Program Notes
What Some of Our Current Students and Recent Graduates Are Up To
Kurt Johnson (M.A. '16) will begin a position as an academic adviser at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, in summer 2021.
Steven Mechlowicz Neal (M.A. '18) has been admitted to the M.F.A. Creative Writing program at the New School, starting in fall 2021.
Catherine Champney (M.A. '20) has accepted an offer of admission, with full funding, to the University of Delaware Ph.D. program in English, starting in fall 2021.
Steven Mechlowicz Neal (M.A. '18) had a version of his Master’s thesis accepted to the Ben Jonson Journal, published by Edinburgh University Press. His essay, “Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist: Shaping Behavior in the Shadow of the Apocalypse,” appears in the Fall 2020 issue, vol 27, no 2. He argues in part, “In straining to escape their present and to a future marked by heavenly expectations, Jonson's characters evoked his contemporaries’ desires to address their own exigencies. By capturing his audience's attention referencing popular current events, Jonson created a stage for his greater concern, that faith in economic as well as religious transcendence exposed his milieu to divisive radicalism and victimization.” The article is available here.
Having received multiple Ph.D. offers of admission, Crystal Payne '18 M.A. will begin the English Ph.D. program at Washington University in St. Louis in fall 2020 with full funding.
Jane Odartey '14 M.A. has published many poems since graduating, including "Conversing With the Farmers" in the Spring 2019 issue of The Malahat Review, whose website also features an interview with Jane. A Queens resident, Jane blogs at janethroughtheseasons.com.
Congratulations to the recent alumni who gained admission to the following graduate programs for fall 2019: Kareem Joseph M.A. '19, English Ph.D. program at Emory University; Gizem Iscan M.A. '17, Ph.D. program in American culture studies at Bowling Green University; Grant Crawford M.A. '19, English Ph.D. program at St. Johns University; Dhipinder Walia M.A. '18, English Ph.D. program at the CUNY Graduate Center; and Melissa Clairejeune M.A. '15, English Ph.D. program at Florida State University.
Congratulations to Alessandra (Dyer) Jacobo M.A. '15, who received a competitive fellowship from the University of Kansas, where she is a Ph.D. candidate in American studies, to study Haitian Kreyol in summer 2019.
Daniel Cohen '15 M.A. received tenure at Brooklyn's James Madison High School, where he teaches English.
Amanda Wochele '12 M.A. has published two books of poetry: Jack Frost (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and Climate Control (Dancing Girl Press, 2019).
Congratulations to Jason Collins '09 M.A., who gained admission to the Ph.D. program at the City University of Hong Kong. Jason will begin in fall 2019 with generous fellowship support from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.
DeShawn Winslow '13 M.A. completed the M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop and has published his debut novel, In West Mills (Bloomsbury, 2019).
Congratulations to the recent alumni who gained admission to the following graduate programs for fall 2018: Katie Contess '17 M.A., Ph.D. program in modern culture and media at Brown University; Chante Reid M.A. candidate '18, M.F.A. in creative writing at Brown University; Joseph Romano '18 M.A., Ph.D. program in English at Columbia University; and Alessandra (Dyer) Jocobo '15 M.A., Ph.D. program in American studies at the University of Kansas.
Congratulations to Gizem Iscan '17 M.A. and Esther Ritiau, current M.A. candidate, whose paper "Geographies of 20th-Century Working Class Culture," was accepted for presentation at the 2018 Working Class Studies Association conference. Their panel will be chaired by Brooklyn College English Professor Joseph Entin. Esther was also featured at this year's Northeast Modern Language Association Conference, where she presented her research on The Yellow Wallpaper as part of a panel on the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Jonathan Holley '15 M.A. was admitted to the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program at the CUNY Graduate Center in fall 2017 to study the history of African American performers in opera.
Joseph Romano '18 M.A. had his paper, "A Rejection of 'The Rejection of Closure': Lyn Hejinian, Leslie Scalapino and the Post-Language Poetics of Occurrence and Collaboration," accepted to the National Poetry Foundation's Poetry & Poetics of the 1990s Conference at the University of Maine, in June 2017.
Congratulations to Jason Hoelzel '14 M.A., who was admitted to the Harvard Divinity School master's program, starting fall 2017.
Congratulations to Robert Weitzer '15 M.A., who will begin the Ph.D. in English at SUNY Stony Brook in fall 2017.
It's a banner spring 2017 for Tristan Cooley, who will present at three academic conferences: "Alchemy of Language in The Canon's Yeoman's Tale," at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill conference Transformations: Tracing Forces of Change in the Medieval and Early Modern Period; "Disastrously in Death: Zero K and the Technological Now," at Northern Illinois University's MCLLM graduate conference on Altered States, Times, Perspectives; and "The Sacred Midwest in 'Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,'" at the International David Foster Wallace Conference, Illinois State University.
Congratulations to M.A. students who gained admission to doctoral programs starting fall 2016: Shayne McGregor '16 M.A. will attend the Ph.D. program in English at Yale University; Kelly Roberts '16 M.A. will attend the English Ph.D. program at Rutgers University; and Yashari Nunez '15 M.A. will attend the English Ph.D. program at the University of North Dakota.
Ursula Lukszo '07 M.A. completed her Ph.D. at SUNY Stony Brook in 2013 and now teaches in the English Department at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Texas.
Lauren Navarro '07 M.A. is an assistant professor of English at LaGuardia Community College (CUNY).
Beatrice Bradley '13 M.A. collaborated with Professor Tanya Pollard to write an essay about Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale that was accepted for publication by the academic journal English Literary Renaissance. She is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago.
De'Shawn Winslow '13 M.A. will attend the M.F.A. Creative Writing program at the University of Iowa in fall 2015.
Brittney Date '15 M.A. will move to Madrid, for a 2015–16 teaching position through the Council on International Education and Exchange.
Summer 2015 will find Shayne McGregor '15 M.A. in Philadelphia at the Library Company of America, where he received a fully funded weeklong archival research grant.
Several recent graduates will be starting Ph.D. programs in fall 2015, including Andrew Dunn '11 M.A. at the CUNY Graduate Center to study digital humanities, Rebeca Rivera '13 M.A. at Drew University, Jake Sanders '14 M.A. at SUNY Buffalo to study 20th-century literature, Jennifer Caroccio '14 M.A. at Rutgers-Newark to pursue U.S. Latino/a studies, Washieka Torres '14 M.A. at the program in American Culture Studies at Bowling Green University, Jeremy Specland '13 M.A. at Rutgers University-New Brunswick to study English, Shoba Parasram '11 M.A. to study education at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, and Bradley Nelson '14 M.A. at the CUNY Graduate Center to study 19th-century American literature. Congratulations and best wishes to all.
Jacob Chandler '14 M.A. presented the paper "Identity and Materialism: Reading the Space Between Persons and Things" at the University of Alabama—Huntsville graduate student conference, spring 2015.
M.A. student Haneen Adi is an intern at Verso Books.
Cherry Lou Sy '13 M.A. is pursuing her M.F.A. in creative writing at Long Island University.
Elizabeth Lotto '13 M.A. is contracts associate at DK, an imprint of Penguin/Random House Books.
Michelle Gordon '14 M.A. is a contributor to the online magazine, Germ.
Charles (Chet) Jordan '12 M.A. is an instructor at Gutman Community College (CUNY) and a Ph.D. student in the composition & rhetoric program at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Bob Williams '13 M.A. published the novel Two Is for You (Open Books, 2015).
Suzette Andrews '13 M.A. teaches English composition and developmental writing at Medgar Evers College (CUNY), and is a member of the Budget Committee in the School of Liberal Arts and Education. She conducted the workshop presentation "Moving Beyond One-Size-Fit-All: Using Writing Assessment as a Tool for Differentiating Instruction" at CUNY's Best Practices Conference, fall 2014, and received a grant from PSC-CUNY to present an excerpt from her M.A. thesis, "Narrationality: The Allegorical Space between the African Burial Ground and Ground Zero" at Florida International University's Conference on Literature and Crisis, spring 2015.
Beatrice Bradley '13 M.A. began the Ph.D. program in English at the University of Chicago in fall 2014. She is studying Renaissance literature.
Natalie Nuzzo '14 M.A., English teacher at David A. Boody Middle School, received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study at the Emily Dickinson archives in Amherst, Massachussetts, in summer 2014. She is co-editor of Wreckage of Reason II: Back to the Drawing Board, a collection of experimental women's writing. She was also named an Astor Education Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum in fall 2014.
Elroy Esdaille '11 M.A. gained admission to the doctoral program in education at Teacher's College, Columbia University, for fall 2014.
Bradley Nelson '14 M.A. participated in the University of Maryland Digital Humanities Seminar in summer 2014.
Nicole Casamento accepted a position as editorial associate at ARTnews.
Beatrice Bradley received funding from the Brooklyn College School of Humanities and Social Sciences to travel to present an abridged version of her M.A. thesis at the Medieval-Renaissance Conference at the University of Virginia's College at Wise in fall 2013.
Kat Thek '12 M.A. landed a job as assistant to the chief digital marketing officer at Harper Collins publishers. A new department, Digital Marketing brainstorming sessions "happen in a room that looks like the inside of Jeanie's bottle in I Dream of Jeanie," says Thek, "and all of the walls are coated with white board paint so you can go nuts on the walls."
Bob Williams had "Forevermore," an essay on Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket published in The Montreal Review, February 2013. He has also published two stories this year, "Strollers" in Epiphany (April 2013) and "The Hanger Thief" in The Faircloth Review (May 2013). His critical essay "Blowing Bellows: And All That Would-Be Could Be in Jonson's Volpone" is forthcoming in the Ben Jonson Review in 2014.
Natalie Nuzzo and Cherry Lou Sy received travel grants from the Office of the Associate Provost to present papers at conferences in spring 2013. Nuzzo will present her work on the reproduction and subversion of social class on Facebook at the Northeast Modern Language Association conference at Tufts University. Sy will present a paper about the performance artist Staceyann Chin at the American Literature Association conference.
Vivien Cao presented her paper "You're a Good Man, Walter White," about signifiers in Breaking Bad, at the CUNY Graduate Center conference In Trans: Reading Between and Beyond, November 2012.
Claudette Visco '12 M.A. has a job a writer for the Poetry Division at Shmoop, an educational website in Silicon Valley, California.
Congratulations to our many current students and recent alumni who will enter Ph.D. programs this in fall 2012. Amina Tajbhai '12 M.A. has been admitted to the Ph.D. program in English at Fordham University. James Osborne '10 M.A. has been admitted to the Ph.D. English program at the University of Arizona. Timothy Griffiths '12 M.A. has been admitted to the Ph.D. program in English at the CUNY Graduate Center. Lindsay Lehman '08, '10 M.A. has been admitted to the Ph.D. program in English at the CUNY Graduate Center. Francisco Delgado '09 M.A. has been admitted to the Ph.D. program in English at SUNY Stony Brook. Michael Carosone '97, '07 M.A. has been admitted to the Ed.D. program at Teachers College, Columbia University. We wish them well!
In addition to a new job at Brooks Brothers, Michael Dell'Aquila '10 M.A. has two forthcoming publications: one in a short story anthology called Writing Our Way Home (Guernica Editions, eds. Licia Canton, Elena Lamberti and Caroline Di Giovanni) and a poem in the upcoming issue of the Paterson Literary Review.
Stephen Spencer '11 M.A. will present his paper, "Cognitivism, New Criticism, and the Epistemic Persona of Nabokov's Lolita" at the CUNY Graduate Center’s conference on May 4, 2012, "Principles of Uncertainty: A Conference on Critical Theory."
Natalie Nuzzo, current M.A. student, will present "Intentional Exposures and Coded Behaviors in the Age of Facebook: Social Constraints in The House of Mirth" at a special session, “Edith Wharton and the Age of TM(I)nformation,” convened by the Edith Wharton Society at the American Literature Association annual conference in San Francisco in May 2012.
Timothy Griffiths, graduating M.A. student, chaired a session at the Northeast Modern Language Association conference in March 2012, entitled "Intellectual Spars and Rival Texts in 20th-century African-American Literature."
Joan Jean-Francois, current M.A. student, had her paper "Will The Real Racist Joseph Conrad Please Stand Up?" accepted to the College English Association conference, March 2012, and her paper "Nationalism vs. Postcolonialism in W.B. Yeats's Works" accepted to the graduate English conference at California State University-Fullerton that same month.
Jonathan Gardner, current M.A. student, presented his paper "The Shield, Antiheroes, and Oppression in America" at the 22nd Annual Mardi Gras Conference at Louisiana State University on February 16, 2012.
Michelle Gibbs, current M.A. student, had tremendous success submitting her paper on Derek Walcott to conferences this year. "Colonial Trauma of Dissociative Proportions in Dream on Monkey Mountain" was accepted to conferences from Aberdeen, Scotland, to Madrid, to Brooklyn, New York. She presented it at the College English Association: Caribbean Chapter conference, On Exile and Its Variations, at the University of Puerto Rico in Arecibo, March 2012; at the 42nd Annual Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference in Boston in April 2012; and also in April read her paper by Skype at the University of South Florida's English Graduate Association conference, Re-conceptualizing Cartography: Space-Time Compression and Narrative Mapping. She will present it once again at the Brooklyn College Graduate English Conference, The Shifting Self, on April 28, 2012.
Claudette Visco, graduating M.A. student, presented her papers "The 'Unspoken' Codes of Second Language Acquisition: Karen Ogulnick's Onna Rashiku: The Diary of a Language Learner in Japan" at the graduate symposium, Belonging, sponsored by the Rice University Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, March 30, 2012.
Chet Jordan will present a paper based on his thesis about visual rhetoric and the teaching of composition at the conference Making Meaning: Language, Rhetoric and the Power of Access, University of Michigan, September 2011.
Michelle Gibbs will present her paper “Postcolonial Schizophrenia in Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain” at the Fordham University Graduate English Conference, The Art of Outrage, October 2011.
Michael Clyne '10 M.A. traveled to Ireland in June 2011, to present his paper, "Diffusing a Politics of Contradiction in The Waves," at the International Virginia Woolf Conference at the University of Glasgow.
Jennifer Stoops '08 M.A. Teacher was admitted to the Ph.D. program in Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center for fall 2011.
John Yi '05, '07 M.A. has been accepted to the Ph.D. program at Teachers College, Columbia University, for fall 2011. His focus will be on the import of postcolonial studies and migrant literatures for pedagogical theory and practice.
Christopher Irving, who began the M.A. program in fall 2010, has a new book, Graphic NYC Presents Dean Haspiel just out from IDW Publishing. It is a combination of creative nonfiction essays on the Emmy Award–winning comic book artist as well as a collection of his earlier comic book work. Check out gnycpresents.blogspot.com for a preview and other information. Irving edits and writes for the Graphic NYC, a comic book journalism site that features photo and essay profiles on many comic book luminaries.
Fearful Symmetry: Thinking Through Dualities, the SUNY Stony Brook graduate English conference in February 2010, featured four Brooklyn College M.A. students. Francisco Delgado presented "Neither Japanese nor American: Identity and Citizenship in John Okada's No-No Boy"; Saad Ibrahim presented "Of Elephants and Horses: The Rationalization of Human Nature and the Work Ethic in Dickens' Hard Times"; Michael DiBerardino presented "The Split Gaze: Labor, Insight, and the Product of Poetry in Chaucer's 'Parliament of Fowls'" and Patricia Marquez, presented "Detecting Literature's Impact on Ideology with the Emergence of the American Novel."
Patricia Marquez, is presenting her paper "The Copyright and Trademark: Piracy, Artist Rights, and the New Semiological Culture" in a panel on Cyber Aesthetics at the Northeast Modern Language Association conference in April 2011, at Rutgers University. Marquez also delivered a presentation, "The Devaluing of the Author in New Historicism," at the SUNY Albany Graduate English Conference in April 2010.
Stephen Spencer will present his paper "'A Lower Flight': Astronomy and Narrativity in Paradise Lost" at the 19th Annual Northern Plains Conference on Early British Literature at St. Mary's University of Minnesota in April 2011.
The Fourth Annual Brooklyn College Graduate English Conference, "The New Urgency: Emerging, Evolving, and Redefining Literature,” April 30, 2011, features papers by current M.A. students Suklima Roy, Gregory Kirkorian, Saad Ibrahim, Timothy Griffiths, and Phil Rafferty, along with students from St. John’s University and New York University.
Timothy Griffiths will present his paper "Of Hobos, Farmers, and Geologists: Mixed Environments, Dual Alienation, and the Emblems of Occupation in Breece D'J Pancake's 'Trilobites'" at the University of Rhode Island Graduate English Conference, "[Pre]Occupations: Working, Seizing, Dwelling," April 16, 2011.
T. Olubunmi Olosunde '09 M.A. Teacher has been admitted to the Ph.D. program in English for fall 2010 at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Catherine Baker '10 M.A. has been accepted for fall 2010 to the University of Tulsa and the University of Miami, home of the James Joyce Quarterly and James Joyce Literary Supplement, respectively.
Kam Hei Tsuei will present a paper at the 2010 National Black Writers Conference, Medgar Evers College (CUNY), March 25–27, entitled "The Total Scale of Kamau Brathwaite's Nation Language."
Jarad Krywicki '09 M.A. has been accepted to the Ph.D. programs at University of Colorado (Boulder) and University of South Carolina (both with full funding).
Patricia Marquez, a first-year M.A. English student, will present her paper, "Detecting Literature's Impact on Ideology with the Emergence of the American Novel," at the SUNY Stony Brook Graduate Conference on February 20.
Sarah Kilby, current M.A. English student, published two poems, "The Bottletree" and "The Day She Remembers," in volume 7 of Anamesa, an interdisciplinary journal of graduate student writing based at New York University.
Clare Callahan '08 M.A. and Sarah Brown '08 will co-chair a panel called "Looking Back on Activism and Twentieth Century American Literature," at the Northeast Modern Language Association conference in April in Montreal. As their title suggests, their panel examines representations of activism and the relationship between literature and activism through the theme of "looking back." The papers they have selected include "How Do You Spell 'Modernity?': Oppen and the Enchantment of Ideology," "'What my heart not my mouth has uttered': Edwin Rolfe and the Body Politic," and "(Re)relevance and Social Activism: Don DeLillo on the Subject of Terror." Callahan, a first-year student in the Ph.D. program in literature at Duke University, will be a graduate assistant for the NeMLA conference organizers for the second year in a row. Brown is pursuing a master's degree in liberal studies at the CUNY Graduate Center when she is not working in 2314 Boylan Hall.
Bridget English '07 M.A. is a Ph.D. student at National University of Ireland, Maynooth, where in addition to studying modern Irish literature she regularly blogs about her experiences as an expatriate graduate student there.
Lia Deromedi and Michael Dell'Aquila both received grants in fall 2009 from the CUNY Graduate Investment Program. Deromedi's funding will offset her research expenses in writing her thesis, which examines how Primo Levi translates traumatic memories into language in his novel, If Not Now When. As part of her comparative and interdisciplinary study on Levi, she is incorporating scholarship in trauma studies, cultural studies, Holocaust studies, and linguistic studies. This spring (2010), she will present her work at two conferences: Trauma: Intersections among Narrative, Neuroscience, and Psychoanalysis, and the New Jersey College English Association annual conference. Dell'Aquila's funding will enable him to present a paper at the conference Mothering and Migration: (Trans)nationalisms, Globalization and Displacement, hosted by the Association for Research on Mothering at the University of Puerto Rico in February, 2010.
Leah Sadykov, who received both her M.A. in English and M.A. English Teacher degrees from Brooklyn College in 2007, published her thesis in the inaugural issue of the journal Language, Literature, and Cultural Studies (June 2008). The article, "Linguistic Determinism," engages the debate in linguistics between the Sapir-Worf hypothesis and "the contemporary linguistic trend of universalism." Sadykov currently teaches high school journalism and English courses and is an adjunct English instructor at Suffolk Community College.
