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Department: English

(Division of Humanities and the Arts)

Professor Daniel Gustafson, Chair • Department Office: NA 6/219 • Tel: 212-650-6327

General Information

The City College offers the following undergraduate degree in English:

B.A. in English

Programs and Objectives

Courses in literature and writing enhance the experience of students in virtually all areas of the liberal arts, the performing arts, and the sciences.

Departmental majors may concentrate in the following:

  • Literature

  • Creative Writing

  • Secondary English Education

The discipline of English has changed dramatically over the past few decades, and the offerings of the City College English Department reflect those changes. The required "Introduction to Literary Study" course, English 25000, takes the analysis of literary genres as its subject. This course helps students develop the basic vocabulary and skills of close textual analysis, while also introducing influential theoretical concepts and encouraging students to read literary texts in light of these ideas. Courses in American, British, and Anglophone literatures replace traditional surveys of major writers and provide a more interdisciplinary and intertextual approach to studying literary traditions. The "Selected Topics" courses offer visiting and permanent faculty members the opportunity to share their particular research interests with students, while the "Advanced Topics" and "Seminars" allow for comprehensive treatment of a particular topic in a more intimate classroom setting.

Creative Writing

The teaching of creative writing at the College began in 1919, and the Department’s graduates include some of the most eminent authors of this century and the previous one. Workshops in fiction, poetry, and playwriting are regularly offered by professors who are themselves accomplished authors.

Secondary English Education

The teaching concentration is a specific regimen of literature, language, and writing courses required by most states (including New York) of candidates for high school teaching certification.

Publishing Certificate Program

This program is for students interested in pursuing a career in publishing. Students take four courses—one of which must be Introduction to Publishing—offered campus-wide in the editorial, marketing and design track. To complete the certificate, students must maintain a 3.0 average in their publishing courses and take part in paid internships at a publishing house suitable to their career goals. Faculty and guests include some of the leading publishing professionals in the country. For information, contact David Unger, the Program Director, at 212-650-7925.

The English Honors Program

Majors and minors with a 3.3 GPA who have taken at least two upper-division English electives may apply to the English Honors Program, which includes two seminars and a course devoted to the writing of a thesis under the supervision of a faculty mentor. The program also offers advising, lectures, and opportunities for students to share their work. Creative writing students may submit a manuscript of poems or stories in lieu of the thesis. Students should contact the program’s administrative assistant, Ms. Renee Philippi, or the Program Director, Professor Robert Higney for information.

Advisement

English

Professor Olivia Wood NA 6/219; 212-650-6360

English Honors Program

Professor Robert Higney

Fellowship Office

NA 6/223; 212-650-8475

Events and Productions

Members of the English Department arrange events throughout the year, including:

The Spring Poetry Festival

The English Department Annual Awards Ceremony

Publications

Fiction, the internationally renowned literary magazine.

Promethean, the City College literary magazine.

Awards

The Department of English awards $50,000 in prizes and over $20,000 in grants every year to undergraduate students.

Creative Writing Awards

  • The Henry Roth Award in Fiction

  • The Doris Lippman Prize in Creative Writing

  • The David Dortort Prize in Creative Writing

  • The Jerome Lowell Dejur Prize in Creative Writing

  • The Elyse L. Nass Endowed Scholarship

  • The Roth Alexander Memorial Award in Drama

  • The Geraldine Griffin Moore Memorial Scholarship

  • The Graduate Children’s Writing Award

  • The Goodman Fund Grants

  • The Goodman Fund Short Story Award

  • The Undergraduate Children’s Writing Award

Poetry Awards

•    The Esther Unger Poetry Award

•    The Goodman Fund Poetry Award

Essay Awards

•    The Allan Danzig Memorial Award in Victorian and Romantic Literature

•    The David Markowitz Essay Award

•    The Riggs Gold Medal Essay Award

• The Meyer Cohn Graduate Essay Award in Literature

The Irwin and Alice Stark Awards

  • The Stark English Composition Award in Memory of Mina Shaughnessy

•    The Stark Short Fiction Prize

•    The Stark Award for Essay in Literature

The Stark Poetry Prize in Memory of Raymond Patterson

General Excellence Awards

•    The Edward C. and Ruth P. Mack Graduate Fellowship

•    The Julius and Elizabeth Isaacs Scholarship

•    The Paul Roberts Memorial Scholarship Fund

•    The Richard Shephard Award for Excellence in Writing

•    The Sydney Jacoff Graduate Fellowship

•    The Toni Cade Bambara Endowed Scholarship

  • The David Dortort Undergraduate Scholarship

  • The Lillian Feder Scholarship

  • The Weiner Nusim Stairway to Excellence Award

  • The Marilyn Sternglass Awards in Language and Literacy

  • The Abraham A. Bernstein Graduate Fellowship

  • The Margaret Halmy Prize

Teaching Awards

  • The Norman Levine Outstanding Teaching Award

  • The Teacher-Writer Award

Faculty

Salar Abdoh, Professor
B.A., U.C. Berkeley; M.A. City College

Doris Barkin, Lecturer
B.A., Queens College; M.A., CUNY; Ph.D., CUNY Graduate Center

Carla Cappetti, Professor
B.A., Torino; M.A., Univ. of Wisconsin; M. Phil., Columbia Univ., Ph.D.

Mikhal Dekel, Distinguished Professor
Tel Aviv School of Law; M.A.,  The  City College; Ph.D., Columbia University

Lyn Di Iorio, Professor
B.A., Harvard Univ.; M.A., Stanford Univ.; Ph.D., Univ.  Of California (Berkeley)

Grazyna Drabik, Lecturer
M.A., Univ. of Warsaw; M.A., Columbia Univ., M. Phil.

Keith Gandal, Professor
B.A., Amherst College, M.A.; Ph.D., Univ. of California (Berkeley)

Barbara Gleason, Professor
B.S., Univ. of Missouri (Columbia); M.A., Oklahoma State Univ.; Ph.D., Univ. of Southern California

Daniel Gustafson, Associate Professor
B.A., Kenyon College; M.A., Yale University, Ph.D.

Robert Higney, Associate Professor
B.A., Boston College; M.A. Johns Hopkins Univ., Ph.D.

András Kiséry, Associate Professor
M.A., Univ. of Bristol (U.K.);  M.Phil.,  Columbia Univ., Ph.D.

Elizabeth Mazzola, Professor
B.A., Univ. of Virginia, M.A., New York Univ., Ph.D.

Renata Kobetts Miller, Professor
B.A., Princeton; M.A., Indiana University, Ph.D.

Mark Jay Mirsky, Professor
B.A., Harvard Univ.; M.A., Stanford Univ.

Janée Moses, Assistant Professor
B.A., University of Pennsylvania; Ph.D., University of Michigan

Václav Paris, Associate Professor
B.A., University College London; M.Phil.  Cambridge Univ.; Ph.D. Univ. of Pennsylvania

Thomas Peele, Associate Professor
B.A., New York Univ.; M.A., City College of New York; Ph.D., Univ. of South Florida

Dalia Sofer, Distinguished Lecturer
B.A., New York Univ.; M.F.A., Sarah Lawrence College

Gordon Thompson, Professor
B.A.,  The  City College; M.A., Yale Univ., Ph.D.

Michelle Valladares, Assistant Professor
B.A., Bryn Mawr College; M.F.A., Sarah Lawrence College

Harold Aram Veeser, Professor
B.A., Columbia Univ., M.A., Ph.D.

Melissa Watson, Associate Professor
A.A., American River College; B.A., San Diego State Univ., MA; Ph.D., Syracuse Univ.

Kedon Willis, Assistant Professor
B.A., Ithaca College; University of Florida, Ph.D.

Olivia Wood, Lecturer
B.A., University of North Carolina (Greensboro), M.A.; M. Phil., CUNY Graduate Center

Professors Emeriti

Linsey Abrams
Marcia Allentuck
Ilona Anderson
Nathan Berall
Felicia Bonaparte
David P. Buckley
Arthur K. Burt
Gladys Carro
Alice Chandler
Morton Cohen
James de Jongh
Barbara Fisher
Byrne R. S. Fone
Arthur Ganz
Robert Ghiradella
Arthur Golden
Frederick Goldin
Ralph Gordon
Theodore Gross
Leon Guilhamet
Marilyn Hacker
Jo-Ann W. Hamilton
James Hatch
Laura Hinton
Mary V. Jackson
Leonard Kriegel
Valerie Krishna
Pamela Laskin
Patricia Laurence
Daniel Lear
Karl Malkoff
Charles T. Mark
Philip Miller
Robert K. Morris
Stephen Merton
Geraldine Murphy
Nathaniel Norment, Jr.
Paul Oppenheimer
William L. Payne
Beatrice Popper
Irving Rosenthal
Earl Rovit
Paul Sherwin
Robert Silber
Frederic Tuten
Geoffrey Wagner
Michele Wallace
Barry Wallenstein
Barbara Bellow Watson
Joshua Wilner