Hello all, This is a reminder that the Sixth Annual English MA Conference, "The Pursuit of Pleasure," will take place on May 1, 2019, in Remsen Hall 017. There are four panels that run through the day, and a culminating afternoon keynote address and reception. Full details are available on the conference website?<http://pursuitofpleasure.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/>, and the day's schedule is pasted below. We hope you can make it out to see some of your colleagues and NYC-area MA students from other schools talk about their research and writing. We'll also provide lunch at midday and snacks following the keynote. Best, Bill SCHEDULE All events will take place in Remsen Hall, Room 017 9:30 - 9:45 | Welcome and Coffee 9:45 - 10:00 | Opening Remarks * Professors Caroline Hong and Bill Orchard (Directors of Graduate Studies) * Farrah Goff (Member of the 2019 Graduate Conference Committee) * Professor Karen Weingarten (Chair of the English Department) 10:00 - 11:15 | Panel 1 - Encountering Nature Chair: Professor Marco Navarro * Joseph Cáceres (City College of New York), "Profound Aesthetics, Profound Protest: An Ecocritical & Queer Reading of America's Cultural Landscape in Richard Bruce Nugent's 'Smoke, Lilies and Jades'" * Marym Khan (Queens College) "Ruffling Suspicions, Raising Winds, and Crafting Clouds: Scientific Performativity in Francis Bacon's New Atlantis" * Samantha Walsh (Hunter College), "Where Language Fails: Thoreau and Howe's Natural Escapes" 11:30 - 1:00 | Panel 2 - Imagining Futures Chair: Professor Ala Alryyes * Catalina Benavides, (Long Island Univeristy, Post), "The Silent Struggles of Latinx: The Personal and Political" * Aquilah Jourdain (City College of New York), "Tranquility Amidst Oppression: Exploring Hope in James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk" * Andrew Schlosser (Long Island University, Post), "The Future of Narrative: Westerns" 1:00 - 1:30 | Lunch 1:30 - 2:45 | Panel 3 - The Profundity of the Popular Chair: Professor Hillary Miller * Maria Bulzone (Queens College) "Perpetual Orphanhood: The Paradoxical Enabling and Disabling Effects of Trauma in the Batman Mythology" * Ellis Ging (Queens College), "Rites of Spring: Pleasure, Pain, and the Politics of the Body in The Wicker Man (1973) and Apostle" * Sayed Karimi (Queens College), "Race, Identity, and Authority in Zong! and Gangster Rap" * Sahar Soleimany (Teachers College, Columbia University), "Separate Moralities: The Limits of Truth and Justice in Asghar Farhadi's A Separation" 3:00 - 4:15 | Panel 4 - Troubling Gender Chair: Professor Briallen Hopper * Kenneth Dunckley (Queens College), "Wolverine and the Rehabilitation of Post-Vietnam Masculinity" * Julie Kern (Queens College), "Foundations of Identity for a Mother and Daughter in Mona in the Promised Land" * Alicia Farouk (Queens College), "Esther Greenwood's Pursuit of the 'Womb-Tomb' in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar" * Luke Widlund (Hunter College), "Metaphysics and Female Torture Poetry" 4:30 - 5:30 | Best Conference Paper Award Presentation + Keynote Address "The Art of Overanalyzing" Corey McEleney, Fordham University 5:30 - 6:30 | Reception ?