We’ve reached the end of another academic year, which means it’s symposium season, awards season, and commencement season!

This past April some of our grad students and faculty gathered on Zoom for the annual graduate student symposium. Raymond Fortunato read aloud a selection of his creative short fiction, while Nelson Orellana and Chad Teasley presented scholarship. As usual it was a collegial event at which ideas were expressed, discussions unfolded, and camaraderie was had. Presenters earned a valuable line-item to list on their curriculum vitae. The graduate faculty encourage all of our students to consider presenting creative or scholarly work at next year’s symposium, which will be held in April 2025.

Four of our grad students were recognized recently for year-end honors. The first such honor is the Graduate English Christie Bowl, named for the late Joannes Christie, who established and for many years chaired the Mercy English Program. The award is determined by the collective graduate faculty and recognizes one graduating student for consistent academic excellence and classroom performance throughout their entire time in the grad program, as well as for other contributions to Mercy and the university community, such as submissions to or editorial work on Red Hyacinth, work as a teaching assistant/learning assistant, and/or other related work and scholarship performed beyond Mercy’s perimeter.

• The winner of the 2024 Graduate English Christie Bowl is Adrianne Gunter.

Next is the Howard Canaan Thesis Award for Innovation. This award honors the late Dr. Canaan, an esteemed Shakespeare scholar at Mercy who was also a lifelong advocate of the value and power of speculative fiction, science fiction, and other genre fiction more often looked down-upon by the academic establishment. This award recognizes a thesis that does one or some of the following: approaches literary analysis in a unique, unexpected, or unusual way; reconsiders and otherwise treats with dignity genre fiction; or involves interdisciplinary studies.

• The winner of the 2024 Howard Canaan Thesis Award for Innovation is Nyasia Almestica for her thesis “Exploring the Intersections of Technology and Intimacy in Personal Relationships.”

Next is the overall Thesis of the Year award. Selecting one study to honor for this award is always extraordinarily difficult, as thesis students across the program, over the past twelve months, have produced numerous high-level and even publishable works, each of which is worthy and respectable in its own right. The one paper receiving this distinction excelled in all areas and was a standout study.

• The winner of the 2024 Thesis of the Year Award is K. Chad Teasley for his thesis “‘Better…a Sober Cannibal Than a Drunken Christian’: Herman Melville’s Literary Advocacy for Socioeconomic and Cultural Equality.”

In most years those three awards would mark the whole of the year-end honors, however this year we have an additional honor to note. Each year Mercy University hosts what’s called the “The Mavie Awards” (Mercy’s mascot is a maverick, that’s where the term “mavie” comes from) which is an event involving forty-some different awards recognizing achievement of various sorts from across the past academic year. One of the Mavie awards is for “Outstanding Graduate Student” and recognizes one student, out of the thousands of Mercy grad students, for both their academic excellence as well as participation in and efforts for the Mercy community. This year one of our own was recognized for a Mavie:

• The winner of the 2024 Mavie Award for Outstanding Graduate Student is Nelson Orellana.

It is always a strange thing to announce such distinctions as when doing so one can’t help but think of the many marvelous students and studies that are not the ones here named. It is extraordinarily difficult for faculty panels to locate any single person to honor for any of the program awards out of the many exceptional students and theses under consideration. So as we recognize these honorees let us please also recognize all members of the MA English Lit program, especially the graduating class of 2023-24, for your work and dedication.

One last program-relevant thing to mention here is that for the Mercy University School of Liberal Arts commencement ceremony, held on May 22nd, the university’s administrators selected one of our program’s own to deliver the graduate-student commencement address: Esteban Figueroa. Esteban gave a lively speech, and provided through his thoughtful and reflective words the perfect finish to the academic year. This is the second year in a row that the university has turned to the MA English Lit program for the grad-student commencement speaker. It seems the powers-that-be have figured out that MA program students have a way with words, and a skill for dramatic performance!

Here’s to each and every one one of you who completed the degree this past year. Here’s to everyone in the program still working toward your degree. Here’s to our alumni. Here’s to the faculty, and the people behind the scenes who make the university function. Here’s to your family, friends, and loved ones. Here’s to summer, and cheers to all!