Teaching and Courses

Every semester the English Program offers a large number of doctoral seminars. Current and past course listings give a sense of the wide variety of our offerings.

Students enrolled in the Ph.D. Program can - after their first year in the program - take courses through the Interuniversity Doctoral Consortium, which includes Columbia, Fordham, The New School, NYU, Princeton, Rutgers, and Stony Brook. Policies for enrollment are given in the Graduate Center Student Handbook.

Students in the Ph.D. Program in English teach at essentially every unit of the City University of New York. At many of the campuses, when they first teach, they are offered a full credit-bearing teaching practicum course (ENGL 79000). At all the campuses they receive the mentorship and support of other part- and full-time faculty members, many of whom will be fellow Graduate Center students and doctoral faculty members. Many of the campuses have active workshops on pedagogical issues.

Our graduate students almost universally gain an extraordinary amount of teaching experience during their years in the English Program. Most have the opportunity to teach a variety of different kinds of writing course, as well as courses in literary specialties. Many teach at both two- and four-year campuses of CUNY during their years in the Ph.D. Program.

The composition/rhetoric courses offered in the Ph.D. Program in English focus on a wide range of questions involving pedagogy, literacy, language, and writing.

Experienced graduate student instructors run a series of workshops for first-time instructors every August as part of a orientation for new teachers in the CUNY system.

The Graduate Center also offers a series of Professional Development courses, several of which focus on questions of pedagogy.

PhD Program in English
The Graduate Center City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue, Room 7407 New York, NY 10016-4309
telephone: 212-817-8315 fax: 212-817-1518
email: english@gc.cuny.edu