Creative Writing
B3000 Fiction Workshop
Prof. Lyn Di Iorio
Tuesdays 4:45 – 6:35pm
Section 2RS (37060)
The course description is forthcoming.
Lyn Di Iorio is from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her novel Outside the Bones was shortlisted for the John Gardner Prize. A recent New York Foundation for the Arts artist fellow in fiction, her short stories have been published or are forthcoming in Best American Short Stories 2025; The Georgia Review; The Kenyon Review; Witness Magazine; Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas; and elsewhere. She has also published scholarly works on Latinx literature and magical realism. She studied at Harvard, Stanford, and UC-Berkeley and teaches literature and creative writing at the City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center. She is currently completing a novel and short story collection.
B3000 Fiction Workshop
Prof. Salar Abdoh
Tuesdays 6:45 – 8:35pm
Section 2TU (37461)
This course is a standard graduate workshop. Each student shares their work two times during the semester. Submissions can be segments of a novel or a short story. My focus in the workshop is entirely on the students’ own pieces. My style is not to do paragraph by paragraph edits of a work. Rather, I look at the overall arc of a piece, and address the fundamental elements of fiction within it – pacing, character, voice, dialogue, prose, transitions, et cetera. Another aspect of my style of workshop is to not be overly intrusive. In other words, I try to work within the context that the writer has created;
I don’t believe in ‘hard intrusion’ into a writer’s intent, style and execution, unless on very rare occasions it is absolutely called for.
Please note:
I am drawn to works that are firmly within the orbit of realism and/or the psychological. This includes but is not limited to genre fiction such as the literary thriller and the noir.
What I am not drawn to is as follows: YA fiction, speculative fiction, experimentalism.
That said, naturally I will try to accommodate you in any genre. But you should know my disposition so that you can make a more informed decision about your choice of a workshop.
Salar Abdoh is a novelist, essayist and translator. His latest book, A Nearby Country Called Love, was published in 2023.
B3000 Fiction Workshop
Prof. Dalia Sofer
Wednesdays 4:45 – 6:35pm
Section 3FG (37061)
In this course we will read and discuss your manuscripts—short stories or excerpts from longer works. Together we’ll explore the elements of craft, including point of view, character, setting, style, and language. We’ll talk about the possibilities of fiction—how, for example, conflict (internal and external) can create narrative tension, how subtext can reveal the complexity of a situation, how time can be collapsed or expanded, or how well-chosen details can evoke character. We will also consider structure and form, as well as editing and revision. Ideally, you’ll each submit two pieces for discussion throughout the course. In each class, we’ll discuss two students’ works, and fellow students will provide written notes and critiques; I will do the same.
My primary goal in this course is to focus on your intention, and on whether your manuscript manifests that intention. I’m less interested in the “formulas” of storytelling than in discovering what is unique to your vision. We’ll explore ways to sustain narrative tension while allowing a work of fiction the freedom to be what it wants to be, and we’ll talk about roadblocks and successes. Occasionally, time permitting, we may also take detours to read stories or essays that may fuel our conversations.
Dalia Sofer is the author of the novels Man of My Time (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020)—a New York Times Editors’ Choice and Notable Book of 2020, and The Septembers of Shiraz (Ecco Press, 2007)—also selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, winner of the Sami Rohr Choice Award, a finalist for the Jewish Book Award, and longlisted for several prizes. A recipient of a Whiting Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Sirenland Fellowship, the Santa Maddalena Foundation Fellowship, and multiple residencies at Yaddo, Sofer has contributed essays and reviews to various publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The LA Review of Books, The Markaz Review, and The Believer.
B3200 Poetry Workshop
Lyric Transformations: Writing Our Other Selves
Prof. Rosanna Young Oh
Mondays 6:45 – 8:35pm
Section 1HJ (37059)
In this poetry workshop, we will examine how language can help us expand and reinvent our lyric selves on the page. Throughout the semester, you will study examples of lyric poetry that reveal how writers inhabit new perspectives and use poetic techniques to reveal the complexities of their inner worlds. In addition to in-class writing exercises and a poem recitation, you will write a poem each week, responding to various prompts that are designed for you to explore new aspects of yourself. One week, for example, you will be asked to write from the viewpoint of an animal; in another, from the mind of a figure in a painting. By the semester’s end, you will have a portfolio that reflects the ways you challenged the boundaries of self-expression.
Rosanna Young Oh is the author of The Corrected Version (Diode Editions, 2023),
which won the Diode Editions Book Prize and the North American Poetry Book Award. Her writing has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Graywolf Lab, RHINO Poetry, Literary Hub, and Rain Taxi Review of Books, among other publications. She has received support and residencies from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, the Hudson Valley Writing Center, the Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the New York State Writers Institute. Her poetry was also the subject of a solo exhibition at the Queens Historical Society, where she was an artist-in-residence. A graduate of Yale (B.A.), the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins (M.F.A.), and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (M.A.), Rosanna lives and writes on Long Island.
B3407 Playwriting Workshop
Prof. Robert Barron
Thursdays 6:45 – 8:35pm
Section 4TU (42835)
This is a creative writing class in the Playwriting form, which is open to both playwrights as well as other writers who have yet to experiment with the form. Whether you are a poet, a fiction writer or screenwriter, an experience in writing for the stage can be a huge benefit to your development as a creative writer. We will be writing in every class, as well as reading aloud the work of the class members. This is not a course in dramatic literature, but rather a practical workshop where we will practice how to effectively create dialogue, character, story and exposition. Students will be given an official playwriting manuscript format example, and will be expected to present work in this format. In addition to writing shorter exercises, everyone will complete an original one-act play by the end of the term. Furthermore, at the end of the semester, students in the class will have the opportunity to see their work presented by Actors from the Theatre Department. The stage is a freeing, flexible and powerful medium, and this class will give students the pleasure and discovery of hearing their work come to life, which may very well affect and deepen their writing beyond any of their expectations!
Rob Barron is a Playwright, a Director, an Actor and a Professor. As a Playwright, he is the author of twelve produced plays and musicals, including: Excavation (Dayton Playhouse/OH and the Jewelbox Theatre/OK); The Road to Washington; 5/31/89: The Flood (The Mountain Playhouse / PA); 1919: A Baseball Opera (Ensemble Studio Theatre / NYC); Ferdinand the Bull (Theatreworks USA), which he wrote with Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez, the authors of Avenue Q; and a new musical version of The Phantom of the Opera, which enjoyed five national tours. Other shorter works have been presented at The Actors Studio (NY) and the Fisher Theatre (NH). As a Director, Rob has directed in New York, regionally, and in England. He has directed premieres at the Yale Rep, the Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays, and the Actors Studio in New York City, where he is a member as an Actor and a Director. He directed the premieres of Come Up and See Me Sometime – A Night with Mae West, and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen at the White River Theatre Festival in Vermont, and the premiere of Thomas G. Waites’ Dark Laughter at the Marin Theatre in California. He has also directed several shows at Theatreworks/Colorado and the Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., where his productions have been nominated for several Helen Hayes Awards. His short film THE DICKS (with Burt Young) was screened at the Milan International Film Festival and the Lisbon Rendezvous.
B3600 Non-Fiction Workshop
Prof. Irvin Weathersby Jr.
Wednesdays 6:45 – 8:35pm
Section 3HJ (37037)
During the spring semester, students will submit two manuscripts up to twenty-five pages each, and learn to critique the work of their peers. Students will also explore exemplars of creative nonfiction and discuss the publication process from writing query letters, soliciting representation, and working with publishers. This class will nurture writers looking to expand their understanding of creative non-fiction as it relates to other forms including memoir, narrative non-fiction, feature writing, journalism, the personal essay and others, including fiction and poetic forms. Each of us has a story to tell, and this workshop will give students the tools to determine how their stories will be told.
Irvin Weathersby is a Brooklyn-based writer and professor from New Orleans. His writing has been featured in Harper’s Bazaar, LitHub, Guernica, Esquire, The Atlantic, EBONY, and elsewhere. He has earned an MFA from The New School, an MA from Morgan State University, and a BA from Morehouse College. He has received fellowships and awards from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, the Research Foundation of CUNY, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon Foundation. In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space, a memoir-in-essays that mediates on expressions of racism in art, museums, and public spaces in New Orleans and throughout the world, is his first book.
Craft Seminars
B1955 Writing for the Culture:
Creating Your Roadmap to Publication, as Writer, Author, and Literary Citizen
Prof. David Groff
Mondays 4:45 – 6:35pm
Section 1FG (37053)
How can you move from writer to author? As an MFA prose writer, poet, or dramatist, you can sharpen the tools you need, and gain the insider knowledge required, to cultivate your vocation and establish yourself as an author with a vital voice. This intensive provides you with the practices and strategies you need to publish your work—together with an emphasis on writing short nonfiction that prepares the way for your first book.
The course features two strands that will alternate and interact over the semester:
- Becoming a published writer and author. As you learn about the “MFA vs. NYC” book publishing realms, literary journals, general interest magazines, online sites, and reading series, you’ll explore various venues for your writing—ones that square with your ambitions and aesthetic—and submit your writing to them, composing and honing targeted and effective query and pitch letters. You’ll master the Artist’s Statement required for grant proposals, residency applications, and post-MFA options. You’ll deconstruct the dynamics of the annual AWP writers conference—the giant public square of literary publishing, to be held in Los Angeles in March. You’ll discover how to create new opportunities, build community, find readerships, and foster creative possibilities.
- Becoming a culture worker through writing nonfiction. You’ll begin to establish a presence in the literary world by writing and submitting for publication 3000 words of nonfiction—personal essays, lyric essays, reviews, interviews, literary criticism, and op eds—that complement the concerns of your other creative writing. You’ll read many examples of literary nonfiction and use them as models. You’ll workshop the nonfiction you write for the course and read and respond in writing to the work of your fellow MFA students. And you’ll interact with visiting writers/culture workers and publishing professionals who will give practical advice about how to make yourself seen, heard, and read.
By the end of this course, you’ll have begun the challenging work of moving from MFA writer to professional author, with a voice that resounds for your readers and contributes to our culture.
David Groff is a poet and independent book editor specializing in connecting new writers with their readers. Formerly a senior editor at Crown, he has edited novels and serious nonfiction published by publishers ranging from Random House to Bellevue Literary Press. David received his MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers Workshop and has an MA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa. His first book, Theory of Devolution, was selected for the National Poetry Series; his second poetry collection, Clay, won the Louise Bogan Award; his third book of poems, Live in Suspense, appeared in 2023. He has co-edited two anthologies, Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners, which won a Lambda Literary Award, and Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS. He has taught poetry, nonfiction, and publishing in the City College MFA creative writing program since 2007.
B1977 Writing with James Baldwin
Prof. Emily Raboteau
Tuesdays 6:45 – 8:35pm
Section 2TU (37588)
“You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world…” said Harlem-born writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin. In this course, we will study the craft of narrative storytelling used by Baldwin to challenge American conscience and inspire societal change. This class offers both an investigation of his multi-genre work as well as an invitation to write with him, through his writings. Through close reading of a range of Baldwin’s essays and fiction (including Go Tell it On the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, “Sonny’s Blues,” and more) students will discuss themes of identity, social justice, self-acceptance, and human connection. Guided writing exercises will encourage students to develop their own authentic narratives using some of the literary motives and techniques characteristic of Baldwin’s project, which pointed both inward and outward. You will expand upon and workshop one of these exercises for group feedback in the second half of the semester, then edit it for your final project. I aim to offer a supportive space for students to hone their singular writing styles while drawing from Baldwin’s enduring legacy to meet our political moment with purpose.
Emily Raboteau has taught creative writing in the MFA program at CCNY for over 20 years. Like James Baldwin, she is a novelist, short story writer, essayist, and critic whose themes include social justice, race, and gross asymmetries of power. Her personal/political writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The New York Times, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Best American Short Stories, The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, and elsewhere. She is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and a contributing editor at Orion. Her books include The Professor’s Daughter, Searching for Zion (winner of an American Book Award), and Lessons for Survival (finalist for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize). Her next novel, Endurance, is forthcoming from Henry Holt & Co. In 2024 she directed CCNY’S James Baldwin Centennial Celebration. She considers James Baldwin to be her biggest literary influence. www.emilyraboteau.net
This course is also available as Literature.
B1987 From Idea to Publication: A Deep Dive into Genre Fiction
ONLINE
Prof. Mayra Cuevas
Thursdays 4:45 – 6:35pm
Section 4RS (37057)
This intensive novel development course guides students through the craft of writing commercial and upmarket genre fiction, while incorporating real-world insight into paths to publication. Students engage in active craft techniques for idea, character and plot development, while gaining an understanding of the genres marketplace. Writers will use their own life experience, identity exploration and cultural background to create a more authentic narrative that feels fresh and original. At the conclusion of 15 weeks, students will have developed their own idea into a novel-length story concept, and then into the first chapters of a manuscript. They will also work with critique groups for feedback, gain insight into the current publishing landscape, break down the literary agent query process and the relationship between authors, agents and editors. This is a workload heavy course for students wishing to develop and complete a full-length novel and potentially be traditionally published.
Mayra Cuevas is the award-winning author of books for readers of all ages. Her young adult novel Does My Body Offend You? (co-written with Marie Marquardt) was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award, a Target Book Club selection, named a 2023 Book All Young Georgians Should Read and appeared in multiple “Best Books” lists. In 2023, she was named Georgia Author of the Year (YA category). Mayra’s debut picture book My Abuela is a Bruja earned three starred reviews and released to wide critical acclaim. Her debut adult romance How to Fake a Southern Gentleman (co-written with Marie Marquardt) releases in 2026. Mayra is also the author of the teen foodie romcom Salty, Bitter, Sweet, and the short story“Resilient,” published as part of the anthology Foreshadow: The Magic of Reading and Writing YA. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Mayra is a former award-winning CNN producer, and now a creative writing professor. She also co-founded the Latinx Kidlit Book Festival and its Latinx Storytellers Conference. Mayra keeps her sanity by practicing Modern Buddhism and meditation. She splits her time between Atlanta and Puerto Rico. You can find Mayra on Instagram @Mayra.Cuevas and her website MayraCuevas.com.
B2030 The Evidence of Things Unseen: Art, Archives, and Harlem
Prof. William Gibbons
Mondays 4:45 – 6:35pm
Section 1FG (46803)
In this hands-on seminar, students directly engage with primary sources held in cultural institutions, archives, museums, libraries and historical societies. Students will gain practical skills searching catalogs, databases, photo collections, and oral histories, establishing a foundation in academic archival research and critical thinking. The classes will extend beyond the classroom into the streets of Harlem. Through curated walking tours, students directly encounter the relationship between place and memory, and history, analyzing social and architectural narratives to understand the community’s enduring cultural significance. The seminar’s core focus is on content creation and storytelling, challenging students to transform their discoveries into projects that amplify their voices and share evidence of things seen.
William Gibbons is a librarian and an archivist. He teaches urban policy, library science, and archival research at The City College of New York (CCNY) and is the Curator of Archives & Special Collections in the City College Libraries. He is a resource on Harlem and helps students and researchers become knowledgeable library users to use libraries and archives to their fullest potential. His writing and research are focused on curating and preserving evidence of cultural heritage unseen.
This course is also available as Literature.
B2033 The Language of the Landscape in the Caribbean Writing
Prof. Kedon Willis
Mondays 6:45 – 8:35pm
Section 1HJ (37055)
This course traces how writers across the Americas have imagined—and contested—the natural world. From the myth of terra nullius (“nobody’s land”) to the tropical sublime, the “New World” was long cast as boundless, Edenic, and untouched. Yet for Indigenous, enslaved, and indentured peoples, these same landscapes bore the scars of conquest, labor, and loss. What happens when paradise speaks back? Through poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, we will examine how Caribbean and American writers reimagine nature as a site of survival and transformation. Our readings move from colonial travelogues to contemporary eco-fiction, tracing how the language of the landscape reflects ongoing struggles over belonging, identity, and ecological crisis. Some authors include Eric Walrond, Samuel Selvon, Jamaica Kincaid, and Rita Indiana; their collective works will take us from Panama’s jungles to Trinidad’s cane fields, from the tourist coasts of Jamaica to the dystopian seas of the Dominican Republic.
Kedon Willis is an assistant professor of English at City College, where he teaches Caribbean and Latin American literature. His courses explore how writers imagine freedom, belonging, and the natural world in the wake of colonialism. His current project, Mercenary Queers in Caribbean Literature, examines how contemporary Caribbean authors use queer characters to question what liberation means in societies still shaped by colonial histories. Outside of research, he writes essays and creative works that have appeared in Obsidian, The Journal of Asian Studies, and on the History Channel.
This course is also available as Literature.
Literature
B0608 Women and Epic,
Beowulf to Toni Morrison
Prof. Elizabeth Mazzola
Tuesdays 4:45 – 6:35pm
Section 2RS (36935)
This course explores the role of women in epics, a genre traditionally associated with male violence, nation-building, and state power. Alongside explorations of Beowulf, Sundiata, The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost, we will consider a handful of works by Toni Morrison, focusing on the ways she rethinks history, memory, genealogy, and community, borrowing from African epics, attending to trauma and loss, and describing conflicts among mothers, sisters, and daughters in terms once reserved for war, heroism, and brute force.
Elizabeth Mazzola mainly teaches medieval and early-modern literature at City College, and has published several books and articles on Shakespeare, Spenser, Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart, and other early modern women writers. Current projects include a study of female flow in Twelfth Night and a treatment of the ways the chartering of the London East India Company informs Shakespeare’s comedy. She’s also started posting on Medium https://medium.com/@emazzola_12716, where you can find discussions of female painters and Virginia Woolf, Kim Jong Un’s daughter and possible successor Kim Ju-Ae, and Victorian novelist George Gissing’s influence on “Sex and the City.”
B1281 Postcolonial Autobiography: Engaging Narratives of Identity, Resistance, and Transformation
Prof. Harold Veeser
Wednesdays 4:45 – 6:35pm
Section 3FG (35205)
Postcolonial memoir and autobiography offer unique personal accounts of self-transformation. Excruciating events (war, assault, injustice, discrimination), personal challenges (weight loss, disability, family tragedy), and LGBTQ+ issues often are foregrounded. This seminar will be given over mainly to discussions of these celebrated memoirs including the following:
Required books: Suad Amiry, Sharon and My Mother-in-Law (Anchor Books, 2007); Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis; and three books chosen by student vote from a list of books by Trevor Noah, Kwame Onwuachi, Shyam Selvadurai, Clemantine Wamariya, Diane Guerrero, Wangari Maathai, and Arundhati Roy.
These memoirs collectively address themes relevant to students at The City College of New York: migration, family, cultural identity, resistance, and the ongoing impacts of colonialism. Their diversity of voices and experiences offer opportunities for critical discussion and personal reflection. Course requirements: Attend the class meetings, read and discuss the books. Any required writing will be completed during the class periods.
H. Aram Veeser has written articles for The Nation and Z Magazine, is co-author of Painting between the Lines (2001), author of Edward Said: The Charisma of Criticism (2010), and editor of The New Historicism (1989) and four other volumes. Recently he has been writing about parasites (“The Uninvited Guest”), the postcolonial interview (guest editor of a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing), and Gaza. He is finishing draft of his memoir, Manorexia, his personal account male anorexia and its transition to bodybuilding (Bigorexia).
B1957 The Novel Now: Contemporary Fiction
Prof. Robert Higney
Thursdays 4:45 – 6:35pm
Section 4RS (37050)
In this course, we will read a set of very recent novels, from about the past decade, with an eye to what they can tell us about literature in the present. These works engage with the urban environment, digital technology, migration, race and identity, history and memory, and other themes of contemporary relevance. They raise questions about the status of English as a global literary language, about the continued relevance of modernism and avant-garde writing, and about the relationships between “literary” and “genre” fiction. Equally important will be our investigation of the contemporary literary field, and how novels are written, sold, published, circulated, reviewed, and read today. This includes the role of cultural prizes, the consolidation of the publishing industry, Amazon and independent bookstores, and questions around translation.
In the past the syllabus for this course has included works such as Raven Leilani, Luster; Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive; Hernan Diaz, Trust; Teju Cole, Tremor; Mohsin Hamid, Exit West; Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun; and Samantha Schweblin, Little Eyes; plus critical and theoretical readings. This list is subject to revision for Spring 2026. Assignments: reading journal posts, a midterm book review, and a final project.
Robert Higney writes about twentieth century British and colonial/ postcolonial literature, including authors such as Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, and Mulk Raj Anand, as well as contemporary fiction. Recent work has appeared in the journals ASAP/J, Studies in the Novel, and Symplokē, and his book Institutional Character: Collectivity, Individuality, and the Modernist Novel came out in 2022 with the University of Virginia Press. In the graduate program, he has taught courses on twentieth-century British fiction, contemporary literature and publishing, and the historical novel. He has directed MA Literature theses on topics including Toni Morrison and folklore, Caribbean and South Asian fiction, modern dance, and contemporary historical novels.
B1977 Writing with James Baldwin
Prof. Emily Raboteau
Tuesdays 6:45 – 8:35pm
Section 2TU (37588)
“You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world…” said Harlem-born writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin. In this course, we will study the craft of narrative storytelling used by Baldwin to challenge American conscience and inspire societal change. This class offers both an investigation of his multi-genre work as well as an invitation to write with him, through his writings. Through close reading of a range of Baldwin’s essays and fiction (including Go Tell it On the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, “Sonny’s Blues,” and more) students will discuss themes of identity, social justice, self-acceptance, and human connection. Guided writing exercises will encourage students to develop their own authentic narratives using some of the literary motives and techniques characteristic of Baldwin’s project, which pointed both inward and outward. You will expand upon and workshop one of these exercises for group feedback in the second half of the semester, then edit it for your final project. I aim to offer a supportive space for students to hone their singular writing styles while drawing from Baldwin’s enduring legacy to meet our political moment with purpose.
Emily Raboteau has taught creative writing in the MFA program at CCNY for over 20 years. Like James Baldwin, she is a novelist, short story writer, essayist, and critic whose themes include social justice, race, and gross asymmetries of power. Her personal/political writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The New York Times, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Best American Short Stories, The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, and elsewhere. She is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and a contributing editor at Orion. Her books include The Professor’s Daughter, Searching for Zion (winner of an American Book Award), and Lessons for Survival (finalist for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize). Her next novel, Endurance, is forthcoming from Henry Holt & Co. In 2024 she directed CCNY’S James Baldwin Centennial Celebration. She considers James Baldwin to be her biggest literary influence. www.emilyraboteau.net
This course is also available as Craft Seminar.
B2030 The Evidence of Things Unseen: Art, Archives, and Harlem
Prof. William Gibbons
Mondays 4:45 – 6:35pm
Section 1FG (46803)
In this hands-on seminar, students directly engage with primary sources held in cultural institutions, archives, museums, libraries and historical societies. Students will gain practical skills searching catalogs, databases, photo collections, and oral histories, establishing a foundation in academic archival research and critical thinking. The classes will extend beyond the classroom into the streets of Harlem. Through curated walking tours, students directly encounter the relationship between place and memory, and history, analyzing social and architectural narratives to understand the community’s enduring cultural significance. The seminar’s core focus is on content creation and storytelling, challenging students to transform their discoveries into projects that amplify their voices and share evidence of things seen.
William Gibbons is a librarian and an archivist. He teaches urban policy, library science, and archival research at The City College of New York (CCNY) and is the Curator of Archives & Special Collections in the City College Libraries. He is a resource on Harlem and helps students and researchers become knowledgeable library users to use libraries and archives to their fullest potential. His writing and research are focused on curating and preserving evidence of cultural heritage unseen.
This course is also available as Craft Seminar.
B2033 The Language of the Landscape in the Caribbean Writing
Prof. Kedon Willis
Mondays 6:45 – 8:35pm
Section 1HJ (37055)
This course traces how writers across the Americas have imagined—and contested—the natural world. From the myth of terra nullius (“nobody’s land”) to the tropical sublime, the “New World” was long cast as boundless, Edenic, and untouched. Yet for Indigenous, enslaved, and indentured peoples, these same landscapes bore the scars of conquest, labor, and loss. What happens when paradise speaks back? Through poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, we will examine how Caribbean and American writers reimagine nature as a site of survival and transformation. Our readings move from colonial travelogues to contemporary eco-fiction, tracing how the language of the landscape reflects ongoing struggles over belonging, identity, and ecological crisis. Some authors include Eric Walrond, Samuel Selvon, Jamaica Kincaid, and Rita Indiana; their collective works will take us from Panama’s jungles to Trinidad’s cane fields, from the tourist coasts of Jamaica to the dystopian seas of the Dominican Republic.
Kedon Willis is an assistant professor of English at City College, where he teaches Caribbean and Latin American literature. His courses explore how writers imagine freedom, belonging, and the natural world in the wake of colonialism. His current project, Mercenary Queers in Caribbean Literature, examines how contemporary Caribbean authors use queer characters to question what liberation means in societies still shaped by colonial histories. Outside of research, he writes essays and creative works that have appeared in Obsidian, The Journal of Asian Studies, and on the History Channel.
This course is also available as Craft Seminar.
Language and Literacy
C0855 Teaching Adult Writers in Diverse Contexts
Prof. Barbara Gleason
Tuesdays 6:45 – 8:35pm
Section 2TU (37036)
HYBRID SYNCHRONOUS
The course description is forthcoming.
Barbara Gleason is a CCNY English Department professor and Director of the MA in Language and Literacy. Her scholarship focuses on basic writing, adult learners, writing course curricula, and program evaluation. She published The Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Adult Learners with Kimme Nuckles in 2014 (Bedford St. Martin’s Series in Macmillan). With Laura Gray-Rosendale, Barbara has recently edited a collection of 33 original essays for a book titled Basic Writing in the 21st Century (Peter Lang, forthcoming in 2025).
B8100 Second Language Acquisition
Prof. Missy Watson
Thursdays 6:45 – 8:35pm
Section 4TU (37035)
HYBRID SYNCHRONOUS
This course examines the relationship between research on second language acquisition and best practices for teaching English language learners (ELLs). We will survey seminal research theorizing how people learn and acquire new languages, including what aspects of the acquisition process are universal, as well as what sorts of environmental, social, and individual factors influence why ELLs develop additional languages so differently. To gain pedagogical insights (for both teaching language and teaching writing), we will investigate the diverse educational needs and experiences of ELLs across three different contexts: high school, college composition courses, and in community programs. In addition to highlighting the implications of second language acquisition theory to teaching, we will engage in our own qualitative research and practice communicating our findings and analyses in academic presentations as well as research reports. Course texts may include Muriel Saville-Troike’s Introducing Second Language Acquisition, Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani’s Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research, Alison Mackey and Susan M. Gass’ Second Language Research: Methodology and Design, and Richard Orem’s Teaching Adult English Language Learners.
Dr. Missy Watson is Associate Professor in the English Department at City College of New York, CUNY. She serves as the Director of the First-Year Writing Program and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in composition, pedagogy, multilingualism, and language studies. Her teaching and administration prioritize radical love, community building, and critical approaches to contesting systemic oppression. Her research lies at the intersection of composition and second-language writing and revolves around seeking social and racial justice. Her publications can be found in the College Composition and Communication, Composition Forum, Composition Studies, Journal of Basic Writing, Basic Writing e-Journal, the Journal of Second Language Writing, and Pedagogy, as well as in edited collections like Plurilingual Pedagogies for Multilingual Writing Classrooms (Losey and Shuck), Reconciling Translingualism and Second Language Writing (Silva and Wang), and the forthcoming Basic Writing in the 21st Century (Gray-Rosendale and Gleason).
