Departments
Brooklyn College Department of English MFA inter-genre reading
The Professional Organization of English Majors (POEM), a fictitious sponsor of the erstwhile radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion," caught the ire of Robert Matz, professor of English and senior associate dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at George Mason University. So did the ongoing jokes the same show perpetuates that describe English majors as comprising "a secret society devoted to the helpless love of books by dead people and an aversion to flummery, persiflage, gobbledygook, gibberish, and high-flown malarkey." Matz makes a plea to the show's host and writer, Garrison Keillor, to recognize the fact that "there's nothing reckless about majoring in English compared to many other popular majors….Students who want to major in English and are good at it should not believe that they are sacrificing a livelihood to pursue their loves. And students who don't love what they are learning are less likely to be successful."
The Department of English at Brooklyn College is hardly moribund or apologetic about what it has to offer students who choose to major in English. In fact, the department is continually in the position of growing and enriching its offerings and carrying out key portions of the mission of the college. It imminent graduate program, an advanced certificate in publishing, will offer an initial cohort of students in fall 2019 marketable skills in the latest techniques of publishing. The program, like the college, is committed to diversity and "seeks to enroll a diverse set of highly qualified students who will go on to challenge and enhance the industry." A recent study has shown that the publishing industry is 79 percent white, and this needs to change if authors who are people of color are to be given opportunities to publish and meet the reading demands of a changing population.
The publishing certificate program owes its origins to the vision and planning of two faculty in the department, Associate Professor Martha Nadell and Professor James Davis. As part of their planning for the publishing certificate, Nadell and Davis met with Johnny Temple, the editor in chief of Akashic Books. Temple studied and taught a course in contemporary publishing. His company, Akashic Books, in addition, seeks out books targeting black, Caribbean, Latinx, Middle Eastern, and Asian interest and could offer an ideal setting for students who enroll in the Brooklyn College program. Courses to be offered will include the Future of Publishing, the Editor in the 21st Century, Publishing in the Digital Order, and two internships in publishing.
Another way the English Department has evolved is the development of a concentration in the history of literature. English majors who choose this track are required to take additional courses in history or American studies and to write a thesis. According the Ellen Tremper, chair of the department, students who elect to take the history of literature concentration grow through "an in-depth and coherent intellectual experience."
Other changes in the department include the recent change of courses from three credit hours to four to incorporate greater opportunities for writing. In addition, the department will cease to offer the journalism major. The major and two of the faculty from the department will be moving to the Department of Television and Radio and be incorporated into the Journalism and Media Studies Program.
The Department of English is not only about change. It has also been about the continuity and growth of its vision, engagement, and existing programs. Since the college's early days, students and faculty in the department have been known for their political activism and efforts on behalf of social justice. Contributors to the student literary journals in 1935—one for men, Spotlight, and another for women, Pioneer—surveyed students' political affiliations and found the individual numbers of Communist- and Socialist-leaning students each nearly matched the numbers of Democrats on campus. During the Spanish Civil War, Brooklyn College students, along with students from Hunter College and City College, raised money to purchase an ambulance for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and sent fighters over to support the cause of the Loyalists. David McKelvy White, a member of the English Department faculty and the son of the sitting governor of Ohio, George White, enlisted in the brigade. In 1946, the African American Marion Starling, the first scholar to introduce the American slave narrative into academia, joined the department, and by the mid-1950s she incorporated the first courses in African-American literature into the college curriculum. In the mid-1970s, activist Lilia Melani, now Professor Emerita of the English Department, was the named plaintiff in the first class action lawsuit against CUNY. She sued the university on behalf of female faculty who, with comparable credentials, were hired at lower salaries than those of their male colleagues, were less likely to be tenured, and suffered longer waits for promotion to higher ranks.
Members of the English Department were instrumental in forming the first faculty union at CUNY in the 1970s, the United Federation of College Teachers, and, later, the Professional Staff Congress, the current union. The Brooklyn College chapter chair is James Davis, graduate deputy of the English Department. Two years ago, when the PSC called for an action of civil disobedience to protest CUNY's failure to offer faculty a contract (after seven years), 12 faculty of the Brooklyn contingent were arrested; half were from the English Department. Ellen Tremper credits an ongoing interest in activism in the department with the hiring of a number of new faculty who have come in since she assumed the seat of department chair in 2000. She is happy to note that the newer hires have "boosted the energy level and morale of the department."
Both students and faculty in the English Department are encouraged to share their research. The department, which boasts approximately 400 undergraduate majors, hosts an undergraduate research conference every March and runs a series on works in progress where faculty discuss their own research. In addition to the new graduate-level certificate in publishing, the department offers several graduate degree programs, including a master's in English, two master's options for teachers of English, and three master of fine arts degrees in fiction, poetry, and playwriting. Faculty in the M.F.A. program have included the National Book Award winners and poets John Ashbery and Allen Ginsberg, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist and screenwriter Michael Cunningham, and MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Fellow award winner, novelist, poet, and critic Ben Lerner. M.F.A. graduates have included the poet and novelist Sapphire, novelist and National Book Award winner Gloria Naylor, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Annie Baker, and Obie-winning playwright Clare Baron, who also was a co-winner of the inaugural 2015 Relentless Award established in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman.
The Department of English is not proud of just its world-renowned master's faculty; students have also made great achievements. Poet and novelist Ocean Vuong '12 received the prestigious Whiting Award in 2016 and now teaches poetry at Amherst. Others have gone into an array of professions, including Esther Hwang ’09 and Maryana Isakova ’07, who have become doctors; Luis Roca, 17, who serves as assistant to the curator of the Hall of Asian Peoples at the Museum of Natural History; and Mike Hidalgo, 16, who is assistant program director of CAMBA's Cornerstone at Stuyvesant Gardens, a community service group for New York State. Former English majors who are now lawyers include Keith Zackowitz '06 and Yevgeniya Drobitskaya, '07. Christopher LaSasso, '19, a CUNY Pipeline participant and Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, won the Randolph Goodman Shakespeare Essay Award in 2016 and is about to start a Ph.D. program in English at Brown University. LaSasso is a transfer student from Kingsborough who studied there under Professor Frank Percaccio, a Brooklyn College alumnus. LaSasso comments about his time at Brooklyn College majoring in English: "From various courses that pushed me to look toward literature as a way of imagining the future, to the adjunct and full-time faculty who made me a part of an intellectual community unlike any other, and to my classmates and peers who inspired me to never shy away from letting the personal become political (and vice versa), Brooklyn College's English Department gave me the one thing I struggle to find anywhere else: a chance to learn and grow without ever having to sacrifice who I am in the process."
Current Brooklyn College English majors may work as interns in the office of Professor Roni Natov, the department student counselor and adviser. In addition to helping other students with questions about their courses and the major, the interns also maintain the Boylan Blog, organize the semi-annual Open Mics, publish the college's annual literary magazine, The Junction, and look forward to registering for more courses in the Department of English on the road toward completing their major. If you have gotten past English 1012, you might consider taking an English course yourself next semester. Your choices range from Medieval English Literature to The Emergence of the Modern, and everything in between. Get started soon. There are many centuries and continents to cover when you delve into the delights of English literature at Brooklyn College.
Back to Critical Thinking — April 2019
