Cheers and happy new year to all of our MA English Lit program students, alumni, faculty, staff (and to all of your family and friends too). On behalf of all of the faculty and staff in the MA program here at MercyU let me say: we hope that all of our students and alumni had a pleasant holiday, and we wish you all the best for 2025.

One big thing going on behind the scenes this winter is that Mercy is switching from Blackboard (BB) to Blackboard Ultra (BBU). There are many similarities between the two Learning Management Systems (LMS), but visually at least they’re significantly different. So when you log into your spring courses, it’s all going to look strikingly different than what you’ve experienced in the past. Faculty have been training to use BBU but we’ve only now gained access to our spring sections in BBU to build them. And although the spring semester starts on January 22, the BBU sections become visible to students on January 8. So, there might be some “learning moments” during the spring as your professors adapt in real-time to the new LMS; and if you look at your course prior to January 22 it might look like a bit of a mess since your professors will still be working on them, and figuring out how to make them look right, in preparation for January 22.

Below are some of the book orders for the spring courses. The MercyU bookstore will list these too but the store tends to hide the particular edition/ISBN info in hopes of forcing you to purchase books from them; but you can surely find the books for cheaper elsewhere.

510 Theory/Practice of Writing:

• No book orders/purchases required; everything will be provided as open-access texts within the BBU section.

515: Murder, Mystery, and Suspense:

• Christie, Agatha. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. William Morrow Paperbacks. ISBN: 978-0062073563.
• Hammett, Dashell. The Maltese Falcon. Vintage Crime. ISBN: 978-0679722649.
• Neeley, Barbara. Blanche on the Lam. Brash Books, LLC. ISBN: 978-1941298381.
• Grafton, Sue. A is for Alibi. St. Martin’s, 2005. ISBN: 978-0312938994.
• Highsmith, Patricia. The Talented Mr. Ripley. ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (June 17, 2008). ISBN: 978-0393332148.

540: Shakespeare:

• Greenblatt, Stephen, et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare. 3rd ed. ISBN: 978-0393264029.

560: Hemingway/Modern Cryptography:

Note that there are many editions of Hemingway’s work out there, because many of his works are now entering the public domain meaning anyone in the world can list and sell them. Scribner’s is Hemingway’s original* publishing house and so I recommend you buy Scribner’s publications, which are listed below. Any edition will do, in the end, but I’ll be reading from and referring to the Scribner’s editions.

• Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. Scribner’s. ISBN: 978-0684801469.
• —. The Garden of Eden. Scribner’s. ISBN: 978-0684804521.
• —. A Moveable Feast. Scribner’s. ISBN:  978-1439182710.
• —. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition. Scribner’s. ISBN:‎ 978-0684843322.
• —. The Sun Also Rises. Scribner’s. ISBN: 0743297334. Knopf,

Recommended but Not Required:

• Dearborn, Mary. Ernest Hemingway: A Biography. Vintage, 2018. ISBN: 978-0525563617.
• Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls. Scribner’s, 1995 reprint. ISBN: 978-0684803357.
• Lynn, Kenneth. Hemingway. Harvard UP, 1995. ISBN: 978-0674387324.

*Boni and Liveright is actually Hemingway’s original publishing house but he’s most famous for publishing through Scribner’s, and how he jumped from B&L to Scribner’s is a great story and one we’ll encounter this spring.