English Language and Literature Commons^™

A Low-Stakes Assignment That Introduces Ai Technology Into The Analysis And Writing Process, Tim Mccormack

Open Educational Resources

In this ENG 225 assignment, students use AI (ChatGPT) to perform tasks related to summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, and responding to a text, then compare the AI-generated work to their own. Using Blitzer’s article “The Rhetorical Situation”, students create APA citations, summaries, paraphrases, key quotes, and personal responses with AI guidance. The assignment emphasizes critical evaluation by having students analyze the accuracy, effectiveness, and differences between human and AI-generated work. This exercise develops skills in rhetorical analysis, source engagement, and reflective assessment of AI as a tool for writing and research.

(Re)Discovering The Streets Of Nyc: Honorary Signs, Sticker Street Art & Collective/Collaborative Investigations, Mark Mcbeth

Open Educational Resources

In a scaffolded series of assignments, students investigate NYC honorary street signs and sticker art through photography, research, individual essays, and a collaborative project.

Annotated Bibliography Assignment For English 201, Sara Whitestone

Open Educational Resources

In this English 201 assignment, students investigate a research question about happiness and build an annotated bibliography through 15 scaffolded, low-stakes steps involving research, source evaluation, reflection, drafting, feedback, and revision. They use the same sources to write papers in two different disciplinary genres, adapting their selection and use of evidence to each genre’s conventions, audience, tone, and style. The process emphasizes personal intellectual engagement, responsible use of AI, self-assessment, and the understanding that strong academic writing develops through sustained revision.

Creating And Analyzing Topic Sentences With Chat Gpt, Raymond Rosas

Open Educational Resources

This assignment engages students in creating and analyzing AI-generated topic sentences using ChatGPT. By working with a shared textual dataset—in this case, the Comments & Discussion section of the article “If Hispanics Hate the Term ‘Latinx,’ Why Is It Still Used?”—students practice distilling key ideas into concise, coherent sentences that preview and structure content. In groups, students generate topic sentences with ChatGPT, then evaluate them for keyword inclusion, main topic, emphasis, and omissions. This exercise develops skills in clarity, coherence, stance-taking, and rhetorical analysis, while encouraging critical reflection on how AI summarizes and interprets text. The activity concludes with group …

Book Review/Reading Reflection Assignment For Eng 201, Kelley Vick

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Mad Or Uncontrollable? Reading Female Madness In Three Gothic Texts, Amy Marie Bueno

Dissertations and Theses

My thesis employs comparative close reading framed by disability studies to analyze representations of female madness in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, and Isabel Allende’s “If You Touched My Heart.” Drawing on theories of socially constructed disability, it argues that Bertha, Antoinette, and Hortensia are framed as “mad women” not through inherent pathology, but through patriarchal violence, colonial domination, and institutional power. By integrating the social model of disability with feminist theory, this thesis examines how women are rendered disabled within societies influenced by Social Darwinism and eugenic ideologies.

This thesis further incorporates Gothic theory and …

Creating A Social Media Campaign, Alexa Capeloto

Open Educational Resources

Students research an issue related to social good and apply visual, news, and digital literacy skills to design an original image and a proposed social media campaign.

Eng 2100 - Writing 1 - Writing As Being, Jonathan Toro

Open Educational Resources

This is an Open Educational Resources (OER) syllabus for ENG 2100 - Writing 1 - Writing as Being. In this course, students will examine how their identities and communities shape their understanding of themselves and the world around them—how it affects the way they move and think in the spaces they occupy. Through the usage of personal narrative and critical writing, the students will study how language, culture, community, and socio-historical contexts influence their ways of knowing and being. Then, they will utilize these influences—the very systems that affect them in tremendous ways—to write themselves into being.  All course materials, …

Ai Image Generation Study Assignment, Pamela Jean Stemberg

Open Educational Resources

This assignment examines bias and stereotyping in AI image generation systems while teaching students the conventions of scientific genre writing through a formal lab report. Working in interdisciplinary groups, students generate image datasets using gender-neutral professional terms and analyze representations of gender, race, and age. Findings are compared with real-world labor demographics to assess discrepancies between AI outputs and existing data. Students practice core lab report conventions, including hypothesis formation, methods documentation, results presentation, and discussion, while integrating analysis and scholarly research. By combining empirical investigation with structured academic writing, the assignment strengthens students’ ability to communicate complex findings clearly …

From Clicks To Consequences: A Map Of Your Data, Pamela Jean Stemberg

Open Educational Resources

This assignment approaches digital platforms as texts to be read, analyzed, and revised using methods drawn from English studies, such as interpretation, argument, and revision. Students examine the language of user interfaces, compare on-screen promises with formal policy documents, and trace the relationships between design choices, language, and real-world outcomes. Through close reading, students practice core skills of literary and rhetorical analysis while engaging contemporary digital systems. In doing so, the assignment connects traditional writing practices to critical inquiry about power, authorship, and accountability in digital environments.

Rhetorical Analysis Essay, Reema A. Rao

Open Educational Resources

This assignment is a rhetorical analysis essay typically assigned as part of the English 110 course during the summer semester. For this assignment, students apply their understanding of rhetorical appeals and devices to read a chosen text closely and analyze how the author constructs meaning and purpose. A variety of resources are provided to students, each accompanied by a brief overview, and students may select a topic of personal interest from these options. They then conduct a rhetorical analysis of their chosen source and write an essay based on that analysis.

Students are supported with a wide range of , …

Engaging With The Archives To Engage With Our Communities, Andrea Efthymiou

Open Educational Resources

This resource offers an assignment sequence for a 200-level writing class. As a variable topic course broadly titled “Writing for Special Fields,” I have flexibility in terms of course content. I ground this course in theories of community writing, where students will learn about how people have written about and for their communities. The resource supports students engagement with their communities, starting with an introduction to QC’s archives. specifically the “LIfe at Queens College” archive, as a way to tell a story about place. Students will then be invited to tell a story about a community to which they belong …

Queens: An Urban Palimpsest, Lee Norton

Open Educational Resources

Overview:

“Queens: an Urban Palimpsest” is a 2-3 week module about community archives, primary source research, and the importance of place in collective memory. It is centered around the digitally-accessible archival documents hosted by the Queens Historical Society in Flushing, NY.

This resource is offered in three parts: most substantially, five class sessions, written up as instructor scripts; second, a list of additional resources to scaffold the module, which, in its initial design and implementation, kicks off the second of three units in my College Writing I course; and, lastly, an outline of several possible ways of continuing beyond this …

English 130: Writing About The Literature Of Queens (Essay Sequence), Kate Schnur

Open Educational Resources

Source Description — Attached is a draft of a new essay sequence for English 130 (Composition II, Writing About Literature). The traditional essay sequence for this class is: 1. a close reading essay, 2. an analysis of a text through a lens, and 3. a research essay. I have shaped the sequence around a group of literary texts about Queens (you will see a provisional list on the essay 1 prompt) and a small selection of secondary sources about Queens. The first essay is a close reading assignment of one of the literary texts we will read in the first …

Assignment Prompt: Presentation On The Arts In New York City, Caroline K. Hong

Open Educational Resources

I will be creating a prompt for a presentation assignment for a first-year Macaulay Honors College course, Honors 125 (also known as Seminar 1): The Arts in New York City, which I usually teach every fall. Students will be required to present on a specific art form, artist, artwork, or arts institution/organization from their neighborhood or community. The format will be a PechaKucha presentation, which consists of a slideshow that shows 20 slides or images, each for 20 seconds, and the slides advance automatically as the presenter talks along with the slides.

The goals of this assignment are for students …

The Biographical Interview, L Torres

Open Educational Resources

I am currently revising the final unit of my English 110 class so students can delve deeper into language, literacy, literacy sponsorship, place and learning. This final unit project asks students to interview someone from Queens and ask them to share their educational history, as well as their migration story, as it relates to language and identity. The goal is to have students use the tools they’ve acquired throughout the semester and use their critical thinking skills to understand how literacy sponsorship varies from one person to another, and how migration, cultural upbringing, language and identity shape how we interact …

Living Photograph Project In Queens, Hillary Miller

Open Educational Resources

I am developing a module for ENGL 371: Twentieth- and Twenty-first Century Drama and Performance. In this course for majors, I have the latitude to choose different topics in my syllabus design. One of the versions I previously developed was organized around “Visions of Home.” In that first attempt I did not successfully connect the material to Queens at any point; in part because none of the plays I selected were based in Queens, I had not figured out how to implement a place-based mode of inquiry of the kind that this workshop explored. The class is organized chronologically (1950s-2000s) …

Synthesis Essay Assignment, Reema A. Rao

Open Educational Resources

The synthesis essay assignment is the second major assignment of ENGL 110, Freshman Composition Course. This assignment invites students to select a topic of personal interest and then do research to develop a well-supported cohesive argument. The assignment supports learner autonomy by allowing students to choose topics that resonate with their goals, curiosities, and motivations which fosters learning and meaningful engagement.

Students are encouraged to use a wide range of scholarly and non-scholarly sources. By integrating and synthesizing these sources, students build critical thinking and analytical skills. Students also present their research in class and respond to questions about their …

Feminist Scholarly Editing: A Provocation, Marlowe Daly-Galeano, Melissa J. Homestead, Claudia Stokes, Leila Walker

Publications and Research

This essay examines the feminist challenges posed by the protocols and history of scholarly editing. Prompted by the recent revival of bibliographical studies, the essay seeks to instigate a similar reconsideration of scholarly editing, bibliography’s counterpart in textual criticism. Scholarly editing has a vexed history with regard to women and gender: women writers were seldom the beneficiaries of editorial attention, but editors regularly used gendered metaphors to describe their work and often relied on the unacknowledged labor of women. This essay examines the history of sexism within the field of scholarly editing, illustrates the challenges and promises of editing women’s …

English 11000, Reflection Essay, Samantha Hernandez, Missy Watson

Open Educational Resources

The Reflection Essay assignment builds on a previous English Composition assignment, the Language and Literacy Narrative (LLN). The LLN asks students to write a detailed narrative about a personal experience they have had with Language and Literacy. Over the course of the semester, students are required to rewrite and revise this essay a number of times. The Reflection Essay assignment asks students to enact reflective writing and explain their experience with iterative writing. They are encouraged to expand on what works in their writing process and any concerns they have about future revisions.

English 11000, Spoken Adaptation Of Language And Literacy Narrative, Samantha Hernandez, Missy Watson

Open Educational Resources

The Spoken Adaptation assignment builds on a previous English Composition assignment, the Language and Literacy Narrative (LLN). The LLN asks students to write a detailed narrative about a personal experience they have had with Language and Literacy. Over the course of the semester, students are required to rewrite and revise this essay a number of times. This particular assignment tasks students with transforming their written work into an oral presentation.

John Domini, Fellow Traveler, George K. Guida

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Writing Workshop In Prose, Kylee C. Pastore

Open Educational Resources

The Prose Workshop (Fall 2025) is a zero-textbook-cost (ZTC) course at The City College of New York that integrates open educational resources (OER) to develop students’ skills as writers, readers, and critics. Structured in two major parts, the course begins with cultural criticism, guiding students to produce a polished 750–1000 word essay that combines close observation, analysis, and creative voice. The second half focuses on longform narrative nonfiction, culminating in a 3,000-word editorial essay intended for submission to a real-world publication. Alongside these core projects, students engage in weekly homework blogs, annotated course readers, and a final creative experiment in …

Love Amid The Rage: Feminist Affect In Women's Life-Writing, Genesis Siverio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of this thesis is to show the ways women’s emotions or affect, particularly rage and love, are described by women writers in their most intimate stories. I discuss the way emotion has been demeaned, and how feminist scholars have instead viewed the body as a place of insight, reclaiming a knowledge from the senses. In the midst of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy, women give voice to their affectual experiences and cultivate the feelings they have so often been denied. Focusing on the particular ways women’s anger manifests in their lives and in their bodies, I zoom in on …

Interspecies Responsivity In Early Modern Drama And Animal Performances, Taylor C. Culbert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation proposes an expansive, interspecies definition of performance that uses behavior rather than cognition as the decisive feature and illustrates how such a definition can reshape our approach to theatre and performance history. Using the concept of responsivity, which refers to the embodied and affective ways that humans and non-human animals acknowledge and react to one another, I trace human–animal interactions across a variety of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century performance genres, from the aristocratic stag hunt and entertainments involving trained animals to the plays of Molière and Shakespeare. Drawing on my experience training animals, I offer a new perspective on …

Zero/Low Textbook Cost Syllabus For [39335 Eng 2100 - Htrf Writing I], Ju Ly Ban

Open Educational Resources

This class is a warm-up for the many writing assignments you will encounter, no matter your major. We will read, write, and talk through texts in different genres, learning how to (1) understand what a writing task is asking for (2) build clear arguments (3) find strong evidence and (4) manage time and writing anxiety. These skills will help you revisit, rethink, and expand your own resources.

You are the writer. (Yes, even if you use ChatGPT. We will talk about how to use it well, too.) And you already have your resources. Let’s begin in an imaginary living room—the …

Transmedial Econarratology: Environment And The Subject Of Science Fiction, Joseph R. Boisvere

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that narrators are constructed by their interactions with diegetic space and time in an ecological relationship. This argument draws upon Erin James’s work on econarratology, particularly her book The Storyworld Accord: Econarratology and Postcolonial Narratives, putting her theories of narrating time and place in dialogue with contemporary “unnatural” narratology as theorized by scholars such as Jan Alber and Brian Richardson. Science fiction (SF) offers a rich complement to these theoretical stances. I also focus much of my dissertation on how narratology works across and is influenced by specific media, featuring literary, audiovisual, and digital media, including novels, …

An Interactive Walkthrough Of Richard Kostelanetz’S Library, Martin Glick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My project utilizes the visual novel game engine Ren’Py to create an embodied virtual walkthrough of Richard Kostelanetz’s personal library. Kostelanetz is a pioneering avante-garde artist, critic, and anthologist whose work spans multiple decades and artistic practices. This interactive experience introduces users to the astounding collection of 25,000 books that Kostelanetz has amassed in Ridgewood, Queens over his decades of publishing avant-garde literature. While scholars might be familiar with his anthologies such as Scenarios: Scripts to Perform (1980) and Texts-Sound Texts (1980), my project allows users to browse through sample pages of his original “Book Art”.

This New Media Object …

A Reconstruction Of The Homeric Tradition In Early Greece, Aidan F. Hoey

Student Theses

This thesis discusses the centuries-long historiographical debate that is known to us as the Homeric Question. The identity of Homer, the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the dating from when the Homeric epic poems were composed, the Homeric diction, and the historicity of the Trojan War has puzzled scholars since Antiquity. Only by the twentieth century, scholars Milman Parry and Albert Lord proved that the Iliad and Odyssey were orally composed. How the written form of the Homeric epic poems came about has become even more of a historiographic puzzle than it has been previously. Building off the …

Ztc Eng 151 Syllabus: College Writing, Nicolette Guida

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus provides a curriculum for an introduction to research writing. In this course, students develop introductory skills for academic research writing, work on critical thinking and analysis skills, and build an awareness of the rhetorical situation both in texts read in class and in their own writing. This course focuses on the impact that culture has in shaping behavior and life experiences. Included course texts are centered on the exploration of the different cultural groups that people occupy and the specific cultural norms, values and beliefs for each of these groups. This is zero textbook cost (ZTC) course, so …