On Saturday, May 14th, a few MA students, alumni, family members, program faculty, and the Dean of the School of Liberal Arts gathered together at Mercy College for the 2016 Graduate English “Writing Image Text” symposium. The symposium took place in Maher Hall, the headquarters for the School of Liberal Arts on the college’s Dobbs Ferry campus. Below are a few photos from and information about the event.

The two panels of presenters: seated, l-r, Dr. Miriam Gogol, Kit Gower, and Carol Mitchell; standing, l-r, Gloria Buckley, Nicholas Cialini, and Dr. Christopher Loots.

The MA program director, Dr. Loots, opened the symposium with welcomes and remarks, and then led the first panel sharing his research on “Entropy/Negentropy in Cormac McCarthy’s Fiction.” Gloria Buckley followed with her paper on “Whitman’s Free Verse: A Lyrical Embrace Shaped by Oration, Opera, Nature or War?” Nicholas Cialini, a recent alumnus and also now adjunct faculty in English at Mercy College, concluded the first panel with his study of “Eliot, The Eagles, Dylan, The Beatles: Modernism and Rock n’ Roll.”

Following a lunch break, Dr. Gogol led the second panel with a discussion of her forthcoming book project, a collection of essays on Dreiser and his representations of women workers, for which she is the editor and a contributor (Dr. Gogol is the founder of the International Theodore Dreiser Society and a leading scholar in the field). Kit Gower followed with her study of “The Philosopher’s Dog: How Animal Characters in Children’s Literature Act as Guides for Transformation.” Carol Mitchell concluded the day’s research presentations with her paper on “Henry James’ What Maisie Knew and D.H. Lawrence’s ‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’:The Financial Morality Behind a (Literary) Childhood.”

Below, Dean Jhashi (left) watches the second panel of presenters along with Dr. Dugan and Gloria.

Below, Kit and Carol prepare for their panel to begin. Presenting CAN be fun!

All in all, it was an afternoon filled with collegiality, ideas, good conversation and laughter. All of us here in the MA program and the greater School of Liberal Arts would like to thank all of our panelists and their guests for traveling to come together for this event. We look forward to seeing some and hopefully all of you again, as well as seeing some new faces, at next year’s 2017 symposium.