In this class we will examine a constellation of British “realist” novels that are set in fictional county towns in England. Fictional towns such as Coketown and Mudfog in Dickens’ work (based on Preston in Lancashire), Wessex in Thomas Hardy’s (said to include Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Berkshire among others), Raveloe and Middlemarch in George Eliot’s (speculated to be based on Coventry in Warwickshire), Barchester in Trollope’s (said to be based on a combination of Winchester and Exeter).

The course studies the topographical imagination in these realist novels. It asks: What does the decision to rename a place that is adjacent to an actual place do for the symbolic construction of that reality? How do these fictional spaces explore the heterogeneities of the periphery as distinct from (and similar to) the popular metropolitan characterizations of the peripheries? How do they attend to the specific vernacular language-scapes of these regions? How does the chronotope of these regionally-specific novels explore the working conditions and social life in smaller industrial and semi-rural parts of England?

In this course, we will treat fictional spatial geography as an essential part of time, narrative and plot-construction of the realist novel. Studying theories of the novel such as Bakhtin’s “chronotope” and Paul Ricoeur’s “threefold mimesis” we see how the fictional naming of spaces provides the opportunity for salience, symbolism and specificity in realist novels. Realism, therefore, is not an exercise in inventorying reality, but imaginatively constructing it (what Barthes, noting the lack of novelistic cohesion in Flaubert, calls the “reality effect” in his 1989 essay of the same title). The fictionalization of actual spaces allows the reader to avoid easy identifications or preconceptions and instead “come into” the constructed world of realist narrative. It is in this manner that the realist novel inscribes within itself the seemingly opposite paradigm of escapism and representation. Keeping in mind this dialectic between the imagined and the real, we will explore the multiple realisms that emerge from the deliberately selected sample size of Victorian realist novels included in this course, and how their regional and fictional vantage point allows them to respond to the modernizing epoch of the Victorian era and the crises that lie therein.

Exploring Music (aka Introduction to Music) examines how music communicates and embodies social and personal ideas, beliefs, and values relevant to both music makers and users. Musical elements and listening skills are introduced and developed throughout the course in order to explicate musical meanings. We will investigate topics such as music and love, music and gender, music and politics, war, ethnicity, et cetera. We will also examine how these topics are embedded in different genres of music, including popular music, world music, and Western art music (also known as classical music). No previous musical expertise such as knowledge of musical notation is required to succeed in this class. At the end of this semester, students will better understand how different musics function within their social context.

Medical anthropology examines how health and illness, as well as medical knowledge and practice, are shaped not only by culture but also by social, political and economic realities. In this course you will be introduced to the key theoretical frameworks, concepts and debates that have shaped this vast subfield of cultural anthropology. Together, we will draw on this knowledge to critically examine questions of cultural difference, power, and inequality in relation to local and global current events as well as our own experiences of health, illness and medical care. On this site you will find all of the readings, assignments and resources associated with the course as well as a virtual space to connect with each other beyond the classroom.

In this course, we examine contemporary discourse and practice around writing instruction in the secondary English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. School-based composition is often framed and assessed as a specific set of discrete skills that can be developed through decontextualized “best practices.” We will interrogate the assumptions about writing and literacy that sustain these practices and contextualize them within larger (settler) colonial projects. Ultimately, we will develop our own writing philosophies and associated curricular innovations and pedagogical moves.

Specifically, throughout this course, we will:

Review the social, historical, and political contexts that shape contemporary approaches to standards-based writing instruction
Investigate our assumptions about the writing process and our conceptions of “good” writing
Explore the challenges, tensions, and possibilities of a decolonial educational framework
Develop a range of creative, collaborative, and nontraditional approaches to standards-based writing instruction

Read more about the course design:
Mina Rees Library | Drafting Possible Futures
https://gclibrary.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2020/05/06/oer-drafting-possible-futures/

See also: Drafting Possible Futures: An Open-Access Handbook for English Educators
Link: https://764handbook.commons.gc.cuny.edu/
This website was collaboratively created by students enrolled in Multimodal Writing in the Standards-Based ELA Classroom. Students wrote the introduction and all chapters, and two student editors reviewed all pieces and created the website design. The result is a document that can be used by any ELA teachers as well as future English Education students.

Syllabus and schedule for a graduate level course designed to introduce Master’s students in music theory and musicology to the academic music research process (e.g. reference tools, citation styles, types of sources, etc.) and build their skills in academic writing. The course is taught seminar style: each week features readings from Booth et. al, The Craft of Research; Sampsel, Music Research: A Handbook; and contemporary selections from various writing genres across the fields of music theory and musicology. The core assignment for the semester is a 15-18 page term paper broken down into various stages.

Extremely rudimentary (introductory), graded ear training exercises designed to loosen the tongue and guide the student through rhythmic and diatonic patterns of increasing difficulty.

Assignment sheets for the three hearings (essentially sight singing exams) assigned over the course of the semester. Class was taught online and synchronously, but these hearings could be used all the same in person. Examples include Schubert and Beethoven, as well as excerpts from A New Approach to Sight Singing.

Syllabus used for the sight singing portion of MUSIC 171 at the Queens College Aaron Copland School of Music. MUSIC 171 is divided between sight singing and dictation, for which there are separate syllabuses. The sight singing portion met twice a week (Tuesday and Friday) for one hour. This syllabus outlines the course policies and content goals, which mainly include cultivating understanding and fluency of movable do solfege, confidence in singing melodies with steps, leaps, and uncomplicated rhythms in major and minor modes, and ability to sight read easy melodies and rhythms in a variety of simple and compound meters.

Sheet with various permutations of the major-key tonic triad arpeggio, including iterations that start on all three chord members. Used in class as a warmup exercise during the first several weeks of sight singing 1. One way you can mix up this in-class activity and/or make it more challenging is to change the key: have students sing these arpeggios in a key other than C major, even though they are reading in C major. An even further challenge is to have them sing it in minor, without showing the accidentals/change in key signature.

A written assignment that asks students to locate and compare two reviews of the same piece from different locations/periods, including specific features to discuss from both reviews. This prompt is best suited to advanced music majors familiar with research and musical reception, ideally within a class focused on a specific composer or genre.

A written assignment that asks students to examine and compare multiple editions of the same Bach composition. This prompt can be easily adapted to fit other composers.