Graduate Resources

Epoch

Epoch (founded 1947), a periodical of prose and poetry, is edited by Michael Koch and published by the Creative Writing staff of the Department of English. Most M.F.A. students serve as Editorial Assistants in their first year of graduate study.

» For further information visit the Epoch site.

The Visiting Writers Series

The Visiting Writers Series is organized by the Creative Writing Program and brings scholars and writers to Cornell for readings, talks, and seminars.

» For further information visit The Visiting Writers Series site.

The Society for the Humanities

The Society for the Humanities brings together visiting Fellows and Cornell faculty who offer graduate-level seminars intended to be exploratory or interdisciplinary.

» For further information visit The Society for the Humanities site.

The School of Criticism and Theory

The School of Criticism and Theory enrolls students and faculty from all over the world each summer in seminars run by eminent theorists. Numerous public lectures and colloquia are also offered a number of scholarships are available to Cornell graduate students.

» For further information visit The School of Criticism and Theory site.

Cornell University Library

The Cornell University Library holds more than seven million physical volumes and offers electronic access to a wealth of digitized primary and secondary sources in the humanities, such as Early English Books Online, Early American Imprints, Literature Online, Black Drama 1850-Present, the MLA Bibliography and JSTOR, to name just a few as well as Library Resources for English. Olin Library reference librarians and subject selectors maintain a variety of subject guides in various disciplines, and are happy to provide personal research consultations as well as course-related instruction sessions on using library resources.

» For further information visit the Cornell University Library site.

Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections

The Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, housed in the Carl A. Kroch Library, offers strong holdings in literature and theater. Collections of special note include the Cornell Wordsworth Collection, the second largest of its kind in the world; the Bernard F. Burgunder Collection of George Bernard Shaw; nearly comprehensive printed holdings of the works of Dante, Petrarch, Jonathan Swift, and Alexander Pope; strong representations of the works of standard English and American authors from the seventeenth-century onwards; the papers of modernist writers such as James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, and Wyndham Lewis; and the archives of authors associated with Cornell, such as E.B. White, Vladimir Nabokov, and A.R. Ammons. Other rare book and manuscript collections of interest include the Human Sexuality Collection, with its extensive holdings in lesbian and gay studies, the Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection, a significant Native American history collection, the largest collections in North America on witchcraft, the French Revolution, and Iceland, and one of the country’s great history of science collections. The Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections offers over 130 instruction sessions per year, introducing both graduate and undergraduate students to original research materials and methods; in-depth, individualized consultations are also available.

Outside the classroom graduate students in English often create forums for teaching each other. Informal reading groups--some established gatherings and others that form from year to year--focus on such topics as Queer Theory, U.S. Latino Literature, Marxist criticism, and Victorian Literature. Conferences largely organized by graduate students also provide a chance for graduate work to reach a wide audience of the Cornell community. Organizations such as the Renaissance Colloquium, The Lounge Hour Reading Series, The Department Roundtable, Quodlibet (a forum for work in Medieval Studies), and the Visiting Writers Series organized by the Creative Writing program bring scholars and writers to Cornell for readings, talks, and seminars.

» For further information visit the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections site.