MA in English Literature – News

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FORMER STUDENT PROFILES:

Punrada Saengsomboon
MA English Literature, Class of 2020

After graduating in December 2020, I began working as a Cultural Affairs Officer at a government agency in Bangkok dedicated to promoting contemporary arts in Thailand. One of the key projects I was involved in focused on facilitating collaborations between local Batik entrepreneurs and established fashion designers. The project aims to increase the capacity of local entrepreneurs to engage with external brands and to become alternative suppliers for the brands. My roles included project planning, proposal writing, drafting official correspondence documents, project implementation, and supervising publicity materials. Sometimes, I also assisted in some cultural projects with international collaborations that focused more on reviewing and analyzing communication and legal materials in English. After a few years, I transitioned to a new role as a Knowledge Management Officer at a public organization that founded a public library in Bangkok. The organization manages the library’s daily operations and provides consultancy services to partner public libraries in other provinces. My current role primarily focuses on strategizing collaborations between our organization and foreign partners to facilitate knowledge and resource exchanges.

The MA in English program equipped me with valuable skills for working in cultural promotion and education. The ability to understand complex English texts and to write well is highly valued and advantageous, especially on projects that focus on Thai and foreign collaborations.

Shana Creaney

Shana completed her undergraduate degree in English & Philosophy at Fordham University. She completed her master’s degree in Literature at City College of New York, where she stayed on as an adjunct professor of composition and ethics at the main campus and the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education. She has presented academic works at MLA, PMLA, GSLA, and PCA with a focus on global modernism and post-colonial language. She continues to teach storytelling with The Moth.

In addition to her academic pursuits Shana has worked as a book reviewer for independent publishing houses through Foreword Reviews. She is a published poet and writer. In 2023, she wrote and directed an off-Broadway play, dealing with the ethics of government access to personal privacy through dating apps, which won the David Dortort Award for Playwriting.

Shana chose not to pursue a PhD and instead used her Master’s to expand her career opportunities. She worked at Fordham University as a grant writer and project manager. Currently, she works at Cornell Tech as a research specialist supporting faculty and the larger humanities-tech driven research initiatives.

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