Dear Graduate Students, The fall semester officially begins this Friday, August 25. Attached (and pasted below) are some important beginning-of-the-semester announcements. Please read them carefully and let me know if you have any questions. My fall office hours officially begin this Tuesday if you need advising. For info and policies specific to our English MA program, please see the most recent handbook, also attached here. For info regarding Queens College's general academic policies and procedures, please consult the Handbook of Graduate Studies<http://www.qc.cuny.edu/Academics/GradStudies/Documents/Graduate-Handbook.pdf>. Enjoy these last few days of summer, and wishing all of you a wonderful fall semester! Best, Bill Orchard _________________________________________________ William Orchard Assistant Professor Assistant Director, MA Program Department of English Queens College/ CUNY worchard@qc.cuny.edu http://english.qc.cuny.edu/quick-links/william-orchard/ QC English Graduate Studies Fall 2017 Announcements CALENDAR Fall 2016 classes begin on Friday, August 25. You can find the 2016–2017 academic calendar with important dates and deadlines on the Registrar’s website at http://www.qc.cuny.edu/pages/calendar.aspx. Please note any deadlines that pertain to you. The last day to drop classes for a 100% tuition refund is Thursday, August 24. The last day to add classes is Thursday, August 31. OFFICE HOURS Please note that Professor Hong is on sabbatical during the Fall 2017 semester. All inquiries should be directed to Bill Orchard, who will serve as the Acting Director of Graduate Studies for the semester. Bill Orchard, Acting Director of Graduate Studies Office: Klapper Hall 637 Email: worchard@qc.cuny.edu<mailto:worchard@qc.cuny.edu> Tuesdays, 3:30 to 5:00 pm, Wednesdays from 4:30 to 6:00 pm, and by appointment It’s a good idea to schedule an appointment ahead of time if possible, even during regular office hours. Walk-ins are always welcome, but students with appointments have priority. Email is the quickest way to reach us. For routine inquiries (e.g., for faculty contact info and office hours), please consult the English Department website at http://english.qc.cuny.edu/ or contact the English Department Office (Klapper Hall 607, 718-997-4600, english@qc.cuny.edu<mailto:english@qc.cuny.edu>). CHECKING YOUR SCHEDULE Before the semester begins, please take a moment to log-in to your CUNYfirst account and double-check that you’re registered for your courses. Every semester, one or two students belatedly discover that they’re not registered for courses when they thought they were, or that their registration has been canceled by the Bursar’s office. It’s much easier to sort out the bureaucratic tangle if issues are caught early and before the start of the semester. ADDING A COURSE / REQUESTING AN OVERTALLY If you’re looking to add a course, there are still several with open seats, including ENGL 629 and two of the sections of 781. Course descriptions are available on the English Department website at http://english.qc.cuny.edu/graduate-programs/current-graduate-courses/. Please confirm current availability by checking the Schedule of Classes on CUNYfirst. If you wish to overtally into a class that is already closed, please email the course instructor and ask for their permission to overtally and/or to be placed on the course waiting list. Keep in mind that instructors have no obligation to overtally you into classes once they’re full and that all instructor decisions are final. NEW COURSE: LITERATURE AND VIRTUOSITY The English department welcomes a new professor this year, Cliff Mak, who is a specialist in Modernist literature. Professor Mak’s research interests are in British and American Modernism, the relationship between modernist writing and children’s literature, aesthetics, and animal studies. His class was added late to our offerings, and is a good opportunity to study writers and concepts that haven’t been offered recently. Below is the course description for his class: Major Modern Writers: Literature & Virtuosity What makes a modern writer “major”? This question—you may find it cheeky or not—is the starting point for this course, which takes as its task the exploration of twentieth-century literature’s self-conscious and vexed relation to cultural status and authority. Beginning with the modernists—James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Franz Kafka, and Samuel Beckett—we will ask what formally indicates that a text is vying for a position of cultural and aesthetic prestige: whether this includes the incorporation of that aspiration into narrative form itself (as a Künstlerroman, for example) or slightly harder-to-formulate matters of “virtuoso” diction and style. We will also ask whether this concept of virtuosity remained productive for later writers even after the crucible of modernism had run its course. Virtuosic writers such as Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Muriel Spark, John Ashbery, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Toni Morrison, for instance, were and are clearly indebted to their modernist forebears while also not feeling limited, arguably, by modernism’s doctrinal parameters of aesthetic autonomy and totalization in the face of impassable historical fragmentation. What, then, does this mean for their virtuosity? Without the pressurizing impulse towards aesthetic unity, does virtuosity become merely an ornamental show of technical skill, even a gimmick (and therefore a style of minor-ness)? Or, does the expansiveness of virtuosity, once untethered from modernism’s sense of historical futility, offer vital new ways to engage with history aesthetically—especially in terms of race, gender, and sexuality? ENGL 791 (THESIS ESSAY) AND ENGL 795 (INDEPENDENT STUDY) If you are planning to write your culminating thesis essay or pursue an independent study in Fall 2016, the deadline to submit sign-up forms is Tuesday, August 29, the second day of classes. You will not be registered for either course until your sign-up form has been received and approved. Sign-up forms must be typed and submitted electronically (as DOC, DOCX, or PDF files). For ENGL 791, the form can be downloaded from our website at http://english.qc.cuny.edu/files/2014/02/ENGL-791-sign-up-form.docx and should be emailed to worchard@qc.cuny.edu<mailto:worchard@qc.cuny.edu>. For ENGL 795, the form is available at http://english.qc.cuny.edu/files/2014/11/ENGL-795-sign-up-form.docx and should be emailed to worchard@qc.cuny.edu<mailto:worchard@qc.cuny.edu>. To discuss the requirements for 791 or 795, please email or make an appointment with the Acting Directory of Graduate Studies. ONE STOP SERVICE CENTER The One Stop Service Center (OSSC) is staffed with the nicest and most helpful people from the Office of the Registrar, the Bursar, and the Financial Aid Office and is by far the quickest way to get any financial or registration problems resolved and your questions answered. As academic advisors, we are usually not qualified to help you with these matters. The OSSC is located in the Dining Hall, Room 128. For their hours and more information, see http://www.qc.cuny.edu/StudentLife/services/onestop/Pages/default.aspx. QCARD If you haven’t yet obtained a QCard, please do so ASAP. You can no longer enter the library or other secure locations on campus without a QCard. For more info, see http://www.qc.cuny.edu/StudentLife/services/online/qcard/Pages/default.aspx.