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Engaging with the Archives to Engage with Our Communities
Resource Type: Instructor: Andrea Efthymiou Title: Associate Professor Department: English Course: 200-level writing class Description 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…
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Living Photograph Project in Queens
Resource Type: Module/Assignment Instructor: Hillary Miller Title: Associate Professor Department: English Course: ENGL 371 Twentieth- and Twenty-first Century Drama and Performance Description 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…
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English 130: Writing About the Literature of Queens (Essay Sequence)
Resource Type: Essay sequence Instructor: Kate Schnur Title: Adjunct Assistant Professor Department: English Course: English 130 (Composition II, Writing About Literature) Description 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…
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ENG 101: Profiling Places in Queens
Resource Type: Assignment Instructor: Victoria Tomasulo Title: Doctoral Lecturer Department: English Course: ENG 101: Profiling Places in Queens Description This sequence of three assignments for English Composition students at Queensborough Community College is structured as a response to the Goings On newsletter published in the May 2025 issue of The New Yorker, which showcased seven short profiles of the staff writers’ favorite ‘Only in New York’ spots. Featured under “Local Gems,” four of these pieces focused on spots in Manhattan and three on places in Brooklyn. To counter this well-worn pattern of borough discrimination, QCC students write a letter to the editor that criticizes the magazine’s decision to overlook Queens, the…
