April 2025 - maenglish@lists.qc.cuny.edu

[EnglishMA] Fall 2025 Pre-Registration
by William Orchard 22 Apr '25

22 Apr '25

Dear MA Students, Pre-registration for Fall 2025 courses occurs on April 23, 2025. Below, I’ve pasted information about pre-registration, which I have also included as a pdf file attached to this message. Descriptions for our Fall 2025 course offerings are also attached to this message. Accelerated BA/MA students who will still be undergrads in the Fall 2025 should set up short advising appointments with me or Professor Mak before registering. Accelerated BA/ MA students who are graduating in Spring 2025 will need to wait to later in the semester to register. For these students, we must wait for the registrar to audit your graduation application and then for your formal admission into the MA program to be processed. This usually happens in early May. If a class that you are interested in closed, please contact me to be put on the class wait list. We are usually able to accommodate students on the wait lists before the semester starts. You’ll also find the course descriptions Summer 2025 course descriptions attached. You should be able to register for summer courses on CUNYFirst now. If you plan to take a class during the summer, please enroll soon so that the course isn’t cancelled for low enrollments. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us at MAEnglish(a)qc.cuny.edu<mailto:MAEnglish@qc.cuny.edu>. Best, Bill Preregistration for English MA Courses Fall 2025 Preregistration for Fall 2024 English MA courses will take place Wednesday, April 23, 2025. Matriculated MA, MAT, and MS Ed students in good academic standing (i.e., minimum average 3.0 GPA and no outstanding INCs) are eligible for and strongly encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity to sign up early for classes. Accelerated students who will still be undergraduates in Fall 2025 and are in good academic standing are also eligible to preregister for English MA courses. To register for graduate classes in the Fall 2025, accelerated students should schedule an appointment with one of the directors of graduate studies. The appointment can be in-person or over Zoom. Please carefully read the following preregistration instructions and FAQs, including a breakdown of program requirements for MA, MAT, MS Ed, and Accelerated students. Fall 2025 course descriptions are attached separately. Note: the majority of our graduate English courses in Fall 2025 will be meeting in person, with a few fully online courses (ENGL 636, 781- 01, and 781-02). If you have any questions or need advising, please email the current Directors of Graduate Studies in English—Bill Orchard (william.orchard(a)qc.cuny.edu<mailto:william.orchard@qc.cuny.edu>) and Cliff Mak (Clifford.Mak(a)qc.cuny.edu<mailto:Clifford.Mak@qc.cuny.edu>). Instructions for Preregistration via Email During the Fall 2025 preregistration day, April 23, please email MAEnglish(a)qc.cuny.edu<mailto:MAEnglish@qc.cuny.edu> with the following info: 1. Your full name 2. Your program (MA, MAT, MS Ed, or Accelerated) 3. Your 8-digit CUNY ID# 4. The courses you’d like to register for, with their 4- or 5-digit class codes (e.g., ENGL 636, code 25703) Students may preregister for up to 3 spring courses. Preregistration requests will be processed within 24 hours and in the order that they are received. You will receive a confirmation email once you’ve been registered, asking you to log onto CUNYfirst and doublecheck your schedule. Preregistration FAQs Who is eligible to preregister for English MA classes? All matriculated MA, MAT, and MS Ed students are eligible to preregister for courses as long as they have an active CUNYfirst account and are in good academic standing. If your GPA has fallen below 3.0 or if you’re carrying incompletes on your record from a previous semester, you should seek advising with one of the Directors of Graduate Studies, Bill Orchard or Cliff Mak, before trying to preregister. Accelerated English BA/MA students who will still be undergraduates in Spring 2025 can also preregister but must schedule an in-person or virtual appointment with one of the directors of graduate studies. Accelerated students who are planning to graduate with their BAs in Spring 2025 semester will not yet be able to register for fall graduate courses. Only once their BA graduation has been approved and their status in the English MA program has officially been activated on CUNYfirst can they then register for their Fall 2025 MA courses. This will likely occur in early May. Please contact the Directors of Graduate Studies with any questions or for advising. If you have any holds on your CUNYfirst account for any reason, however unwarranted, CUNYfirst will not allow you to be registered for classes. Please check your account before the start of the preregistration period and make sure that any holds have been resolved. Non-matriculated/non-degree students are not eligible to preregister and must wait to register themselves during their registration appointment period on CUNYfirst. Can I take a course with the same number twice for credit? Some courses may be repeated for credit as long as the specific course topics and texts are substantially different. This term, the classes that can be repeated for credit are: 724. ENGL 781 (Special Seminars) may also be repeated for credit, as long as the specific course topics and texts are substantially different. ENGL 636, 642, 664, 701, and 731 cannot be repeated for credit. What are my English course requirements? For MA students (30 credits): • ENGL 701 • ENGL 636 • 7 open electives (any English graduate class offered at the 600 or 700 level, excluding ENGL 751– 763, which are reserved for MFA students) • ENGL 791 (thesis essay) For Accelerated BA/MA students (up to 9 credits): • ENGL 701 • 2 electives (any English graduate class offered at the 600 or 700 level, excluding ENGL 751–763, which are reserved for MFA students) For MAT students (9 credits): • 1 pre-1900 elective • 1 open elective (any English graduate class offered at the 600 or 700 level, excluding the creative writing workshops and craft classes, ENGL 751–763, which are reserved for MFA students) • ENGL 781 For MS Ed students (15 credits): • ENGL 702 or ENGL 703 • 2 pre-1900 electives • 1 open elective (any English graduate class offered at the 600 or 700 level, excluding the creative writing workshops and craft classes, ENGL 751–763, which are reserved for MFA students) • ENGL 781 What if the class that I want is full when I pre-register? You can request to be placed on a wait list. Wait listed students will be able to register for the class when a space becomes available. In past semesters, we have been able to accommodate almost all students who are on wait lists. To be placed on a wait list, contact Bill or Cliff (not the instructor). For MAT and MS Ed students, what courses fulfill the pre-1900 requirement? In Fall 2025, English 642, 724 and 731 satisfy the pre-1900 requirement. Can I preregister for ENGL 791, the thesis course? English 791 requires additional advising and paperwork, so this is not course for which you can preregister. The Directors of Graduate Studies will announce more information about how to sign up for these courses after the preregistration period has ended. Can I pre-register for summer courses? Registration for summer classes is open. You can register on CUNYfirst for these now. We have attached the summer course descriptions to this message.

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[EnglishMA] ENGL 791 Information Session for Fall 2025 Thesis Writers
by William Orchard 21 Apr '25

21 Apr '25

We’ll be holding an information session for Fall 2025 thesis writers next Monday, 4/28, at 6:30 pm on Zoom. To register for the thesis class, there’s a procedure that involves securing an adviser and second reader and submitting a proposal. We’ll go over the process to register, talk about good strategies for approaching the thesis essay, and explain how the thesis course works. Please respond to me if you plan to attend the session, and I’ll reply with a Zoom link. Best, Bill ________________________________________ William Orchard Associate Professor Director, English MA Program Queens College/ CUNY Graduate Center

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[EnglishMA] English MA Classes/ Summer Registration
by William Orchard 06 Apr '25

06 Apr '25

Hello All, As some of you know, there was a glitch in the summer registration because the college has adopted a new bell schedule for the summer. That glitch has been fixed, and everyone who requested to pre-register for summer has been pre-registered. You’re now able to register for summer classes yourself on CUNYFirst. I have attached the course descriptions to this message and pasted them below. We will be offering two classes in the four-week session and two-classes in the second week session. (Please note that the meeting times for the classes have changed slightly from the first mailing your received about summer classes). Registration for the Fall 2025 semester will begin after Spring break. Pre-registration will occur on April 21. I’ll send along a more detailed announcement after the Registrar assigns course codes for our classes later this week. In the meantime, you can preview Fall’s offerings on our Instagram page: @qcenglishma. (If you don’t have Instagram, you can access these on web browser at: https://www.instagram.com/qcenglishma/) Please follow us, as we will post other announcements about the program and events on campus there regularly from here on out. If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to contact me or Professor Mak. Best, Bill __________________________________________ William Orchard Associate Professor Director, English MA Program Queens College/ CUNY Graduate Center SUMMER 2025 ENGLISH MA COURSE DESCRIPTIONS Session I (4-week session, June 2 to June 26) English 719. Medieval Epic Literature Online, Asynchronous Prof. Edward Currie Course Code: 6983 The epic is generally taken to be one of the oldest and most venerable genres, a literary form used by ancient cultures to represent their legendary origins and martial achievements. This course, a survey of medieval ‘epics’ (i.e., quasi-epics with epic features and pretensions) from the eighth century to the thirteenth, explores the diversity of forms and purposes that can be found in epic productions of the medieval period and the difficulty of bringing these extremely varied texts under one denominator. Although works within this genre have much in common, they are also diverse enough that it is hard to speak of them as belonging to one tradition. A heroic epic may include narrative elements—varying in number and type—derived from myth, legend, and folklore. The text may center on a single hero, or a group of warriors (e.g. a dynasty), exemplifying virtues we expect in literature of this sort, but also qualities particular to a certain culture and foreign to modern notions of ‘heroism.’ We will read texts composed in medieval England, France, Scandinavia, and Carolingian Germany; namely, Beowulf, The Song of Roland, The Saga of the Volsungs, and The Nibelungenlied. Some of our texts share the ‘same’ heroes and narrative situations, represented very differently according to the purposes of particular authors, the periods when they were composed, and the audiences for whom they were intended. The literature will be read in translation. Students will submit daily responses and write two papers: the first requires close readings of a text; the second is a research paper that involves engagement with scholarship. This online course will be asynchronous. Class discussions will occur on our Brightspace site, where required lectures and other course materials will also be available. English 781. American Women Playwrights MTWTh 6:00 to 7:40 pm, online synchronous Prof. Rhoda Sirlin Course Code: 6926 This special topics course will focus on American women playwrights, some of whom have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and some who are significant for other reasons. We will explore themes and approaches of these women dramatists and what their plays reveal about American culture. Among the topics considered are the relationship between women writers and their cultural and social backgrounds, conditions affecting women’s literary production, including their struggle for gender parity in the theatre world, the influence of female and male precursors, the impact of race and class, and the continuities and breaks with the dominant literary traditions; additionally, we will explore how contemporary theatre is connected to Greek tragedy and to Ibsen’s realistic social dramas of the 19th century. We will begin with the mother of American drama—Susan Glaspell, writing plays before women could vote—and end the course with the most recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama—Eboni Booth. Some of the other women playwrights we will discuss are Lillian Hellman, Lorraine Hansberry, Beth Henley, Marsha Norman, Paula Vogel, Rebecca Gilman, Sarah Ruhl, Quiara Alegria Hudes, Lynn Nottage, and Martyna Majok. Session II (7-week session in June 30-August 18) English 732. The Latinx Child MW 6:30 to 8:10 pm, online synchronous Prof. William Orchard Course Code: 6927 In the heart-wrenching stories of migrant families torn asunder at the US-Mexico border, the Latinx child has emerged a key figure in contemporary political discourse. Although we are often inclined to think of childhood as a universal experience or a time of innocence, childhood is affected by a host of historical, economic, social, political, and cultural factors. In this class, we will examine the experience of Latinx childhood in three ways. First, we will consider the ways in which Latinx coming of age narratives have to rework the conventions of the bildungsroman in order to account for the roles that race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality play in a Latinx child’s growing understanding of their social roles. Second, we will read recent works in young adult and children’s literature to examine how Latinx childhood is being represented to young readers. Finally, we will consider the various ways in which childhood has been invoked and deployed in contemporary debates in the United States about immigration. Likely text include Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, Justin Torres’s We the Animals, Javier Zamora’s Unaccompanied, and Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends, Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X, and Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. English 781. 20th Century Poetry: Modernism to Postmodernism TTh 6:30 to 8:10 pm, online synchronous Prof. James Richie Course Code: 6925 While new work is continually being done to re-examine the claims, terms, and historical contexts for modern poetry, there’s a general critical consensus on what poetic modernism entails and what works may be considered modern. Postmodern poetry, which both emerges and diverges from the tenets of modernism, is another story. Parameters are starting to emerge, but for the most there’s still debate on what counts as postmodern or if there even is (or was) such a thing as a “postmodernism.” This course is going to examine modern and postmodern American poetry with a historicizing lens to understand how poets from the early part of the century developed poetic strategies to account for the feeling of overwhelming, rapid, and unprecedented historical change and how the poets of the mid part of the 20th century drew from and critiqued those strategies to account for their own historical moment. It will also conclude by analyzing a few poets whose work emerged much later in the 20th century (or beginning of the 21st) to think through how these writers may be dealing with their own inherited dual legacy.

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[EnglishMA] REMINDER: Careers in Media and Publishing Roundtable today (4/2)
by William Orchard 02 Apr '25

02 Apr '25

Just a reminder of this Writers at Queens event about career paths for students in media and publishing is today, April 2 at 7pm in the Rosenthal Library, 6th floor! Please join us to hear from MFA alumnae zakia henderson-brown, Rob Gunther, Jasper Lo, Jenna Telesca, and Alexa Wejko. They will talk about their work at The New Yorker, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, The New Press, and Soho Press. Or join us on zoom here<http://bit.ly/4hq6XWj>—no registration required. This is a wonderful opportunity for all students who want to learn more about careers in media and publishing! [cid:image001.png@01DBA389.40E7C620]

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