latin American Lit course “hybrid” which means students will be required to meet for half of the weekly class-time live on zoom, and will complete the remaining portion of weekly work in the more usual asynchronous environment on Blackboard. This course is listed in Connect as running on zoom on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7pm to 8:20pm (eastern); but it will only meet on zoom on THURSDAY night each week. The scheduled Tuesday night session will not meet and will instead be met by asynchronous work throughout the week. Students who sign up for this course must be committed to attending the live Thursday zoom session each week, as you would for any class meeting weekly in a classroom.

  • ENGL 540 – Literature by Women (Dr. Miriam Gogol)

This course is an exploration of women’s writing in a variety of genres, such as story, poetry, memoir, and essay. Students will experience and analyze writings by women through a variety of different perspectives, e.g., through the lens of feminist theory, psychology, history, etc. We will as well consider some of the social and cultural forces informing the lives of the women writers we study, and will consider how these forces might intersect with and inform the literature created by women. 3 credits. (Fulfills a Literature Group 1 requirement or an elective.)

  • ENGL 545 – Literature of the Left Bank, Paris (Dr. Christopher Loots)

This course examines the diverse people, culture, and writings of the expatriate community of the Parisian Left Bank during the modernist movements of the early- and mid-twentieth century. Authors covered typically include Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Hilda Doolittle, Andre Breton, Mina Loy, Nancy Cunard, Zelda Fitzgerald, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin, among others. In the course of our studies we will consider the significance of Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare & Company bookstore and lending library, and of intellectual and artistic salons such as those of Natalie Barney and Gertrude Stein. An emphasis will be placed on studying the historical context of modernism in Paris, as well as on the cultural geography of Paris which attracted so many of the world’s great writers and artists, and gave rise to some of the most profound writings ever created. 3 credits. (Fulfills a Literature Group 2 requirement or an elective.)

  • ENGL 560 – African & Caribbean Literature (Dr. Donald Morales)

This survey course of cross-generational writers from Africa and the Caribbean will take as its focal point the theme of “Justice and Human Dignity in Africa and the African Diaspora.” The course looks at writers whose works address the idea of justice and human dignity in the domestic, political, religious and moral arenas. Some possibilities include Nobel Laureates Naguib Mafouz [Egypt], Wole Soyinka [Nigeria], V.S. Naipaul [Trinidad], J.M. Coetzee [South Africa], Nadine Gordimer [South Africa] and Derek Walcott [St Lucia]. Other options are Chimamanda Adichie [Nigeria], Jamaica Kincaid [Antigua], Edwidge Danticat [Haiti], Mariama Ba [Senegal], Tsitsi Dangaremba [Zimbabwe] and Athol Fugard [South Africa]. As a group these writers look critically at their societies, with, at times, grave consequences but nonetheless seek a just life for themselves and their fellow citizens. 3 credits. (Fulfills either a Literature Group 2 requirement or an elective.)

NOTE: Dr. Morales plans to update the readings for this course after attending and considering ideas presented at conferences this summer. So some of the authors/works listed above could be studied, but some will likely be replaced with different authors/works. The spirit of the class will remain the same as described here.

Career Advice, Student News

Waiving Your Right to Access Recommendation Letters, & Other Advice for PhD Program Applications

Some of our MA students aspire to join a subsequent program upon completing their MA degree, such as a PhD or MFA program. If you’re one of those students interested in pursuing a PhD, this blog post is for you. This will be a long one so get a cup of coffee.

Securing admission to a PhD program has always been, and is still, a very difficult thing to do. The field is highly competitive. Most programs open just a few seats each year and have hundreds of applicants (the CUNY Graduate Center, for example, opens 15 to 20 English PhD seats each year and receives four hundred applications on average; UC Berkeley opens about 10 to 15 English PhD seats each year and receives upwards of five hundred applications annually). This information isn’t meant to discourage, is rather meant to contextualize the process so that your expectations will be informed by real data. Some of our MA graduates have achieved entry into PhD programs; others have tried and have not. There are steps you can take during your MA studies to make yourself a more viable candidate for PhD programs.

This includes developing a rapport with Mercy professors who teach and publish in your area of interest and from whom you will eventually want to request a recommendation. Building a rapport can be accomplished by taking courses with those professors and making sure you’re a positive and helpful presence in the classroom, aren’t just doing the bare minimum but are striving in discussions and in your papers to go beyond the minimum required. Building rapport can also be done by treating your professors with respect in exchanges of all sorts, whether in the classroom, in email, on the phone, or otherwise.

Another step is to go beyond the classroom and engage in the other types of professional development: such as presenting papers at conferences, conventions and symposiums. This might sound daunting but it can be done rather easily by reading something you’ve written for one of your MA classes at our annual Graduate Student Symposium; the next one of which will be held later this spring on zoom. Details about that will be shared on this blog in good time. Presenting in this way is classified as “scholarship” and having any sort of scholarship listed on your curriculum vitae is practically essential for applying to PhD programs these days.

The next-level of scholarship, the most valuable form of scholarship, is publication by peer-reviewed journals or presses. But it’s extremely rare for applicants applying for PhD programs to actually have publications of this sort. Most often it’s during PhD studies that a student begins to achieve scholarly publication of this sort. Again, presenting scholarship at conferences, conventions, and symposiums is the most reasonable focus for your scholarship as an MA student.

Performing other relevant work can boost your application chances too, such as volunteering for an editorial position for the college’s annual Red Hyacinth literary journal (advertised each year on the blog). Such volunteer editorial work doesn’t have to be done at Mercy College, so be on the lookout for similar opportunities in your area, or online.

Within your classes, be sure to read everything assigned; and read as much as is possible beyond the required readings. That can mean reading the recommended readings a professor might list, or even just doing your own research each week to secure sources, primary or secondary, relevant to the required reading. You all need to secure an assortment of secondary sources when completing your papers, but doing that sort of scholarly work throughout the semester, rather than just when the papers are coming due, will both develop your research chops and increase your overall knowledge of and experience with texts and scholarship in the field.

THE APPLICATION PROCESS

Typically PhD programs will accept applications during the spring, summer and early fall of the year prior to the intended year of entry, and will have a deadline late in the fall of that prior year (so for example, if applying for fall 2024 entry, the deadline for applications will normally be fall or early winter 2023). What this means is that MA students who aspire to apply to a PhD program for fall 2024, and who are on track to complete their MA degree prior to fall 2024, should be starting to survey the scene and get their application materials together now.

Surveying the scene can include selecting what programs to apply to, reviewing the applications from those places, gathering required application materials, establishing your recommenders, and actually submitting the application. Let’s talk about these steps.

When selecting institutions to apply to, the first consideration is whether or not you’re willing to relocate. If you’re not, then don’t waste time looking into any institution beyond whatever is your commute distance. It’s rare for someone to not have to relocate to attend a PhD program, so just keep that in mind. Even today it’s difficult to find a PhD program that’s fully online because one of the primary responsibilities of a PhD program is providing its students with old-fashioned in-room teaching experience. This is why you might find a few almost-fully-online options out there, but they’ll still usually require a semester or two of residency (because that’s when they’ll put you in the classroom to teach).

Research various programs. Learn about their faculty, and particularly about the faculty teaching in the area of your interest. Review their curriculum and see if it speaks to you. Find out what financial support the program offers (some offer “full rides” to every incoming student, others might have competitive scholarship or grant opportunities for some students, others offer support only through work-study and teaching fellowships, while others offer little or no support. Of course the programs that offer the most widespread and comprehensive support are also the most sought and competitive to enter, and so might not be the most reasonable target for your application).

Consider a range of institutions; and to increase your chance of success, apply to multiple institutions. A good start is to look into state universities (University of [X] and [X] State University). Avoid the allure of applying only (or at all) to the supposedly elite/prestige institutions. Ivy league institutions, for example, might open just a few new PhD seats in a year, and might favor their own undergrads or MA students, or applicants from what they consider to be their elite “peer” institutions. Moonshot applications to such places, including to ultra-elite public institutions such as UC Berkely, have an extremely low chance of success for most applicants nationwide, and especially those not already in the pipeline of these institutions. Of course you should do what you want and feel is right, but each application costs money. Consider, always, the cost of such things. As a point of reference, in recent years Mercy College MA students have entered PhD programs at: University of Wisconsin, University of Georgia, Texas Tech, Marquette University, St. Johns University, Bowling Green State University, Nova Southeastern University, among others.

Regarding recommendation letters: establish your faculty recommenders many months before any recommendation will actually be due. One of the rudest things you can do in this regard is to approach a faculty member for a recommendation that’s due next week. Many faculty will simply say no in that situation, as they will already have a huge queue of work to which they are tending. If you’re planning to apply to programs for a 2024 start, now is the right time to be asking around and securing your recommenders. Keep in mind that in instances where you and another candidate look essentially identical on paper, your recommendation letters will likely spell the difference. You want to be sure that whomever is writing your letter has plenty of time to do so, doesn’t feel rushed, and doesn’t feel disrespected (which is how it can feel when someone asks for a letter due next week). And with that in mind, let’s talk about the point included in the title to this blog post:

When submitting your application you will be asked whether or not you waive your right to access the recommendation submitted on your behalf. Of course the choice is yours to do whatever you want, but you should strongly consider waiving your right to access. You’re not going to find any Admissions Dept. that will ever say this in writing, but institutions will generally be skeptical of recommendations submitted for someone who did not waive their right to access the recommendation. The only reason this is even an option is due to a lawsuit a few decades ago which thereafter required this to be an option. Prior to that, recommendations were by default kept confidential between the recommender and the institution. When the recommendation is kept confidential, meaning is done without the applicant monitoring the exchange, institutions know that whatever the recommender is saying is the unfiltered truth. If the right to access the recommendation is not waived, though, institutions might presume that the recommendation is skewed toward the positive due to the recommender’s knowledge that the applicant is monitoring the recommendation. It’s human nature: people tend not to say anything critical about someone if that person is standing right there, and so the possibility of the student monitoring the situation threatens to invalidate anything positive being offered by the recommender.

Your recommenders know if you refused to waive your right to access the recommendation because we get an alert informing us of this when we go to submit our recommendation.

So from the institution’s perspective, not waiving the right to access could suggest that the applicant does not trust the recommender to provide a positive recommendation, or is even hoping to influence the recommender into providing a more positive recommendation than they might have otherwise. For the exact same reasons, from the recommender’s perspective, it can be insulting when you choose not to waive your right to access the recommendation.

The irony is that you should only be asking for letters of recommendation from faculty whom you know for sure will say only wonderful things about you (and the way you secure such faculty, and know as much, is by building rapport with faculty as described above). And so there should be no question that your recommenders will be saying only wonderful things on your behalf. And so by not waiving your right to access, you risk invalidating, in the eyes of your target institution, a glowing recommendation that would have been no less glowing otherwise. And you risk alienating your recommender.

If you’re curious to see what your recommenders are saying about you, all you have to do is ask them privately to share with you a copy of their letter. Most faculty are happy to do so, especially because there are plenty of situations in the world where it will help you to have a copy of the letter in-hand anyway.

Deciding whether or not to apply to a PhD program is a big decision. If you decide that you want to apply, that’s just the beginning of an application process that takes time, patience, research, and money; and that doesn’t always result in landing a seat in a PhD program. Hopefully the information and advice above will prove useful to those in our MA program who are interested in applying to PhD programs. As a last bit of advice: speak with your 599 thesis tutorial mentor for more personal suggestions and advice regarding this process.

Course Information, Useful Program Info & Tips

Book Order Info for Spring 2023

Below you will find some info for books/materials required for your spring MA courses. This will be updated as professors finalize their courses and readings.

ENGL 505 Transformations of the Epic (Dr. Sax)

  • Boroff, Marie, trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. ISBN: 0393930254.
  • Alighieri, Dante. Inferno. Trans. Mark Musa. New York: Penguin, 2002. 0142437220.
  • Fagles, Robert, trans. The Iliad. New York: Penguin Classics, 1998. ISBN:  0140275363.
  • Harrison, Robert, trans. The Song of Roland. New York: Dover, 2002. ISBN: 0486422402.
  • Hatto, A. T., trans. The Nibelungenlied. New York: Penguin, 1965. ISBN: 0140441379.
  • Raffel, Burton, trans. Beowulf. New York: Signet, 2008. ISBN: 0451530969.
  • Sandars, N. K., trans. The Epic of Gilgamesh: An English Version with an Introduction. New York: Penguin Classics, 1960), ISBN: 014044100X.

ENGL 521 Themes & Genres of Medieval Lit (Dr. Fritz)

  • Black, Joseph, et al, eds. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Concise Volume A – Third Edition: The Medieval Period – The Renaissance and the Early Seventeenth Century – The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century. ISBN: 9781554813124

ENGL 525 Victorian Age in Literature (Dr. Dugan)

  • Braddon, Mary Elizabeth. Lady Audley’s Secret. Broadview Literary Texts, 2003.  978-1-55111-357-9.
  • Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss. Dover Thrift Editions, 20003.  978-0-486-42680-8.
  • Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. Dover Thrift Editions, 2001.  978-0-486-41920-6
  • Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 2019, 978-0-486-26688-6.

ENGL 540 Philosophy of Literature (Dr. Fisher)

  • Noël Carroll and John Gibson (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Literature, Routledge (2006). ISBN 9780367360399
  • Eileen John and Dominic McIver Lopes (eds.), Philosophy of Literature: Contemporary and Classic Readings, Wiley-Blackwell (2004). ISBN 9781405112086
  • Numerous other short readings will be provided as PDFs or links in Blackboard.

ENGL 544 Cyberpunk & Technoculture (Dr. Loots)

Required

  • Eggers, Dave. The Circle. ISBN 9780345807298.
  • Gibson, William. Neuromancer. ISBN 9780441007462.
  • Scott, Melissa. Trouble and Her Friends. ISBN 9780765328489. (But this is out of print [OOP] so a PDF will be provided in class. You can find used copies for cheap on Alibris.com, if you don’t like reading from PDFs. I use the hardcover 1994 edition but any edition will do.
  • Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. ISBN 9780553380958.
  • Numerous other shorter works will be provided as PDFs or links in Blackboard. Also note that students will be required to view a selection of relevant films and shows, and so should budget perhaps $25 for the cost of a few streaming rentals and a month of Netflix.

Recommended, not required:

  • Cadigan, Pat, ed. The Ultimate Cyberpunk. ISBN 9780743452397. (OOP, relevant selections from this will be provided in class as PDFs)
  • Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? ISBN: 9780345404473.
  • Mill, Anna, and Luke Jones. Square Eyes. ISBN 9780224097222.
  • Sterling, Bruce, ed. Mirrorshades. ISBN: 9780877958680 (OOP and expensive, but you can sometimes find fairly priced copies on Alibris)
  • For anyone who games, I recommend you play through CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 which despite what you may have heard is a brilliant game; and the many issues/bugs present during its infamous 2020 release-debacle have been fixed through patches.

ENGL 560 Black Theatre, Art, and Power in the Digital Age (Dr. Morales)

  • London, Todd, and Ben Pesner. Outrageous Fortune. ISBN-13:‎ 978-0984310906
  • Nayeri, Farah. Takedown: Art and Power in the Digital Age. ISBN-10: ‎1662600550
  • Wilson, August. King Hedley II. ISBN-13:978-1559362603

Other materials will be provided as PDFs or links online.

Faculty News, Student News, Useful Program Info & Tips

Zoom Holiday Social Hour Wrap-up

Just want take a moment here to say thank you to the students, alumni, and faculty (and the dog) who were able to attend the holiday social hour hosted by Dr. Kilpatrick this afternoon on zoom. It was a nice time, full of conversation, stories, and humor. We will have future zoom social hours in 2023, in addition to our annual symposium. Information about those events will be posted here on the blog, as they come into view.

Cheers and Happy Holidays to everyone in the graduate English community!

Faculty News, Student News

Zoom Holiday Social Hour, Friday 12/16 at 3pm eastern

This coming Friday 12/16, at 3pm eastern, Dr. Kilpatrick will be hosting a live-online holiday social hour for the graduate English community. So make a cup of coffee, or pour yourself your favorite holiday drink, and get online this Friday afternoon for some casual conversation and holiday cheer. Use the link below to attend:

https://mercy.zoom.us/j/92960654436?pwd=bFlaTkZLUTVxMXNiNW83dkJtQ2xTdz09

Zoom Meeting ID: 929 6065 4436

Passcode: 314781

Faculty News

Reminder: Dr. Dana Horton’s Zoom Event Is Today 12/8 at 2pm

Just a reminder here for our graduate community that Dr. Horton will be discussing her current book project, “‘Don’t You Fuck With My Energy’: The Occult, Intersectional Spirituality, and Religious Appropriation in Hip Hop Culture,” today (12/8) on zoom starting at 2pm.

Students and alumni are strongly encouraged to attend. In order to do so please complete the rsvp form linked here. And then at 2pm today click here to open the zoom link. In case you’re new to Zoom, know that you don’t have to actually be on camera, so you can watch the event with your camera and mic off if you prefer. Any questions contact cloots@mercy.edu.

Faculty News

Book Publication by Faculty Member Dr. Dana Horton, and Upcoming Speaking Event on Zoom

Dr. Dana Horton’s book Gender, Genre, and Race in Post-Neo-Slave Narratives is now in print. As well, Dr. Horton will be hosting an online-zoom talk regarding her next book project on Thursday December 8, at 2pm, as a part of Mercy College’s Research Salon Series. More information about both the book and the event are as follows:

Gender, Genre, and Race in Post-Neo-Slave Narratives provides an innovative conceptual framework for describing representations of slavery in twenty-first century American cultural productions. Covering a broad range of narrative forms ranging from novels like The Known World to films like 12 Years a Slave and the music of Missy Elliott, Dr. Dana Renee Horton engages with post-neo-slave narratives, a genre she defines as literary and visual texts that mesh conventions of postmodernity with the neo-slave narrative. Focusing on the characterization of black women in these texts, Dr. Horton argues that they are portrayed as commodities who commodify enslaved people, a fluid and complex characterization that is a foundational aspect of postmodern identity and emphasizes how postmodern identity restructures the conception of slave-owners.

Students and alumni are strongly encouraged to check out the book, and to attend Dr. Horton’s upcoming research discussion based on her next book project, and titled: “‘Don’t You Fuck With My Energy’: The Occult, Intersectional Spirituality, and Religious Appropriation in Hip Hop Culture.” The project uses a Black Feminist theoretical framework to analyze how rappers, such as Princess Nokia, Gangsta Boo, and La Chat, assemble a diverse array of spiritual, religious, and occult symbols to construct their rap personas. Dr. Horton argues that rappers engage in sampling, a common Hip Hop practice, as a way to construct an inclusive identity that challenges patriarchal structures; ironically, by participating in religious appropriation, these artists reinforce the structures that they are attempting to thwart. In addition to lyrical/visual analysis and rap music, Dr. Horton’s presentation will discuss what Hip Hop culture teaches us about our individual and collective spiritual practices.

The zoom event will run from 2:00 – 4:00pm on 12/8. To attend, please complete the rsvp form linked here. And then, to join the zoom meeting, click here to open the zoom link at the appropriate day and time. Any questions contact cloots@mercy.edu.

This is the director's blog for the Mercy College MA in English Literature Program. This is not the official College site. The purpose of this is to share news and other information to help MA graduate students stay current with the state of the program and navigate the MA degree. Students in the program should check here regularly to learn about upcoming registration periods, course schedules, and other news.