All posts by madirector

ENGL 599 Master's Thesis Tutorial (how to register for it and other useful info), Useful Program Info & Tips

Let’s talk about assessment, and how we assess your final 599 thesis paper.

Some of you in the program are already teachers or are employed in fields of education in other ways. If you are, you probably know that American education has become overrun at every level by the current trend, “assessment.” While the basic idea of assessment, the connotation you probably get from reading that word, is something everyone in education has always done–we do it when we give you a grade for any paper or class–this new type of assessment I’m talking about is something very different, very specific, and very difficult to apply to less-linear studies such as of art, music, philosophy–and literature. This new type of assessment involves a reductionist view of what education actually is–one in which students produce “data” which we can presumably “measure” against a set of “learning outcomes” and by which we can then determine whether or not you are “learning.”

That concept works great in many disciplines (math, physics, etc) but less so in others. I and many of my colleagues teaching in the humanities have a hard time seeing your insights, explications, analyses and expressions of such as “data” which can be measured against some fixed yardstick. Many of us harbor a much more complex and varied notion of what learning actually is, of what is actually taking place over the course of your literary studies (and we believe that these things will be diverse and different for each of you, are not able to be homogenized.) Well no matter what I or any of my like-minded colleagues think about it, this type of rigid assessment is something we have to do now because our accrediting body demands it. As a result, over the past year or two we faculty have had to come up with a program assessment structure, a fixed “yardstick” to use to measure whether or not you, our graduate students, are learning, in the sense that our accreditors define the term.

We’ve tried then to appease that directive while also creating a structure that respects diversity and difference, that respects the irreducible complexity and variety of literature, literary studies, learning; that respects you. First, we devised a set of “student learning outcomes” (or SLOs) which we tried to word in a way that both focus in on the things we want you to accomplish during your MA study, while remaining unfocused enough to allow for a variety of ways that you might address (and we might assess) each outcome. So here’s what we came up with as the five SLOs for the program, meaning the things that we hope you’ll all be able to demonstrate by the time you complete the program:

  1. Students will demonstrate critical thinking and interpretive skills reflecting knowledge and comprehension of important British literary texts.
  2. Students will demonstrate critical thinking and interpretive skills reflecting knowledge and comprehension of important American literary text.
  3. Students will demonstrate critical thinking and interpretive skills reflecting an awareness of theoretical trends and criticism.
  4. Students will demonstrate knowledge of some of the literary traditions, and/or cultural situations, and /or historical eras from which the literature referenced in SLO1, SLO2, and SLO3 emerged.
  5. Students will create original research topics, research primary and secondary sources on those topics using digital databases, and produce writings on those topics which demonstrate clear grammatical prose and accurate style.

Then, we had to come up with a way to measure these five SLOs against every student to determine if students are meeting these by the the end of the MA program. We created a rubric which we now use to “assess” papers written in the program’s final course, ENGL 599 Master’s Thesis Tutorial. Mentors and second readers now complete the rubric for each 599 paper at the end of each semester. We file the completed rubrics with a copy of the thesis paper. Eventually our accreditors will come around as they periodically do and when they do we’ll point to the filing cabinet as proof that program assessment is taking place. Students can ask their 599 mentors to show them the completed rubric for their 599 papers. But hopefully your mentor will have made clear whatever strengths and weaknesses your 599 paper showed during the feedback and mentoring process of the 599 tutorial. Nothing you might see on the rubric should be a surprise.

Now because this rubric will be held against every 599 thesis paper, each of you should be aware of what it looks like now, even if you’re in your first semester here. This way you can be aware of the sorts of things we’ll be looking at in the 599 paper and can work on developing these things in your courses leading up to 599. Click here to see the rubric.

 

Annual Director's Welcome

Welcome to the 2016-17 School Year

Welcome, everyone, to the 2016 – 2017 school year. I’ve broken this letter down into three parts. The first part touches upon something of what it means to be an MA literature student in the world today, and is meant to encourage you as you head off into the new school year. The second part introduces you to a special theme that we’re hoping to emphasize across all of our liberal arts programs here at Mercy College this year. The third part contains a review of some helpful resources and other practical points about graduate study to keep in mind this and every semester that you’re with us.

I.

I want to begin the year by commending all of you graduate literature students for having the conviction to pursue your goals inasmuch as they include earning the Master of Arts degree. I’ve written of this before, but it’s worth repeating that being a student of literature, which is to say a student of the humanities, which in an overarching sense is to say a student of the liberal arts, is not always an easy thing to be in our world today. Your passion and pursuits are perhaps not always understood or appreciated by those around you, sometimes not even by those closest to you. Our society has a habit of casually marginalizing the importance of the arts as a meaningful pursuit, field of study, or career. English, like most of the liberal arts, is a discipline that in our increasingly data-based and so “pragmatically-geared” society has become a soft target for those who think only in terms of practical outcomes.

We might easily provide a pragmatic rebuttal to such concerns:

  • the MA degree qualifies you to hold a full-time English professorship at the community college level, and those are pretty great teaching positions if you’re looking for a stable college-level position that tends to pay well and usually comes with solid benefits;
  • it allows you to adjunct at four-year colleges which depending on your long-term goals either (a) gives you invaluable teaching experience for when you apply to full-time positions, or (b) can be a satisfying side-job complementing another career or position one might hold elsewhere (some adjunct professors do adjunct work not as a career but as a way to enrich their lives, while earning some money in the process); or (c) can itself be a career, if you can establish yourself enough across multiple institutions that they offer you courses each year—this path though works best if you have a working partner or spouse with whom you pool your income;
  • if your goal is to try for a full-time senior college professorship, the MA degree may be and has for some of our students been the stepping stone to a PhD program;
  • the MA English degree is traditionally a degree held by those in fields such as publishing, editing, journalism, technical-writing, copy-writing, content-writing for media or other outlets, etc.;
  • finally, in a business sense, an MA can be a degree that complements another degree, such as one in management, and so “rounds out” an applicant in the eyes of those hiring for such positions.

But here’s the rub, the thing that I believe many and perhaps most MA literature students feel: the pragmatic, though it matters, is the lesser point. The greater point is that we love literature, we love words. That is where this begins. Life is just better when you’re in the flow of literature, when you’re engaging the words written by humanity’s great poets and thinkers and authors from across the centuries, across millennia—when you’re engaging them alongside others.

And so though we can respond fittingly to questions about practicality and pragmatism, let us more recognize how the impetus to enroll in graduate literary study is fueled by some wonderfully strange and relatively rare element burning in the deep core of your being. If you are here, on some level it is because you’ve felt the mystery, the power, the imperative coursing up through the literature of the past; and you want to stay close to it; you want to be a part of it. To be a graduate literary student is to be in good company with what Emerson would call “the like minded,” which bespeaks not reductionism or homogenization of difference but rather simply a shared appreciation for the wonder of the written word, and a desire to explore and explicate humanity’s writings and wisdoms alongside others who feel similarly.

II.

As some of you know, our school of liberal arts (which is one school out of five here that together constitute the greater Mercy College) welcomed a new Dean at the start of last year, Dr. Tamara Jhashi. If you’re curious to attach a visual to the name you can see her pictured here in the blog post for our spring 2016 graduate English symposium. Dr. Jhashi is a stalwart defender of the liberal arts and of the importance of the liberal arts in our lives. One thing that she has brought to our school is the idea of an annual school “theme,” not as something to which any individual or class must necessarily adhere, but rather as an inspirational idea around which some of us—if inspired to do so—might rally and to which we might together tend.

The theme this year is borders. This theme of borders was arrived at holistically through feedback among the faculty and a faculty vote, all which was organized through a committee that Dean Jhashi created.

I don’t have to tell you English grad students that whatever that word borders signifies or inspires is entirely up to each of us to define and pursue in our own way. It’s meant to be a broad and general theme, something that sparks ideas and doesn’t curtail or force them into any particular frame.

So why am I telling you this? Well for one it’s because as students in the MA program, which is housed in the school of liberal arts, you are of course students of the liberal arts. So this is your theme to pursue, if you wish and in whatever way you wish, as much as it is mine and the other faculty here and all of the students in all of the liberal arts courses running here at Mercy College, undergrad or graduate. Perhaps you can use this theme to help you focus in on a research topic for whatever class you’re in this semester. For example in my Search for Identity Course I’m going to encourage (but of course not require) students to keep the theme in mind when designing a research topic this semester.

For another thing, our Writing/Image/Text (W.I.T.) 2017 Graduate English Symposium will be on the theme of borders. Now that doesn’t mean that, if you were to come and be a part of the W.I.T symposium in the spring, that you would have to write a paper that tends to that theme—I already know that some of you are working on papers for the symposium and if that’s the case, keep on with whatever you’re doing. But we’re going to encourage you all to find some way to make your papers relate to the theme of borders. And if you’re planning on attending the W.I.T. symposium well the easiest thing to do would be to write some paper for a class over this or the next semester somehow involving the theme of borders, and then to just show up and share that paper with us at the symposium. I’ll be talking more about the symposium here on the blog in early 2017.

III.

Finally, let me collect here links to information and resources that you should all be aware of. This blog post linked here contains a rundown of resources and contact-info that Mercy College provides for its students, whether on-campus or online. This support ranges from basic student services, to mental counseling, to registering accessibility accommodations, to getting online writing and research tutoring, to our online research facilities. On this post linked here you’ll find information about the incomplete “I” grade which some of you might occasionally receive. As I explain in that post, it’s critically important that any incomplete be remedied within one year of earning it; otherwise you lose the potential course-credits and lose the money you paid for the course. 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 you must complete in order to graduate. For those hoping to enter the college teaching job market check out this post here where I introduce a variety of resources and information on that topic. If you’re going to be applying to anything in any academic field you’ll need to have your curriculum vitae (CV) polished up and also need to know the difference between a CV and a resume. I talk about that here. Finally let me link you here to a post about the waitlist feature that you may encounter when you try to register for a course with no empty seats.

Although you should all have contact with advisors in the Student Services department, I serve as faculty advisor to every student in the MA program. Just keep that in mind if you have any questions or issues with anything in the program. If you’re having issues in any particular course you should always first communicate with and work to resolve any issues with the professor of that course. But again, I am here for each and every one of you as your faculty advisor, so feel free to contact me at any time at cloots@mercy.edu if you have any questions or have something you’d like to discuss. Okay that’s it! Have a great semester, everyone,

-CL, 9/9/2016

Course Schedules

Fall Semester Begins this Wednesday, September 7

In the next few days I’ll be putting up a letter here on the blog welcoming you all to another school year and sharing some thoughts about the upcoming year. But I wanted to take a quick moment here on this Tuesday, the eve of the semester, to just remind you all that the fall semester begins on Wednesday 9/7. At some point this Wednesday your professors will unlock the Blackboard sections for your courses. One of the strengths of online learning is its asynchronicity; that is, that you are not all required to be online at any particular day or time during a weekly unit. It is still a good idea, though, to check in to your courses as early as possible during the first week of classes so to read the syllabus, see the required books, and get into whatever first week activities your professor has set up. If you have any questions about your courses after going over the initial materials posted for them, ask your professors for clarification. Of course keep in mind that I serve as faculty advisor to all students in the program so if you ever have more general questions about your coursework or the degree, or need help with something, drop me a note at cloots@mercy.edu. I check there all the time. More soon, -CL

Course Information

Reading lists for some fall 2016 courses:

I know that some of you like to get a jump on the fall course readings over the summer, so below you will find the book orders for some of the fall courses (some profs haven’t finalized their reading lists yet, and so those courses aren’t listed here). The list will be updated over the summer as necessary. Some students prefer to wait and read the selections as assigned during the semester, and that’s fine too. Even those in the latter group, though, can benefit from seeing these readings ahead of time and perhaps doing a little preliminary research into the authors and scholarship related to them. All professors will be submitting their book orders to the Mercy bookstore throughout the summer, so that’s where the official reading list for each course can be found.

ENGL 500, Theory/Criticism:

  • Leitch, Vincent B., et al, eds.  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.  ISBN: 978-0393932928.

ENGL 510, Theory/Practice of Expository Writing:

  • Miller, Susan. The Norton Book of Composition Studies. New York: W.W. Norton& Co., 2009. ISBN: 978-0-393-93135-8.
  • Oates, Joyce Carol, ed. The Best American Essays of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. ISBN: 978-0-618-155587-3.
  • Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. NY: Simon and Schuster, 2010 (Folger Library Shakespeare). ISBN: 978-0-7434-7712-3.
  • Tyson, Lois. Using Critical Theory: How to Read and Write About Literature, 2nd ed. . London: Routledge, 2011. ISBN: 9-780415-6167171.

ENGL 521, Themes & Genres of Medieval Literature:

  • The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middles Ages. Volume A. 9th Edition. ISBN: 978-0393912494.

ENGL 524, Reason/Imagination:

  • Blanning, Tim. The Romantic Revolution: A History. New York: Modern Library Chronicles, 2010. ISBN: 9780812980141.
  • Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. New York: Mass Market Paperback, 2006. ISBN: 0765356155.
  • Sax, Boria. City of Ravens: The True History of the Legendary Birds in the Tower of London. London: Overlook, 2012. ISBN: 9781590207772.
  • Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Dover, 1994. ISBN: 0486282112.
  • Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. 2 ed. New York: Penguin, 2012. ISBN: 0140137440.

ENGL 541, Search for Identity in American Lit:

  • Baym, Nina. The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Shorter Eighth Edition. Norton, 2012. ISBN: 9780393918854. [Students do not have to read from this specific text and can procure the various semester readings from other anthologies or texts, if preferred; specific readings will be shared shortly before the semester begins in the syllabus, which will appear when the Blackboard section goes live in late August.]
Annual Grad Student Symposium, Faculty News, Student News

The 2016 Graduate English Symposium

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.

001

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.”

003

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.”

002

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

004

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

005

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.

Faculty News, Student News

Writing/Image/Text Graduate English Symposium: Saturday 5/14

Writing Image Text 2016 Poster copy

Based on the responses that I received from students regarding availability and interest, on Saturday 5/14 the MA in English Literature program will be hosting a graduate English student symposium at Maher Hall on Mercy College’s Dobbs Ferry campus. A few students indicated that they could have made other dates/times, but 5/14 was the one that worked out for the majority of respondents. We have two current students and one alumnus scheduled to present a scholarly paper, and will have a few faculty sharing their scholarship as well. This will be a small, informal and friendly gathering to which all current and former students, as well as their friends and family, are invited. A catered lunch will be served compliments of the MA program. So if you’re anywhere within traveling distance that weekend and would like to come by and meet a few of the students and faculty from the program, please do (and please rsvp to cloots@mercy.edu if you plan to, so that I can get the size of the catering order correct).

Faculty News

Recent Publications of Mercy MA Faculty

Dr. Donald Morales is Professor Emeritus at Mercy College, where as a full professor he has taught courses in Caribbean, African, and African American literature. He was awarded the 2009 “Mercy College Online Teacher of the year” (awarded annually to one professor out of the hundreds who teach online at the college; the MA program has three such award-winners actively teaching in it). This month sees the publication of his latest work, “American ‘Migritude’: The Flight of Black British Artists to the United States,” which appears as a chapter in a book to be released in just a few days: Continental Shifts, Shifts in Perception: Black Cultures and Identities in Europe.

Final Cover Image to Share.jpg-1

Dr. Morales is widely published and highly-regard in his field. Some of his other many publications include: “Do Black Theater Institutions Translate into Great Drama?” in African American Review (31:4, 1997). “Post-Apartheid Theater,” in African Visions (2000). “The Pervasive Force of Music in African, Caribbean and African American Drama,” in Research in African Literature. (34:2, 2003). “Garcia Marquez in Film: His Image of Women,” in Hispanic Connection: Spanish and Spanish-American Literature in the Arts of the World (2004). “Current South African Theater: New Dilemmas” in African Diasporas: Ancestors, Migrations and Boundaries (2008). “August Wilson & Derek Walcott, a Conversation Moderated by Paul Carter Harrison,” in Black Renaissance Noire (9:2/3, 2009/2010). And “Contemporary African-American Drama: Trends in Diaspora Performance,” in Diaspora Representation and the Interweaving of Cultures (2013). Dr. Morales is currently a member of the New York Jazz Workshop and plays soprano saxophone.

Dr. Christopher Loots is currently the head of the MA program in which he teaches American literature, modernism, and modern expatriate literature. His article “‘That Inscrutable Thing’: Holography, Nonlocality, and Identity in American Romanticism” has just been published in the latest edition of Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science and Technology (24:1, 2016).

lootscovers

Other publications include “The MA of Hemingway: Interval, Absence, and Japanese Esthetics in In Our Time,” in The Hemingway Review (29:2, 2010), and “Wrinkles in Time: Tracing Joseph’s Trauma in Saul Bellow’s Dangling Man,” in Saul Bellow Journal (22:1, 2006). Research interests include interdisciplinary studies of American literature and science, and intercultural studies of American literature and Japanese religio-aesthetics. Currently he is completing a chapter for a collaborative book-project on Hemingway and Japanese aesthetics, to be published later in 2016, and is working on a study concerning entropy and negentropy in Cormac McCarthy’s fiction. Like Dr. Morales, Dr. Loots is also a winner of the “Mercy College Online Teacher of the Year Award.”

Course Information, Course Schedules

Second 500 Section Open: Those Waitlisted on First Section Must Manually Register to Be in Newly Opened Section

We have just opened a second section of ENGL 500 for the fall. There were over ten people on the waitlist for the original section. Those waitlisted people now need to go and actively register for the newly opened 500 section in order to be in it. There is no mechanism by which students on the waitlist are automatically enrolled in the new section. As two courses per-semester is the full-time load, every full-time student planning to take 500 this fall should consider taking that and one other course, so as to not be overwhelmed with reading and requirements for three courses. This may require you to drop a course in which you’re currently enrolled. Feel free to contact me for advising on this situation if you have any questions (cloots@mercy.edu).

Course Information, Course Schedules

Update regarding fall 500 and 599 courses.

After spring break, so starting in the first week of April, a second 500 section will open. Those on the waitlist will be able to enroll in this, and a few more seats will be available for others who need to take it this fall. Students seeking to enter a 599 thesis tutorial section and who have completed the procedures to get a 599 section opened (explained here, as well as in the program handbook downloadable in the left-hand menu of this blog) will start seeing this appear on their schedules early in April as well. Note that your mentor is the one who must notify me when you are ready to have your 599 section opened. There’s plenty of time to secure a 599 section for the fall so don’t panic if you don’t see it appearing on your schedule right away in April, or if you’re just discovering now the procedures for enrolling in the course. As always contact me at cloots@mercy.edu with any questions (though I will be away from email over spring break).