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Text course descriptions below:
Gateway Course Required for the Beginning Major
Engl 25000
Introduction to Literary Study
21052 sec. D Elizabeth Mazzola M, W 12:30 – 1:45pm
21051 sec. E Kedon Willis M, W 2:00 – 3:15pm
21050 sec. F Tyson Ward M, W 3:30 – 4:45pm
21110 sec. M TBA T, TH 11:00 – 12:15pm
21177 sec. P Daniel Gustafson T, TH 2:00 – 3:15pm
This course offers an introduction for beginning English majors to the practices and concepts in the study
of literature. We will think carefully about literature as a form of representation – about what literary texts mean as well as how they mean. The course will help students to develop a critical vocabulary and method for reading and writing about literature, as well as introduce them to the cultural contexts and backgrounds of various literary traditions. Our readings will explore a variety of genres and styles – short fiction, the novel, narrative poetry, lyric poetry, and forms of drama. Above all, this is a class in reading and (frequent) writing which will emphasize close reading techniques, interpretive approaches, the making of arguments, and the development of individual critical voices in order to prepare students to succeed in advanced English elective courses.
Literature Courses
200- Level courses
Please note: These 200-level courses are designed to introduce beginning students to literary history, critical approaches, and formal terminology. They typically have a minimum of 3-5 shorter assignments, a variety of in-class writing tasks, and assume no prior background in the discipline. For this reason, majors are not permitted to take more than four (4) 200-level classes.
Engl 21300
Grammar
sec. G TBA M, W 5:00 – 6:15pm
sec. S TBA T, TH 5:00 – 6:15pm
THIS COURSE WILL BE ADDED TO THE SCHEDULE LATER IN THE SPRING.
Engl 21500
Teaching Creative and Literary Works
31209 sec. M Alyssa Yankwitt T, TH 11:00 – 12:15pm
This course is designed to teach undergraduate English and Education majors and minors how to teach poetry for the Poetry Outreach Center through experiential learning. The center is housed at City College and is a non-for profit that sends trained poetry teachers (we call them mentors) to go out into public elementary, middle, and high schools, so that they can get the kind of art’s literacy education imperative for an enriched education. The course is hands-on learning. By the end of the semester, the students in this class will be shadowing seasoned mentors with the explicit goal of mentoring in a school for the spring, 2025 semester. To help prepare for this, the fundamentals of poetry will be taught, including lesson plans; working in another teachers’ classroom, administrative duties, judging responsibilities; exploration of diverse and engaging poets; and reading, writing, and editing of poetry as well. These essential tools will equip students with the necessary skills and connections to secure an internship more easily, as well as teach in after-school centers and community-based learning based programs.
Engl 26000
The Short Stories of the Americas
19306 sec. P Lyn Di Iorio T, TH 2:00 – 3:15pm
This class is both an introduction to the technical makeup of the short story and an exploration of genre tendencies in the form. In studying the technical aspects of the short story, we will consider elements such as protagonists and their desire lines; the way story conflict escalates; the importance of good endings; and the use of sensuous and precise details.
Our genre approach, on the other hand, will itself focus on two tendences. The first involves uncanny, mysterious, magical and haunted happenings. The first modern short stories by Americas-based authors (such as Hawthorne and Poe) were in this mysterious-haunted category, and we will start there. Mariana Enriquez and Carmen Maria Machado are contemporary pursuers of this tendency and we will read them too, among others. The other genre tendency is decidedly non-magical, focused on character psychology. These stories are often about outsiders. Practitioners of this form include Anton Chekhov, Ernest Hemingway, Junot Díaz, and of course we will read them and others in this category.
The main writing assignments will be essays in which you analyze stories read in class. But there will also be one or two creative writing exercises. Students who have taken creative writing classes are also encouraged to write a short story as a final project.
The short story is a poetic and beautiful form and I am excited to explore its makeup and genre tendencies with you!
Engl 27000
Queer Caribbean Writing
19305 sec. C Kedon Willis M, W 11:00 – 12:15pm
This course surveys a range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry from contemporary queer authors of Caribbean descent. As a class, we will investigate how these authors dramatize spectacles of resistance and autonomy in a region popularly imagined as homophobic. We will also examine how “queerness” is diversely imagined and actualized in the region. Along the way, students will be introduced to the major themes of Caribbean literature, as well as the basic tenets of postcolonialism. Students can expect to interact with literature from the diverse cultural regions of the Antilles, including Jamaica, Haiti, The Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Engl 27000
The New Human “Nature”: The Rise of Meritocracy, Psychology, and Materialist Medicine
19304 sec. R Keith Gandal T, TH 3:30 – 4:45pm
The 1880-1919 period in the US saw technological, scientific, demographic, and epistemological changes unprecedented in history: the conquest of age-old diseases, the mobilization of a multi-million-man army along largely meritocratic lines, and the Great Immigration from southern and eastern Europe that made the country significantly multicultural and urban. These developments fundamentally transformed the terms of human experience and identity. Modern American literature registers and dramatizes these shocking changes, and we’ll consider their representation in American works, as well as a couple of European works that were immediately imported to the US.
Tentative texts:
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
Rebecca Harding Davis, “Life in the Iron Mills”
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (excerpt)
Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Sigmund Freud, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (excerpt)
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Willa Cather, One of Ours (excerpt)
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Victor Daly, Not Only War (in Content)
Katherine Anne Porter, “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”
Engl 27013
Cross-listed with JWST 21300
Humor and Despair in Modern Jewish Fiction
19297 sec. M Amy Kratka T, TH 11:00 – 12:15pm
This course examines the literary trajectory of the American Jew from the immigrant experience to contemporary lifestyles with respect to the depth of human feeling. The fictional reading list focuses on characters that straddle both the joyful and melancholy. We will investigate character development, narrative style, and the ways in which Jewishness informs the central themes of humor and despair.
Engl 28001
Cross-listed with JWST 14000
Spirit Possession in Yiddish Literature
19249 sec. P Elazar Elhanan T, TH 2:00-3:15pm
The narrative of possession appears with astonishing regularity in Eastern European Jewish culture from the 17th century in eyewitness accounts and in folk tales. By the 20th century, the Dybbuk becomes a powerful figure for the haunted nation, a figure possessing the keys to Jewish modernity. We will investigate the rich history of narratives of possession, dybbuks, and demons in the Jewish tradition.
300- Level Courses
Please note: 300-level classes assume some background and prior experience at the 200-level. Students should complete two 200 level courses before embarking on 300 level work; however, they may register for a single 300 level course if they are still completing 200 level requirements. Generally, these classes require two shorter essays and one longer assignment or final paper involving research or reference to secondary materials.
Engl 31173
Cross-listed with JWST 12000
Culture of Resistance in New York
19251 sec. R Elazar Elhanan T, TH 3:30 – 4:45pm
This course will be an archeological expedition, seeking to unearth hidden layers of New York’s history, specifically the rich Jewish immigrant culture that was discarded and covered up by the process of acculturation. Using literature, theater, and politics we will trace the outlines of this long-gone culture and familiarize ourselves with a unique chapter of the American experience.
Engl 31722
Cross-listed with JWST 23200
Jews in Film and Fiction
19252 sec. L Amy Kratka T, TH 9:30 – 10:45am
This class explores the portrayal of Jewish characters in (mostly) post-WWII fiction and film. It discusses the depiction of Jewish identity and asks what role religion plays in these depictions. It also looks at the representation of women and men, parents and children, the importance of bearing witness to tragedy, and it investigates the way in which stories change when subjected to different media, discussing, in general, the larger questions that are posed by being Jewish in America.
Engl 31820
Immigration Literature
21003 sec. R Grazyna Drabik T, TH 3:30 – 4:45pm
The immigrant experience has been richly represented in American literature since the beginning of the
20th c. constituting a fundamental part of American cultural history. Numerous narratives, in fiction and
non-fiction, chart the dynamics, variations, and stages of the immigration experience – focused around
the ur-concept of the “American Dream” and the process of “assimilation/acculturation” by which
immigrants “become Americans,” espousing promises of a new life. However, these narratives,
especially more recent ones, also question mainstream values and representation of American identity.
These literary works broaden the canon in challenging ways.
We’ll read texts of diverse genres: a novella; a collection of short stories; two “classic” novels as well as a novel with the unusual “collective narrator”; a play; and selection of poems and literary essays. The majority of our writers are our contemporaries, who address in an open-ended, exploratory manner the leading themes of the immigration literature: clashes of culture; processes of forging new individual and communal identities; redefinition of gender roles and inter-generational relations under the impact of immigration; and conflicting loyalties shaping lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of origins. Our discussion should help us to appreciate complexity and richness of the changing landscape of multicultural America.
• Willa Cather, My Ántonia (1918).
• Mario Puzo, The Fortunate Pilgrim (novel, 1964).
• Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic (2011).
• Martyna Majok, Ironbound (2016).
• Imbolo Mbue, Behold the Dreamers (2016).
Class booklet: selection of poems, short stories and essays by Andzia Yezierska, Claude McKay,
Edwidge Danticat, Junot Díaz, Maxine Hong Kingston, et al.
Engl 35302
Shakespeare II
21001 sec. D Estha Weiner M, W 12:30 – 1:45pm
Shakespeare II is a survey of Shakespeare’s later plays, beginning with Measure For Measure, a “problem comedy,” bursting genre boundaries, as all his genres defy boundaries. We’ll continue to three of his major tragedies, Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth, and, finally, to one of his finest romances, The Tempest. The class will focus on Shakespeare’s language, on its physicality, as well as the physicality of his theatre, in light of the prevailing ideas and politics, secular and religious, in Early Modern England. We will never lose sight of his necessity to “put on a show.” We will always read the plays aloud, and students will memorize a monologue or scene of their choice to present. A variety of critical readings and movie viewings will illuminate our work: occasional in- class questions, short essays, the mid-term memorized pieces, and a final project chosen by each student, in consultation with the professor.
Engl 35422
The Global Middle Ages and its Outcomes
21000 sec. L Mark-Allan Donaldson T, TH 9:30 – 10:45am
The Middle Ages, as a conceptualized period, is often forced to fight battles of misinformation on two fronts. The first, that it was a time of significant insulation between cultures which (if they interacted at all) were mainly throwing as many swords at each other as possible or were otherwise comprised of a bunch of white people waiting around for the Enlightenment. The second, that the period has had a negligible impact on contemporary cultures and is something that should be swept under the nearest rug available. Our course will interrogate these views of the Middle Ages through the literature it produced, and the literature, film, and music which is produced about it. We will attempt to construct a more nuanced view of the medieval period. One which, while including a fair share of sword throwing, also acknowledges cross cultural interactions which were decidedly less sharp. We will also examine how the medieval informs the modern in negative and positive ways so that we can recognize why some people are still throwing swords, and why so many books have something to do with a dragon.
Engl 35603
Revolutionary Poetics
36843 sec. E Jared Fagen M W 2:00 – 3:15pm
The 19th and 20th centuries were marked by widespread social and political unrest. Yet during this period, a revolution of the mind also took place. Karl Marx envisions that the awakening of consciousness would end class struggle, and Sigmund Freud proposes that understanding unconscious thought can unlock inner desires. Both theorists share a radical awareness of oppression and a drive to expose hidden powers—our own and those which challenge us.
In this course, we will attempt to link the revolutions of modernity (sociopolitical, intellectual, and technological) with revolutions occurring simultaneously within the world of poetry (formal, linguistic, and conceptual): the democratization of poetic language; the break from traditional literary conventions; the mixing of genres and blending of different speech types; and other transgressions against the status quo. Our primary concerns will be how poetic reflection might be turned into practical action and the ways literature succeeds or fails in shaping the tenets of revolutionary thinking. Through close readings of poems, prose, manifestos, and essays—and analyses of practices in poetics, critical theory, and genre theory—we will consider how poetry can capture the fleeting quality of modern life and give expression to the urban atmospheres of poverty, alienation, terror, political corruption, and hypocrisy. Some literary forms/schools we will investigate include: Romanticism, Symbolism, Dada, Surrealism, Marxism, narrative poetry, prose poetry, vers libre/free verse, and more. Some writers we will potentially read include: Schlegel, Wordsworth, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Cendrars, Apollinaire, Marx, Freud, André Breton, Max Jacob, H. D., Mina Loy, Gertrude Stein, Leon Trotsky, Aimé Césaire, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Myung Mi Kim, Will Alexander, and others.
Low-stakes writing assignments, creative writing exercises, and a long formal essay.
Engl 36100
19th Century American Literature
Dead Bodies of American Modernity: Trauma, Terror, and Eerie Sounds
36924 sec. H TBA M W 6:30 – 7:45pm
This course establishes a metaphorical ‘police line’ around the crime scenes of 19th-century American fiction, inviting students to embark on an aesthetic investigation as literary sleuths. Is the notion of a flawless crime feasible? Edgar Allan Poe reminds us that no burial can claim perfection, Herman Melville intertwines the demise of other beings with our own existence, and Mark Twain hints at the inevitable failure of meticulously devised, rational, and scientific schemes. The traumatic deaths in these authors’ narratives leave behind a residue of inexplicable terror over the histories of logical thinking, industrial capitalism, and energy transition, resonating even in our current climate crisis.
However, this course aims to delve deeper than these analytical diagnoses by focusing on the sonic excesses of ‘irrational emotions’ experienced by ‘rational’ modern characters, which may take the form of laughter, crying, singing, playing tunes, and confession, alongside unexpected silences. How do these soundscapes hint at the hidden aspects of tragedies? What new clues can be unearthed from these vibrations of American modernity? Moreover, what implications do they hold for our future beyond the 21st century as we discern similar sounds and feelings in our present lives?
Tentative readings include, but are not limited to, Poe’s “Berenice” (1835), “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), and “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846); Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851); and Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889). For theoretical grounding, we will draw from various excerpts in trauma studies, affect theories, environmental humanities, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience.
Engl 36407
American Life Writing: Comprehending their lives and ours
21513 sec. M2 Janee Moses T, TH 11:00 – 12:15pm
This course invites students to engage the genre of life-writing through various mediums including novels, poetry, lyrics, oral history, and interviews. Throughout the semester, students will analyze and interrogate the genre and develop their life-writing projects.
Engl 36503
Energy Infrastructure, and the Worlds of Modern Literature
20998 sec. C Robert Higney M, W 11:00 – 12:15pm
Covering the 19th century to the present, this course will look at how literature deals with the non-human world: specifically, the sources of energy that power human civilization, our environment, and the forms of infrastructure like housing, food, sanitation, communication, and transit that sustain our daily lives. We often ask what literature can tell us about human beings, our histories and identities, our relationships to one another, and the social forces like race and gender that shape us and that are expressed in literary texts. Without leaving these issues behind, this class will try to approach literature and literary history from a different angle. How do literary texts make infrastructure—which we usually ignore until it breaks down—visible, and to show how it makes human life sustainable? How can literature help us rethink the relationships between the natural world and the built world, especially in the city? How do we tell stories about systems and processes that exceed any one person’s lifetime or understanding? Authors may include Pauline Hopkins, Franz Kafka, EM Forster, Jamaica Kincaid, Arundhati Roy, Namwali Serpell, and others. Short writing assignments, a midterm paper and a final research project.
Engl 36908
Digital Rhetoric
20708 sec. B Olivia Wood M, W 9:30 – 10:45am
Digital Rhetoric focuses on the design and circulation of digital artifacts in 3 primary areas: websites, social media networks, and digital content production (text, audio, images, video, etc.). In this course, students will design and write the content for a website to provide resources or information for a social movement/campaign, a hobby/area of interest, or for a creative/artistic endeavor. In other words, students will (1) produce digital content that is (2) shared through a website and (3) promoted through a social network. These pragmatic activities provide the framework for understanding rhetorical theory as it relates to digital environments, and how rhetorical theory informs the design, circulation, and attention economics of digital production.
Engl 37106
Making a Monster: Race and Monstrosity in American Film and Literature
21467 sec. P Janee Moses T, TH 2:00 – 3:15pm
How has mainstream, white audiences’ “fictitious” fear of angry black masses impacted the genres of horror film, fantasy, and science fiction? This seminar, which begins with D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, explores the making of racialized and gendered monsters in the aftermath of enslavement in the American cultural imagination through literature and film of the 19th and 20th centuries. Using the intervention of Christina Sharpe’s Monstrous Intimacies (2010) concerning the contemporary repetition of familiar and familial violence that shaped black and white life during colonial slavery. We will explore difference and otherness based on race, gender, sexuality, and power to consider the potential for the monster and the non-monster to be identified through formulations that resemble black and white subjects. The course ends with the critically acclaimed film, Get Out (2017), and the push for further conversations about the ways in which monstrosity and otherness continue to be recognizably black. Throughout the semester, students will learn to place literature and film into their corresponding historical contexts and complicate concepts of racial and national identities with attention to America’s histories of monstrous intimacies.
Engl 37109
Black Literature in Harlem
22131 sec. F Kedon Willis M, W 3:30 – 4:45pm
This course examines selected works from both American and international Black authors about Harlem from the past century. Students will read a range of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction to engage with such concepts as modernity, migration, and diaspora and to discuss Harlem’s relevance as the cultural and political center of the global Black diaspora. Possible authors may include Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, Colson Whitehead, Teju Cole, and Maisy Card.
Capstone Seminars – recommended after 24 credits in the major
These courses are strongly recommended upon completing 24 credits in the major and can only be registered with an English Advisor.
Engl 49010
The New World Seminar
20785 sec. 2NP Grazyna Drabik TU 12:30 – 2:30pm
The course is structured as a student-led discussion seminar requiring intensive reading, critical text analysis and creative exploration. Students are expected to set aside sufficient time to prepare for each session by covering assigned readings and formulating well-informed observations, questions and topics for discussion during class meetings.
Our general field of inquiry belongs to the broadly understood Immigration Literature that invites us to reflect upon such important themes as processes of forging individual and communal identities; conflicting loyalties that shape lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of origins; redefinition of gender roles and of inter-generational relations as a result of immigration; the important role of education and encounters with the Other; and relationship between language, identity, and place. However, in this seminar we focus our attention in particular on complex cultural identities of the “borderlands” and the transformative impact of “border crossings.”
Our selection of texts is unusual in the broad range of time-span covered and diversity of voices. We start with two extraordinary accounts of transformation under the impact of forced displacement and a “journey into unknown”; read a “classic” bildungsroman set in the Southwest and two powerful ethnic-based novellas; highlight the important counterpoint of the American Native perspective; and explore global dimensions of on-going changes due to the massive and prolonged displacement of millions of people. These fictional narratives and non-fiction accounts address the pain and conflicts resulting from such displacement, but also bring to attention new options and possibilities, including the complexity of bi-cultural, in-between, and trans-national identities.
Readings:
• Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa), The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (memoir, 1789).
• Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America (memoir, 1542).
• Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Última (novel, 1972).
• Tomás Rivera …y no se lo tragó la tierra/ …And the Earth Did Not Devour Him translated by Evangelina Vigil- Piñón (novella, 1992).
• Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (novella, 1989).
• Thomas King, One Good Story, That One (short stories, 1993).
• Teju Cole, Open City (novel, 2012).
Class booklet: collection of poems, short stories and essays by Gloria Anzaldúa, Francisco Jiménez, Linda Hogan, Simon Ortiz, James Baldwin, Taiye Selasi, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, et al.
Engl 49017
Modern Literature, Illness, and Medicine
20996 sec. 3FG Keith Gandal W 4:00 – 6:00pm
The meteoric rise of modern medicine, starting in the late 19th century, with its strictly “materialist” approach to health—and its separation from (what is now called) psychology—has greatly transformed the very conception of the human being. From that period until now, literature, which is of course centrally concerned with characters and human experience, has not only reflected but also contested this modern medical understanding of human illness. We will consider representations of illness and doctors—and their relation to the medical versions of these—in American works, as well as a couple of European works that were immediately imported to the US, from the 1890s to the present.
This class initiates a new project in literary studies, which will involve discussions usually outside the purview of literature courses: about the nature of the scientific method and the history of science. This is not the typical course on “Literature and Medicine,” which, even when it focuses on modern literature and medicine, does so in an ahistorical way. Standard courses might, for example, “raise questions about ethical behavior in the face of sickness” (to quote a random course description at another university) or discuss “narratives or metaphors of illness.”
But, as these phrases indicate, such courses take “sickness” as a given; in other words, it doesn’t raise questions about the ethics of the modern medical construction of sicknesses themselves. Sicknesses for which we are still seeking a cure cannot be said to be fully understood. The treatments of sicknesses that have no cure have a significant social history because our medical ideas about such sicknesses are, by necessity, at an experimental stage, which is to say, they are not scientifically proven—as only a cure is scientific proof. To take perhaps the most important example, doctors have for centuries recognized cancer, but the conception of the cause of cancer is very different today from what it was even in the late 19th century.
Warning: “Chronic” and “terminal” illness, perhaps especially cancer, autoimmune disorders, and now COVID-19 as well, is a troubling subject for many people. It can be a source of fear and post-trauma; a lot of us know people who have had cancer or a serious case of COVID or have an autoimmune disorder; many of us fear it. Fear of cancer is a serious social issue and one we will be discussing; arguably, in fact, the promotion of fear is a major tactic deployed by the medical profession in the management of cancer as well as COVID. This course, by contrast, will not promote fear of cancer or COVID, but just the opposite. However, in this class, there is no getting around discussing cancer, heart disease, other chronic illnesses, and COVID; in fact, such discussions are central to the course. We can’t shy away from issues because they are disturbing. So, if you have a problem reading or talking about chronic illness or COVID—which is understandable—you should not take this course.
Literature:
Herman Melville, excerpt from Moby Dick
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Kate Chopin, The Awakening and “The Story of an Hour”
Sigmund Freud, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (excerpt)
Willa Cather, One of Ours (excerpt)
Katherine Anne Porter, “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” (excerpt)
John O’Hara, “The Doctor’s Son”
William Burroughs, Junky (excerpt)
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (excerpt)
Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness
Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
Criticism:
Ivan Illich, “Medical Nemesis” (short essay)
Robert Aronowitz, Unnatural History: Breast Cancer and American Society (excerpt)
Engl 49036
Intersectionality in the Novels of James Baldwin
30189 sec. 1DE Gordon Thompson M 12:30 – 2:30pm
The class will explore issues of race, sexuality, and how these topics intersect as a reflection of America’s notion of the “pursuit of happiness.” We will explore how patterns in the lives of James Baldwin’s characters speak to the rights of Americans in general. We will consider how the general reader of any demographic may connect with issues raised in his works even if, at first glance, such issues may appear limited to a single social group or individual. We will explore how in his works seemingly private or narrow narrative tropes connect with larger universal themes. To do so, we will examine one of Baldwin’s plays, a short story, and three of his early novels, namely, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Another Country, and If Beale Street Could Talk.
Creative Writing Courses
Engl 22000
Introduction to Creative Writing
21042 sec. B TBA M, W 9:30 – 10:45am
21040 sec. C TBA M, W 11:00 – 12:15pm
21045 sec. E Salar Abdoh M, W 2:00 – 3:15pm
21036 sec. G TBA M, W 5:00 – 6:15pm
21034 sec. L TBA T, TH 9:30 – 10:45am
20778 sec. P Dalia Sofer T, TH 2:00 – 3:15pm
21031 sec. R TBA T, TH 3:30 – 4:45pm
While studying various forms of creative writing, emphasis will be placed on the creative process of writing while encouraging students to find their writing voice.
Engl 22003
Performance Poetry Workshop
20638 sec. C Allen Baez M, W 11:00 – 12:15pm
Performance poetry is a form of artistic expression that combines elements of poetry, storytelling, and performance. Language is active, word equals action, vocals are visible, and sound can be seen. In this workshop we will study the art of performing poetry as the poet hone’s both their creative writing and performing skills.
Engl 22100
Prerequisite: English 22000
Intermediate Creative Writing: Reading as Writers
21053 sec. F Estha Weiner M, W 3:30 – 4:45pm
Reading and Writing go together. This Intermediate Creative Writing Workshop links reading and discussing poems, short stories (fiction), and drama with improving your own writing in those three genres. You will read the texts as readers and writers, becoming more aware of the tools of each genre, as you do so. The readings should act as a catalyst/prompt for your own work. Be prepared to discuss those readings. Then comes presentation of your own first drafts in a workshop format, culminating in a final manuscript, and a required Reading Day. Workshopping will usually be in alphabetical order, to be fair. If we are able to workshop or privately meet about your final drafts, we will. Please attend readings at CCNY and throughout our five boroughs, and consider submitting your own work to college literary magazines.
21121 sec. M TBA T, TH 11:00 – 12:15pm
This intermediate creative writing workshop focuses on the continued improvement of student writing through reading and discussing models in literature. This will include poems, short stories, and novel excerpts. The emphasis of the course is on reading texts as writers, and discussion of craft, based on the work of a few published authors considered in-depth. It operates with the belief that writers must read deeply and extensively in order to hone their work.
Engl 23000
Prose Writing Workshop
21019 sec. B TBA M, W 9:30 – 10:45m
21018 sec. D TBA M, W 12:30 – 1:45pm
21016 sec. F TBA M, W 3:30 – 4:45pm
21014 sec. L TBA T, TH 9:30 – 10:45am
21013 sec. R TBA T, TH 3:30 – 4:45pm
21009 sec. S TBA T, TH 5:00 – 6:15pm
In this course the varieties of prose writing, excluding fiction, will be practiced. The class is devoted to exploring such nonfictional forms as personal essay writing, reportage, memoir and biographical writing, sketches and opinion pieces. Throughout the semester students will read exemplary works from each area of nonfiction and will also spend considerable time practicing the genre through continuous exercises given by the instructor each week. Students will also learn to revise their works, respond to their peers’ writing, and work toward one to two major papers assigned for the semester.
Engl 23007
Prose Workshop: Business Writing
20701 sec. P Pamela Stemberg TU 2:00 – 3:15pm
HYBRID ASYNCHRONOUS
In this course, tailored for students poised to enter the professional world, participants will master professional, clear, concise, and persuasive writing and spoken and visual/graphic communication. They will learn to effectively integrate Artificial Intelligence tools for enhanced communication strategies, applying these in practical business tasks such as resume writing, drafting business memos, developing grant proposals, and creating engaging presentations. Through case studies, possibly derived from introductory business courses, students will confront real-world business challenges, applying traditional and AI-enhanced methods. The course also emphasizes developing collaborative and public speaking skills through group work and presentations. Additionally, students will cultivate the art of revision and editing, leveraging instructor and peer feedback to refine their communication skills. This comprehensive approach ensures students are well-prepared for the modern business environment, equipped with communication skills and a deep understanding of how AI can enhance these skills in various business contexts.
Engl 32000
Prerequisite: English 22100
Workshop in Fiction
21002 sec. F TBA M, W 3:30 – 4:45pm
20779 sec. M Dalia Sofer T, TH 11:00 – 12:15pm
This biweekly workshop aims to support you in becoming a more astute reader and writer of fiction. It is only to be taken by those who have already completed ENGLISH 22100 OR ENGLISH 22101. In the first part of the course, we will read and discuss a range of short stories and novel excerpts, focusing on various elements of craft—including point of view, character, narrative tension, form, and language. You will also complete brief writing exercises (sometimes in class) and assignments inspired by the readings. In the second part of the course, we will critique your manuscripts—short stories or excerpts from longer works—and again we will address questions of narrative and craft. The aim of our discussions will be to support you in your writing process, spark new ideas, and help you become a better editor of your own work.
Engl 32100
Prerequisite: English 22100
Workshop in Poetry
21498 sec. S Michael Montlack T, TH 5:00 – 6:15pm
Sometimes the muses just don’t show up. Or not as often as we’d like. This workshop is designed to lure them to your door and keep them coming back—through reading contemporary poets, discussing their techniques and styles, then incorporating them in some fashion into your own poems, even if it’s just as a source of inspiration. Drafts will be workshopped and revised on a weekly basis. Topics will include Portrait, Form, Imitation, Narrative, Repetition, and Direct Address. In addition, there will be some time spent on ways to revise more bravely, going beyond line edits and actually re-seeing poems.
There will be occasional in-class writing exercises and prompts to get things started. While each assignment is meant to develop an element of craft, you will be encouraged to forge your own voice and style. One aim might be to create a foundation for a chapbook or series. By the end of the semester, five (or more) revised poems will be submitted with a process paper that reflects on what you experienced and learned while creating them—whether it’s about poetry, craft, or yourself as an artist.
Engl 32200
Drama Workshop: Your Words, Out Loud Workshop
20781 sec. E Julia Francis M, W 2:00 – 3:15pm
Are you a writer curious about performing? Are you a performer who enjoys writing? Are you a scientist who would love to sharpen your public speaking skills? In this dynamic and supportive workshop, students will write and develop original performance texts and present them at a work-in-progress showing at the end of the semester. The class will include on your feet warmups and diction exercises and strategies for managing stage fright, as we create, shape, and share our words out loud.
List of Interdisciplinary Electives that will be counted toward major requirements
Only one course offered outside of the English Department will count toward the English major requirement
ANTH 20200 Language in Cross-Cultural Perspective
ASIA 31104 Modern Japanese Literature and Films
CLSS 32100 Classical Mythology
FREN 28300 Literature of Contemporary France
ITAL 31105 Writing the Self in Italian Contemporary Literature
LALS 31147 Latinx Media Studies
MCA 31133 African Cinema: Gender and Culture
MCA 31134 African and African American Cinema: Parallel Movements
THTR 33100 Playwriting 1 Counts as creative writing class
SPAN 28100 Masterworks of Spanish Literature 1
Fall 2024 Publishing Courses
NOTE: Publishing courses are electives. They do not count toward English major/minor requirements, but only toward fulfillment of the Publishing Certificate Program (PCP), or as general electives taken individually. Publishing courses are open to students from all majors and require no prerequisites for registration. For more information, contact the PCP Director, Christina Marie Castro, via email at ccastro2@ccny.cuny.edu.
Engl 32501 – Introduction to Publishing
29761 sec. 2LM Cherise Fisher TU 9:30am – 12:00pm
29762 sec. 4ST Jennifer Baker TH 6:00 – 8:30pm*
Introduction to Publishing introduces students to various roles at publishers of trade books (books for the general consumer). The course is designed to provide an overview of the book business—from the role of the author, agent, and acquiring editor at manuscript stage; how books are made and the book-making teams (design, production, managing editorial); and how books are sold (publicity and marketing, sales, distribution). Additional aspects of book publishing to be discussed include legal areas such as copyright and DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging).
An important aspect of this course is helping students find their potential niche in book publishing should they pursue the full Publishing Certificate. The course concludes with steps to employment stressing resume preparation, introductory letters to publishers, and interview preparation. The course aims at inculcating professionalism and industry knowledge in students as they prepare for careers in book publishing.
*Reserved for non-degree students; open to undergraduate degree-seeking students with permission from the PCP Director.
Engl 32800 – Fundamentals of Copyediting & Proofreading
29763 sec. 1HJ Pamela R. Maines M 6:30 – 9:00pm
In this course, students learn the key functions of the copy editor and the proofreader in the context of the book publishing workflow, print or digital. Students will refresh their knowledge of grammar and punctuation fundamentals, as well as learn how to assess the needs of different types of manuscripts. In addition, we will cover the standards for page elements, fact checking, creating style sheets, and collaborating with others in the workflow.
Engl 32803 – Global Publishing
30027 sec. 2ST Edison García TU 5:30 – 8:00pm
Global Publishing offers a comprehensive exploration of international book export. Students delve into key aspects of book production and organizational dynamics, examining the evolving landscape of global publishing pre and post COVID-19. Through case studies and discussions, students learn how to initiate new publishing business ventures and foster collaborative efforts, with a focus on regions such as Asia, India, Europe, Australia, and Latin America. By course completion, students gain a nuanced understanding of global publishing principles, preparing them for careers in the dynamic field of international book export.
Engl 33800 – eBooks & Digital Publishing
29764 sec. 3GH Philip Rappaport W 6:00 – 8:30pm
This course delves into the transformative impact of the digital revolution on the publishing industry and reader behaviors over the past 30 years. Students will engage with industry experts through in-person talks, readings, videos, and podcasts. Topics include eBook production and design, SEO and metadata, audiobooks, digital marketing, social media strategies, and generative AI like ChatGPT. Coursework involves online discussions, written assignments exploring virtual and indie bookselling, backlist publishing, cover design, and a final group project to edit, design, and market an original eBook.
Engl 31003 – Independent Study (Publishing Internship)
Students who are near completion of the 15-credit Publishing Certificate Program are required* to register for the final three-credit independent study that represents an internship in the book publishing field and the application and interview process ahead of placement. Permission from the program Director is required for enrollment. Email the Director at ccastro2@ccny.cuny.edu with your request for approval. Once approved, contact the English Advising Office for registration.
*Requests for exceptions or substitutions for the Independent Study requirement must be made ahead of the final semester of study and approved by the program Director.