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Course Information

Happy New Year to our Graduate Community (And: Blackboard Ultra)

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.

Course Schedules

Spring 2025 Course Options

General registration for spring 2025 opens on October 30. It normally opens at or around 9am eastern. Priority registration, which includes veterans and active military, opens earlier. Students who know that they qualify for priority registration, or who would like to know if they do, should contact the graduate English PACT advisor Lydia Yearwood at lyearwood@mercy.edu for help arranging your priority registration. Any student in need of help with registration should contact Lydia. If anyone has any questions about any of the courses below, please contact the Program Director at cloots@mercy.edu. Note that the descriptions below might change a bit as professors work more on their courses during the fall, but these descriptions basically express the spirit of each course. Book orders will be shared later in a future blog post.

ENGL 510 Theory and Practice of Writing (Dr. Proszak)

  • In this course, students learn about how writing has been studied and theorized across writing studies and related disciplines. The course specifically focuses on cultural issues endemic to writing and how race, ethnicity, gender, and class enter into conversations on writing instruction and assessment. Students who take this course will understand how writing functions across contexts and communities, including within higher education. All course texts will be scanned or available online. Readings will likely include chapters from A Short History of Writing Instruction; Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies and chapters from texts on the open-access WAC Clearinghouse, including Situating Writing Processes; Writing Assessment, Social Justice, and the Advancement of Opportunity; Genre in a Changing World. Fulfills the Writing & Literary Forms field requirement or an elective.

ENGL 515 Murder, Mystery, and Suspense (Dr. 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 the social, cultural, and historical context from which the stories emerged. 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 have been and continue to be so interesting to so many people. 3 credits. Fulfills an elective by default but can instead fulfill a Literature Group 2 requirement upon request. Note that this last ran as ENGL 560; if a student took that instance or any earlier instance of this courses titled “Murder, Mystery, & Suspense,” they cannot take this course again.

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

  • This course is designed to cultivate students’ awareness of the themes, genres, and issues related to medieval literature and to the study of medieval literature. Students will explore the major genres of medieval literature, including epics, lays and romances. Fulfills a Literature Group 1 requirement or an elective.

ENGL 540 Shakespeare (Dr. Kilpatrick)

  • Students in this course will critically study and discuss select Shakespeare works. During the course of this study students will gain familiarity with the syntax and lexicon of Shakespeare’s language, and develop a basic understanding of the cultural and intellectual background in which Shakespeare lived, and out of which his drama emerged. Fulfills a Literature Group 1 requirement or an elective.

ENGL 560 Hemingway / Modern Cryptography (Dr. Loots)

  • This course follows Ernest Hemingway, through his writings, from his early days in Paris to his final moments in Ketchum, Idaho. Readings will include many of his major novels and short stories, and some non-fiction. By exploring Hemingway’s travels and writings we will experience through his eyes the rise of modernity; the unprecedented way that the world changed forever in the early twentieth century; and the relationship of modern literature and art to modernity. We will as well consider the interrelated effects of Hemingway’s self-engineered celebrity status—as the rugged bearded “macho man” world traveler—which coincided precisely with the rise of modern media technology, exceeded his literary fame even within his lifetime, and belied the complexity, gentleness, and queerness of the man. We will as well consider how Hemingway’s groundbreaking style exemplifies a type of modernist code, a type of literary cryptography, requiring of us delicate work to interpret/intuit/decode what secrets and subtle meanings weave through the writings of this giant of 20th-century American literature, arguably the most influential American writer of all time. Fulfills a Literature Group 2 requirement or an elective. Note that this last ran as 514; if a student took that instance or any earlier instance of this course titled “Hemingway / Modern Cryptography” they cannot take this course again.

ENGL 599 Master’s Thesis

  • 599 doesn’t actually appears on the schedule in Connect. The way to enroll in a 599 Master’s Thesis tutorial is to follow the instructions here. Students need to take 599 as one of their courses during whatever is their final semester in the program (so if spring 2025 is not your final semester in the program, then you won’t be able to enroll in a 599 tutorial in the spring). Contact cloots@mercy.edu if you have any questions about this, and/or if you need assistance establishing a thesis mentor for your 599 in spring 2025.
Student News

YEAR-END EVENTS AND HONORS: 2024 SYMPOSIUM & STUDENT AWARDS

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!

Annual Grad Student Symposium

2024 Grad English Symposium; Live Online Saturday April 27, Noon Eastern

On Saturday April 27 the MA program will be hosting its annual “Writing Image Text” or “W.I.T.” Graduate English Symposium. The event will be held on Zoom. We will begin at noon, eastern time. The length of the event will depend on how many of our grad students will present, but usually it runs for a few hours.

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 6.

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 6. 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 indicate as much by sending an email to cloots@mercy.edu no later than the end of Saturday, April 6. And please use the subject line “WIT Symposium 2024” for your email. Zoom info will be sent out after April 6 to everyone who RSVPs.

You can read about some of our previous symposiums on the blog here, and 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.

Annual Grad Student Symposium, Course Information, Course Schedules

Fall (and Summer) 2024 Course Offerings; Also, Preliminary Grad Student Symposium Info

First please note that the annual Graduate English Symposium will again this year be held on Zoom, in order to accommodate our students at a distance. The date hasn’t been finalized yet but it will likely be near the end of April, and likely on a Saturday. A post with further information and details, including the call for presenters, will be coming soon, so stay tuned to this blog for more on that.

The fall (and summer) 2024 schedules will be appearing soon in Mercy Connect. Many of our students don’t take summer courses, whereas all of our students take fall and spring courses, which is why I’m privileging fall here in my phrasing. It’s also why we offer just a few summer courses. Fall and summer registration will open for veterans on Monday, March 11. General registration will open for all students on Monday, March 18. Registration normally opens at or around 9am, eastern (it begins when the Registrar’s Office opens and they activate the reg system).

Specific book info will be coming later, and some of these descriptions will change as professors refine their courses over the months ahead.

The five fall 2024 course offerings are:

  • ENGL 500 Theory and Practice of Lit Criticism1 (Dr. 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. Fulfills the requirement for ENGL 500.

  • ENGL 505 Transformations of the Epic (Dr. Sax)

This course is based on the conception of the epic as an encyclopedic narrative of substantial length featuring a central figure who reflects the values of a particular culture. It will proceed chronologically, studying the taxonomy and transformations of the epic, from its earliest Classical manifestations, through its emergence in Medieval and Renaissance texts, to its incorporation after the Renaissance into modern writing. Fulfills the Writing & Literary Forms requirement or an elective.

  • ENGL 525 Victorian Age in Literature (Dr. Dugan)

If one were asked to define the timeline of Victorian literature, one might be hard-pressed to do so. As literary genres are fluid, it is hard to determine when the Romantic Period ends and the Victorian Period begins; and when the Victorian Period ends and Modernism begins. Whatever the dates, a defining characteristic of Victorian England would be change, change matched with a belief in progress: societal, religious, economic, and artistic. While some benefited from these changes, others did not. The semester we will look closely, through Victorian literature, at issues that challenge the notions of change and progress, notably the role of women, industrialism, gender roles, and poverty as shown in fiction, poetry, and drama of the Victorian age. Fulfills a Literature Group 1 requirement or an elective.

  • ENGL 543 American Renaissance (Dr. Loots)

This course will study representative American writings from “The American Renaissance,” a period during the mid-nineteenth century (roughly 1832 to 1865) which saw the rise of the first truly non-Colonial, non-Revolutionary body of national literature; a literature which no longer concerned itself with European precedent, engagement, or approval. When F.O. Matthiessen coined the term “The American Renaissance” in 1941 he did so in light of five monumental American works by five different writers, all produced within five years (1850-55): Emerson (Representative Men), Thoreau (Walden), Melville (Moby Dick), Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter), and Whitman (Leaves of Grass). Since Matthiessen’s time the notion of an American Renaissance has expanded to encompass a greater diversity of representative works, writers, and perspectives from this era. In this course we’ll study selections from across the American Renaissance, most likely engaging works by: Harriett Jacobs; Frederick Douglass; Harriet Beecher Stowe; Frances Harper; Sojourner Truth; Margaret Fuller; Sara Willis (Fanny Fern); as well as Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman and Melville.  Fulfills a Literature Group 2 requirement or works as an elective.

  • ENGL 560 Tilting at Windmills: Riding with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza though 16th century Spain2 (Dr. Reissig-Vasile) [Note: if you use the Mercy schedule-planning tool, the title for 560 will show as “Topics in American Literature.” Ignore that title, it’s just a generic place-holder title in the planning tool. The real title is the one in Mercy Connect, Tilting at Windows]

It is often said that the long and tangled history of the modern novel begins in Europe, and it begins with Cervantes.  Through a close reading and analysis of Cervantes’ literary masterpiece, Don Quixote de la Mancha (which many readers, including many authors, consider to be among the greatest works ever written), we will explore this issue and many others.  The course will focus on questions of literary, linguistic, cultural, and historical heterogeneity in Don Quixote. We will seek to understand why so many celebrate Cervantes for teaching us “to comprehend the world as a question.”  We will explore the polemics of 16th century Spain and how Cervantes used Don Quixote to raise ethical issues relevant to his time. Fulfills a Literature Group 2 requirement or works as an elective.

And for those nearing the end of the program, note that ENGL 599 Master’s Thesis is a one-on-one tutorial that needs to be taken during your final semester. You don’t enroll in 599 as you do a normal class. Check out this page on the blog for more about 599 and how you enroll in it.

The two summer 2024 course offerings are:

  • 509 Perspectives on the Essay (Dr. Keckler)

[Updated description 2/26] The course will study of the essay as a distinct literary genre; its characteristics, types, and structures; its history; and its role in reflecting authorial consciousness. This course will focus in particular on the personal essay and sub-genres such as nature writing, cultural criticism, travel writing, and academic-personal essay hybrid forms. Fulfills the Writing & Literary Forms requirement or an elective; can work in other ways, as needed, for the degree, by request.

  • 540 Monsters2 (Dr. Dugan)

In this course we will read classic and contemporary literary works to explore notions of monsters and monstrosities from the perspectives of the monster and the creator. Historical, societal, political, and cultural issues will be explored and addressed. Types of monsters and monstrosities will also be considered: e.g. human, beast, and scientific. Fulfills a Literature Group 1 field requirement or an elective by default; can work in other ways, as needed, for the degree, by request.

1 ENGL 500 runs once a year, in the fall, and because it’s a requirement for the MA degree seats are locked and reserved for students who are on track to graduate prior to fall 2025. Students who have not taken it already, and are on track to graduate prior to fall 2025, can get a seat by contacting the program director at cloots@mercy.edu. Students who are on track to graduate in fall 2025 or later can still contact the program director requesting a seat in the fall 2024 instance, but will be prioritized behind students who must have the course this fall to graduate on time.

2 ENGL 540 and 560 are numbers by which we run a variety of new or experimental coursework. Students can take multiple instances of ENGL 540 and 560, as long as they’re not taking the same course with the same title twice. So for example a student who took 540 Fairy Tales last summer can take 540 Monsters this summer because those are different courses, even though they both use the 540 number; likewise, students who took 560 African and Caribbean Lit last fall can take 560 Tilting at Windmills this fall.

Course Information

Book Info for Spring 2024

Below are some details about book orders for spring 2024 courses. This is a work in progress, as professors are still considering materials for the spring. The list will be updated throughout December and January as further details are provided by professors. In many cases professors will be providing materials within the course in the form of PDFs or links, so the book listings below won’t always tell the whole story of what materials/texts students will encounter during the semester.

ENGL 508 – History of Drama in English (Dr. Kilpatrick)

  • Gainor, J. Ellen, et al, eds. The Norton Anthology of Drama, Third Edition (Two-Volume Set). Norton, 2017. ISBN: 9780393283495. [Please note, this includes Vol 1: ISBN: 9780393283471 and Vol 2: ISBN: 9780393283488.]

ENGL 515 Hispanic and Latino Literature (Dr. Reissig-Vasile)

  • Garcia, Cristina.  Dreaming in Cuban . Ballantine Books, 1993. ISBN: 978-0345381439.

ENGL 524 From Reason to Imagination (Dr. Sax)

  • Bacon, Frances. Francis Bacon: The Major Works (Oxford World’s Classics). Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN: 0199540799.
  • Blanning, Tim. The Romantic Revolution: A History. Modern Library Chronicles, 2010. ISBN: 9780812980141. 
  • Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Mass Market Paperback, 2006. ISBN: 0765356155.  
  • Hoffmann, E. T. A. Tales of Hoffmann, trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Penguin, 1982. ISBN: 9780140443929.
  • Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Dover, 1994. ISBN: 0486282112.
  • Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. 2 ed. Penguin, 2012. ISBN: 0140137440.

ENGL 541 Search for Identity in American Lit (Dr. Loots)

The books listed below are recommended but not necessarily required. It will be possible to navigate the semester without purchasing these specific books by locating versions of the assigned readings online or in a library. And I will provide PDFs of some of the shorter readings from the Norton, as much as I am allowed. Still, if you’re focusing on American Lit during your MA studies, or want to be on the exact same page as I, or just want to build up your library with quality books, I highly recommend purchasing these:

  • Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Amistad 75th Anniversary edition, 2006. ISBN: 978-0061120060.
  • Levine, Robert, et al., editors. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter 10th Edition (Two-Volume Set). W.W. Norton, 2022. ISBN: 978-0393884449.

ENGL 546 Working Women in the USA: 1865 to Present (Dr. Gogol)

  • Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie. Vintage Classics, 2021. ISBN: 9780593314883.
  • Oates, Joyce Carol. Marya: A Life. EP Dutton, 1986. ISBN: 9780062269218.
Red Hyacinth Journal

Creative Writers and Artists Take Note! 2024 issue of Red Hyacinth Is Now Accepting Submissions

The Mercy University literary/arts journal Red Hyacinth is now accepting submissions of creative writing, photography, and images of other original studio arts for it’s 2024 edition. For submission guidelines and instructions, please click here. This is a great opportunity for MA students and alumni to get your creative work considered for publication, and potentially to see it in print in a perfect-bound hard-copy journal.

Course Schedules

Spring 2024 Course Schedules and Registration Info

General registration for spring 2024 is scheduled to open on Wednesday November 1. Priority registration, which in the graduate program tends to apply only to veterans, is scheduled to open a week earlier on Wednesday 10/25. These dates could change if the Registrar needs more time, but as of now, those are the dates. Registration usually opens at 9am eastern. The following five courses will be on the spring schedule. Each will begin with 14 seats, and once a course is full, students will need to pick from whatever other courses still have seats. So, if you see particular courses you hope or need to take, set an alarm!

  • ENGL 508 – History of Drama in English (Dr. Kilpatrick)

This course will study select dramatic works with an eye to the cultural and historical contexts from which those works emerged. It will use a chronological approach, exploring for example the development of drama in medieval English mystery cycles and morality plays; moving on to the emergence of secular drama in the 16th and early 17th century; proceeding to precursors and contemporaries of Shakespeare; moving onward into Restoration drama, and the development of sentimentalism; then exploring the adaptation of drama to an increasingly middle class audience in the 18th Century; and finally tracing the further development of drama through the 19th and 20th centuries. Fulfills the Writing & Literary Forms requirement or an elective.

  • ENGL 515 Hispanic and Latino Literature (Dr. Reissig-Vasile)

The terms “Hispanic” and “Latino” refer to people living in the United States who have roots in Spain, Mexico, Latin America, South America, and/or Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries. In this course we will experience the literature of various Hispanic and Latino/a authors, and through such study will explore some of the many themes, styles, and social concerns of such authors. Among other things, we will consider what these works have to say about gender, race, class, diaspora, bilingualism, violence, and community. Our readings will focus on short stories and poetry, but could also include novels. All such works will emerge from various Hispanic and Latino/a groups, including Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans and Dominican Americans. Fulfills an elective by default but can work as a Literature Group 1 requirement if needed, upon request.

Note that students who are taking ENGL 515 Latin American Literature this fall can take this ENGL 515 course in the spring because although the titles look similar, they are in fact two different courses; read the notes at the bottom of this blog post for more on this.

  • ENGL 524 From Reason to Imagination (Dr. Sax)

This course studies a range of literature emerging first during the Enlightenment, and then during the subsequent Romantic era, with attention to Neoclassicism, among other things. Students will explore and consider some of the tensions between and informing these different eras and literary movements, will consider ways that these eras and movements relate to one another, including how the Romantic era and its emphasis on imagination emerged to some degree as a response to the Enlightenment and its emphasis on reason. As such, particular attention will be paid to the historical contexts from which the literature of these eras emerged, and to the role of reason and imagination in literature, history, and life. Fulfills a Literature Group 1 requirement or works as an elective.

  • ENGL 541 Search for Identity in American Lit (Dr. Loots)

This course will study the search for identity, individually and collectively, as it manifests in American (United States) literature from Colonial times through the turn of the twentieth century. Attention will be paid to the rapidly changing historical/cultural contexts from which such literature emerged, as well as to different literary movements emerging in America over the eras studied (e.g. Colonial, Revolutionary, Romantic, Realist, Modern). Part of the goal of the course is to provide students with a foundation of American literature, and with an understanding of the foundations of literature in America. Another goal is to recognize just how vast and diverse the literature of America is, as well as how vast and diverse are the definitions of what it has meant, and means, to be “American.” Readings will likely include works by Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Olaudah Equiano, Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Phillis Wheatley, Philip Freneau, Poe, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Henry James, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Charles Chestnutt, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and Zora Neale Hurston. Fulfills a Literature Group 2 requirement or works as an elective.

  • ENGL 546 Working Women in the USA: 1865 to Present (Dr. Gogol)

This course will examine writings about and by working women from the post-Civil War era to the present. We will review key changes in the American work force, as well as some of the relevant social, economic, and racial factors since 1865, with attention to movements leading up to and informing the cultural and social changes happening between 1865 and today. We will use literature to help us deconstruct the definitions of “women,” “working,” and even “The United States.” We will inquire into the shifting definitions of the term “gender” and explore the differentials of power and opportunity within the word and concept. One of the course’s goals is to explore some of the contradictions and tensions involved in such an inquiry, as well as to explore the history and benchmarks of major events in the lives of women in the USA since 1865. Fulfills a Literature Group 2 requirement or works as an elective.

  • A few notes about ENGL 515 and ENGL 599:

ENGL 515 is what we call a shell number, meaning we run a variety of coursework under that same number. Students can take multiple instances of ENGL 515 as long as they’re not taking the same course with the same title twice. So for example a student could take ENGL 515 Hispanic & Latino Lit, and ENGL 515 Latin American Lit, and ENGL 515 Animals in Lit, because those are three different courses, indicated by their three different titles.

ENGL 599 Master’s Thesis is not listed on the semester schedule and students do not enroll in it in the normal way. All students need to take 599 during their final semester in the program. If spring will be your final semester, click here to read up on how you enroll in a 599 section.

Annual Director's Welcome, Useful Program Info & Tips

Student IDs and Student/Alumni Book Club

Something of an addendum here to the “welcome” post from last week.

STUDENT ID

Grad students, whether on campus or online, can and should secure student ID cards. A student ID can get you discounts at various stores, and can usually get you access to any college or university library in your area. Students at the Dobbs Ferry campus can stop in and get your ID card in Person at the Admissions office in Main Hall. Students at a distance can secure an ID card through the mail by following these instructions:

Using your @mercy.edu email account, send a photo of your face along with your full first name, last name, and ID number (your eight-digit CWID number) to pact@mercy.edu.

 Full photo guidelines are:

  • Submit a color photo of just your face taken in last 6 months
  • Have someone else take your photo – no selfies
  • Submit a high-resolution photo that is not blurry, grainy, or pixilated
  • Use a clear and unedited image of your face; do not use filters such as those commonly used on social media
  • Face the camera directly with full face in view
  • Have a neutral facial expression or a natural smile, with both eyes open
  • Use a white or off-white background

Explain in your email that you are a distance-learning graduate student in the MA English Lit program at Mercy U, and that you would like a student ID card.

STUDENT & ALUMNI BOOK CLUB (MEETS ONLINE)

Any grad students or alumni interested in joining the student-run book club, please do! The club meets online, so you can join no matter where you might be located in the world. Please contact the club’s faculty advisor, Dr. Dugan, at sdugan@mercy.edu, for information on how to join.

Annual Director's Welcome

Welcome to the 2023-24 Academic Year

On behalf of all of the Mercy University* MA in English Literature faculty: welcome, everyone in our graduate English community, to the 2023-24 academic year. I always find the start of the fall semester and the new academic year to be an exciting, fun, wonder-filled time. Each September we get to begin again our journeys together, get to begin again our explorations across the frontiers, get to once again travel through time and place through the power and artistry of writing, words, language, text, and thereby experience together something of the thrill and mystery and sublimity of all things; all while also developing particular areas of knowledge related to your specific courses of study. It is a special thing to be a part of a graduate community such as ours, to be able to begin again like this each September, together. I hope that each of you feels something of the excitement, the fun, the wonder of it all, here at the start of the fall semester and the new academic year. And I hope that each of you brings something of that feeling into your studies and your classroom discussions.

Below in this welcome post you’ll find some program info and news, along with information about support and resources available to all of our graduate students. Please read through all of this to get caught up on what’s happening and to get in view what resources are available to you.

*A footnote! Yes Mercy College is now Mercy University, as of August 22. To be a university a college needs only to have a certain amount of graduate programs, which Mercy has, so Mercy went through the process of legally switching its designation from college to university this past year.

ZOOM ORIENTATION, Q&A, AND OVERALL WELCOME TO THE SEMESTER: THURSDAY 9/7, 6PM EASTERN

Grad English students, new and continuing, interested in gathering on Zoom this Thursday 9/7 at 6pm eastern, please contact cloots@mercy.edu for the login info. All of the professors teaching your fall MA courses are scheduled to be there to introduce themselves and answer any questions, and others will be there as well to offer guidance for navigating the graduate program: e.g. Dr. Kristen Keckler, the Chair of the Department of Literature & Language; Dr. Laura Proszak who runs the English TA program; Lydia Yearwood, the current PACT mentor responsible for all grad English students; and the Dean of the School of Liberal Arts, Dr. Peter West, might be there for a few minutes to say hello. We already have about fifteen new and continuing grad students planning to attend. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend so don’t hesitate to ask for the login info if you’re curious.

GRAD STUDENT RESOURCES & SUPPORT

Each active graduate student has what’s called a PACT advisor, which is basically your staff advisor and the point-person for assisting you with issues that arise or general questions you might have. As mentioned above, the PACT advisor for every graduate English student is currently Lydia Yearwood (lyearwood@mercy.edu). Also know that as the Program Director I am the faculty advisor to every graduate English student, so you can always contact me at cloots@mercy.edu. I am here to help, always.

Student Support Services is the general office/portal where you can find info about many of the things that students normally need info about. Note that practically all of Mercy University’s support services have some online variation, and so are available for our distance learning students.

The College’s Office of Accessibility is the place to contact if you need to discuss or register any accommodations.

We also have an office of Counseling Services for those in need.

The Center for Academic Excellence and Innovation (CAEI) provides tutoring (including online tutoring) and other such assistance for those who want some help with their writing and researching. Occasionally a professor might recommend that you seek additional help with your writing, and the CAEI is the place you can get it, whether on campus or online.

Mercy has extensive online library resources. JSTOR Language & Literature, MLA International Bibliography, and Academic Search Premier are the main databases in the field of literary research, though there are many other databases available online through the library. Additionally, Mercy College has digitized versions of many scholarly books. To search the ebook selection use the advanced search option for the library catalog and under “format” select “EBook.” Then search away and check-out/download any useful books you find. For general research help and an overview of basic research methods, you might find useful this online guide that librarian Miranda Montez created specifically for the MA English program. And don’t hesitate to make use of interlibrary loan to secure any materials (such as academic journal articles, etc.) that you need but which Mercy might not have on hand. Librarians can secure materials using interlibrary loan and send scanned PDFs to students at a distance, within fair use and copyright allowance.

On this post here you’ll find important information about the incomplete “I” grade which some of you might occasionally receive. It’s critically important that students recognize that there is a time-limit past which incompletes cannot be fixed, after which all credit and tuition for the incomplete course is lost.

For those approaching their last semester, you must pay attention to your required comprehensive exam, to the instructions for how to enroll in the final 599 course, and to the application form you must complete in order to actually graduate. Also note that the format for the 599 thesis paper involves some in-house style requirements, which are explained here.

PROGRAM LEARNING OUTCOMES AND ENGL 599 MASTER’S THESIS ASSESSMENT RUBRIC

The program’s “student learning outcomes” are the big-picture things we hope you are developing throughout your time the program, and all of your courses in one way or another are geared around developing one, some, or all of those outcomes. We have a rubric keyed to those outcomes that we use when reviewing your final 599 thesis papers. You can see that rubric by clicking here. Even though we don’t apply the rubric systematically to papers written for courses prior to the 599 tutorial, it’s a good idea to look at it since more or less the things listed on the rubric are the things we’re considering when reviewing all of your papers for just about any course in the program. The rubric and the outcomes, and our 599 assessment practices, as well as the sharing of this information with students, are all requirements of our university’s accreditation.

THE SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS ANNUAL “THEME”

Each year faculty from across the entire School of Liberal Arts (SLA) vote on a “theme” for the year. The theme becomes the focus for various SLA events and activities. The SLA theme for 2023-24 is “perception.” The SLA Dean’s Office has provided the following description:

Perception is the process by which humans apprehend their surroundings and make sense of the world that they inhabit. It is a physical phenomenon that engages all five senses. But it is so much more than the sum total of sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch. As a form of consciousness, perception also carries intellectual and spiritual connotations. Nor is perception a neutral process. It can (and does) vary considerably between different people, across cultures, and over the course of an individual’s life.

You might informally keep the SLA theme of “perception” in mind when designing things like research-topics for your course papers. You might even create something based on the theme to present at the annual Graduate English Student Symposium in spring 2024. It’s not too early to start thinking about attending and presenting at the spring symposium.

ONWARD WE GO

Okay, that’s it for the welcome post! Thank you, everyone, for all of your work and effort. As always, if anyone has any questions about anything, please let me know at cloots@mercy.edu. Once again, welcome, everyone, to the 2023-24 academic year here in the Mercy College MA in English Lit program. Onward we go, together.