Registration opens today, 3/20. Below are a few registration notes. This list will be updated as necessary during the registration window:

• UPDATE: 506 History of Poetic Forms is now active on the summer schedule. The summer ENGL 506 History of Poetic Forms course is not appearing on the schedule. That is an error and will be fixed today, asap, so expect 506 to appear on the schedule soon.
• ENGL 500 is permit locked per the information shared in this earlier post. In order to receive a permit to register for the 500 course, you must (1) be on track to complete your MA degree prior to fall 2024, and (2) receive a permit from the program director by contacting cloots@mercy.edu.
• ENGL 599 Master’s Thesis doesn’t appear on the schedule, since the way you register for the tutorial is unique. Consult this post for instructions and guidance for getting into a 599. After reading that post, contact cloots@mercy.edu with any further questions.
• Summer registration has been brisk right from the start (one class is already full with registration having been opened for just two hours). The 506 course will appear soon to provide more options. Depending on demand, we might schedule another course. The way students can signal whether or not another course is needed is by getting on the waitlist for full courses. If those waitlists climb to the point where we can see that a lot of students are waiting for seats, then another course will appear. If those waitlists don’t fill, then that signals to us that the existing schedule is adequate and has absorbed the expected amount of summer students.

Update 5/2: 515 Latin American Lit is no longer a zoom course.

Update 2/24: students can take multiple instances of courses numbered 514, 515, 540, and 560, as long as the courses running by those numbers are different. So for example you could take ENGL 540 Ulysses and ENGL 540 Fairy Tales because these are two different courses.

Update 2/21: to learn about how to enroll in an ENGL 599 master’s thesis tutorial, which every student must take during their final semester in the program, click here.

Summer and fall 2023 registration will open soon. We’re running three graduate English courses this summer and six in the fall (many students don’t take courses over the summer, which is one reason why summer schedules are always smaller than fall and spring schedules). Each course will have 15 seats, so students interested in taking any of these courses should be online as soon as registration opens to claim seats in your preferred courses.

Please note that if you’re using any of the dubious “schedule planning” tools recently launched in Connect, courses running by the numbers 514, 515, 540, and 560 won’t show up there by the unique titles shown below or listed in Connect itself. They’ll instead show up with generic titles such as “topics in British Literature” or some such thing. Ignore those generic titles, as they don’t necessarily bespeak the nature of the course actually running by that number. Use the numbers, titles, and descriptions below as your guide.

The descriptions below are subject to change.

SUMMER 2023

• ENGL 506 – History of Poetic Forms (Dr. Kilpatrick)

The course will study the major forms and conventions of poetry that have developed from classical models to the present. Wherever possible, particular poems from different historical contexts will be compared and analyzed to demonstrate how these forms and conventions have developed and been adapted to specific personal, ideological, or cultural pressures. (Fulfills the Writing & Literary Forms requirement or an elective.)

• ENGL 540 – Fairy Tales (Dr. Boria Sax)

This course looks at the discovery, history, intellectual interpretation, and literary adaption of fairy tales. Such tales have been variously viewed as, among other things, a font of primeval wisdom, a guide to growing up, or a response to the stresses of modernity; and students will consider such views while exploring what else fairy tales might be, and why else fairy tales might exist. The semester will begin with a study of classic collections of fairy tales such as those of Perrault and Grimm; will examine permutations of fairy tales over time; and will conclude with a discussion of the continuing popularity of fairy tales in contemporary films such as Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Universal Studios’ Shrek. (Fulfills an elective by default. Can fulfill a Literature Group 2 requirement upon request.)

• ENGL 560 – Murder, Mystery & Suspense (Dr. Sean 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 societal values and attitudes including racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. 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 are so interesting to so many people. (Fulfills either a Literature Group 1 requirement or an elective.)

FALL 2023

• ENGL 500 – Theory & Practice of Lit Criticism (Dr. David 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.

NOTE: All students must complete ENGL 500. The course runs once each fall semester, so if you’re aiming to graduate at the end of fall 2023, spring 2024, or summer 2024 and have not yet completed 500, you must enroll in this course for fall 2023. The next instance of the course will be fall 2024. For this reason this course is registration-locked and requires a permit from the Program Director. Anyone not on pace to graduate in the semesters noted above can request a permit but will only be given one if seats remain after everyone who must have the course during this fall 2024 instance gets a seat. All students who need or want a permit for 500 should contact cloots@mercy.edu to request one.

• ENGL 507 – Narrative Strategies in the Novel (Dr. David Fritz)

This course studies the novel and various narrative methods used in the novel over the centuries and across the British and American traditions. 3 credits. (Fulfills either the Writing & Literary Forms field requirement or an elective.)

• ENGL 515 – Latin American Literature (Dr. Celia Reissig-Vasile)

*THIS 515 CLASS INCLUDES A REQUIRED WEEKLY LIVE ZOOM SESSION ON THURSDAY NIGHTS, 7:00-8:20pm EASTERN*

Our theme this semester will be Protest and Resistance in Latin American Literature. Literature in Latin America has long been a vehicle for explorations of interpretations of social history and cultural identity. Latin American literature has gained international respect for its ability to present social criticism through works of imaginative creation. The Latin American writer uses language to engage readers in the polemics and complexities of the Latin American experience; literature in Latin America is thus not just art, it is also social commentary. In this course we will examine a variety of mediums of protest and resistance in Latin American literature. We will examine texts by the Mexican writer Nellie Campobello, the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, the Argentine writer Luisa Valenzuela, and the Cuban filmmaker Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. We will also focus on examining the relationships between aesthetics, politics, and history. (Fulfills an elective by default, but can fulfill a Literature Group 1 requirement upon request.)

*NOTE: this course was scheduled as a zoom, however due to lack of enrollment it has been switched to an asynchronous online course in the usual style.

• ENGL 540 – Literature by Women (Dr. Miriam Gogol)

This course is an exploration of women’s writing in a variety of genres, such as story, poetry, memoir, and essay. Students will experience and analyze writings by women through a variety of different perspectives, e.g., through the lens of feminist theory, psychology, history, etc. We will as well consider some of the social and cultural forces informing the lives of the women writers we study, and will consider how these forces might intersect with and inform the literature created by women. 3 credits. (Fulfills a Literature Group 1 requirement or an elective.)

• ENGL 545 – Literature of the Left Bank, Paris (Dr. Christopher Loots)

This course examines the diverse people, culture, and writings of the expatriate community of the Parisian Left Bank during the modernist movements of the early- and mid-twentieth century. Authors covered typically include Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Hilda Doolittle, Andre Breton, Mina Loy, Nancy Cunard, Zelda Fitzgerald, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin, among others. In the course of our studies we will consider the significance of Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare & Company bookstore and lending library, and of intellectual and artistic salons such as those of Natalie Barney and Gertrude Stein. An emphasis will be placed on studying the historical context of modernism in Paris, as well as on the cultural geography of Paris which attracted so many of the world’s great writers and artists, and gave rise to some of the most profound writings ever created. 3 credits. (Fulfills a Literature Group 2 requirement or an elective.)

• ENGL 560 – African & Caribbean Literature (Dr. Donald Morales)

This survey course of cross-generational writers from Africa and the Caribbean will take as its focal point the theme of “Justice and Human Dignity in Africa and the African Diaspora.” The course looks at writers whose works address the idea of justice and human dignity in the domestic, political, religious and moral arenas. Some possibilities include Nobel Laureates Naguib Mafouz [Egypt], Wole Soyinka [Nigeria], V.S. Naipaul [Trinidad], J.M. Coetzee [South Africa], Nadine Gordimer [South Africa] and Derek Walcott [St Lucia]. Other options are Chimamanda Adichie [Nigeria], Jamaica Kincaid [Antigua], Edwidge Danticat [Haiti], Mariama Ba [Senegal], Tsitsi Dangaremba [Zimbabwe] and Athol Fugard [South Africa]. As a group these writers look critically at their societies, with, at times, grave consequences but nonetheless seek a just life for themselves and their fellow citizens. 3 credits. (Fulfills either a Literature Group 2 requirement or an elective.)

NOTE: Dr. Morales plans to update the readings for this course after attending and considering ideas presented at conferences this summer. So some of the authors/works listed above could be studied, but some will likely be replaced with different authors/works. The spirit of the class will remain the same as described here.