Cheryl J. Fish
Professor
English
EMAIL: cfish@bmcc.cuny.edu
Office: S-616D
Office Hours: M, W, Th times to be determined.
Phone: +1 (212) 220-8279
Professor Cheryl J. Fish teaches English 100.5 as well as English 320, an elective that considers environmental justice and sustainability issues in literature, film and eco-media. She has been visiting professor in women’s studies and liberal studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, a lecturer in American Studies at Mount Holyoke College, a Fulbright Professor at University of Tampere, Finland, and a docent lecturer in the Department of Cultures at University of Helsinki.
In Fall of 2018, Prof. Fish was a writer-in-residence at KulttuuriKauppila in Ii, Finland. Professor Fish has been the Grimes Scholar-in-Residence at the NYU Faculty Resource Network where she researched film by indigenous Sami people of Northern Scandinavia, with a focus on representations of mining and extraction in film and photography, and on Sami identity and resistance.
Professor Fish has also lectured on June Jordan and Buckminster Fuller’s architectural collaboration in Harlem in the 1960s, and how their work was an early example of advocating for sustainable development, ecojustice, and linking it to critical race theory.
Professor Fish’s short fiction has been featured in Liars League NYC and she was a finalist for L Magazine‘s Literary Upstart search for pocket fiction for an excerpt from her novel manuscript Off the Yoga Mat. Her short story, “Never Buy Dope in Washington Square,” from the innovative fiction journal Between C&D was featured in an exhibit at the Fales Library, New York University, in 2015. Her latest poetry chapbook is Make It Funny, Make it Last (#171, Belladonna, 2014). Her creative writing has appeared in The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry; Far from the Centers of Ambition: The Legacy of Black Mountain College; Terrain.org; New American Writing; Talisman; The Village Voice; Kudzu House Press; Santa Monica Review and Volt. She is the author of the scholarly study “Black and White Women’s Travel Narratives: Antebellum Explorations.”
Expertise
Environmental Humanities, Ecocriticism, Activist Art, Creative Writing, Contemporary Fiction, American Literature, African American Travel Writing, Film and ecomedia by Indigenous Sami artists.
Degrees
- Ph.D. CUNY Graduate School, English and American Literature,1997
- MFA, Brooklyn College, CUNY.
- BA, Michigan State University.
Courses Taught
- Students placed in ENG 100.5 are offered extra support, afforded through additional instructional time. Students completing ENG 100.5 will have mastered the fundamentals of college-level reading and writing, including developing a thesis-driven response to the writing of others and following the basic conventions of citation and documentation. They will have practiced what Mike Rose calls the "habits of mind" necessary for success in college and in the larger world: summarizing, classifying, comparing, contrasting, and analyzing. Students will be introduced to basic research methods and MLA documentation and complete a research project. Students are required to take a departmental final exam that requires the composition of a 500 word thesis-driven essay in conversation with two texts. Successful completion of this course is equivalent to passing ENG 101.
Prerequisite: English Proficiency Index of 55-64 or a score of 43-5 on the CAT-W and exemption from ACR 95 or successful completion of ACR 95. This course is not open to ESL students.
Course Syllabus - English Composition is the standard freshman writing course. The course introduces students to academic writing. By its conclusion, students will be ready for English 201 and for the writing they will be asked to do in advanced courses across the curriculum. Students completing ENG 101 will have mastered the fundamentals of college-level reading and writing, including developing a thesis-driven response to the writing of others and following the basic conventions of citation and documentation. They will have practiced what Mike Rose calls the "habits of mind" necessary for success in college and in the larger world: summarizing, classifying, comparing, contrasting, and analyzing. Students will be introduced to basic research methods and MLA documentation and complete a research project. Students are required to take a departmental final exam that requires the composition of a 500 word, thesis-driven essay in conversation with two designated texts.
Prerequisite: Pass the CAT-R and CAT-W or Accuplacer tests
Course Syllabus - This is a course that builds upon skills introduced in English 101. In this course, literature is the field for the development of critical reading, critical thinking, independent research, and writing skills. Students are introduced to literary criticisms and acquire basic knowledge necessary for the analysis of texts (including literary terms and some literary theory); they gain proficiency in library and internet research; and they hone their skills as readers and writers. Assignments move from close readings of literary texts in a variety of genres to analyses that introduce literary terms and broader contexts, culminating in an independent, documented, thesis-driven research paper. By the conclusion of English 201, students will be prepared for the analytical and research-based writing required in upper-level courses across the curriculum; they will also be prepared for advanced courses in literature.
Prerequisite: ENG 101
Course Syllabus - The objective of this course is to sharpen students' creative writing skills in the genres of the short story, poetry and drama, depending on students' interests and ability.
Pre-Requisite: ENG121 or ENG201
Course Syllabus - This course will focus on a specific theme, concept, cultural milieu, or major author to be announced in advance. Topics for the following semester will be made available by the English Department during registration. Each section of the course will cover in-depth a single special topic, such as one of the following: the Harlem Renaissance, Literature and the Environment, Utopian and Dystopian Literature, Literature and Medicine, The Beat Generation, Literature of the Working Class, Satire in the 18th Century, Censorship and Literature, Literature of Immigration, War in Literature, Madness and Inspiration in Literature, Gay and Lesbian Literature, and Women in Shakespeare. Prerequisites: ENG 101 and 201, or ENG 121
Course Syllabus - This is a class that will focus on a variety of timely and historical environmental and social justice issues related to sustainability at the local, national, and global level. We will read essays, fiction and poetry that establish the field of ecocriticism, then draw on readings and films that have expanded ecocriticism to include environmental justice, urban nature and we shall view films on themes related to the readings.
Prerequisite: ENG 201
Course Syllabus - This course focuses on the contributions of women literary artists from a variety of cultures and ethnic groups. It examines how some writers have both reflected the prevailing female stereotypes of their age and background, and also imagined the "New Woman." Enrollment is open to both women and men.
Course Syllabus - This course focuses on the literature of urban America since 1950 and in particular on how contemporary writers use the images and themes of the city.
Course Syllabus - 3 CRS.3 HRS.NULL LAB HRS.ENG 381 (American Literature from the Colonial Era to the Civil War)
- This course surveys American literature from its colonial beginnings to the American Renaissance of the nineteenth century-from Ann Bradstreet and Cotton Mather to Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. Students learn about the cultural milieu that influenced writers, read major and representative works and sharpen their critical abilities.
Course Syllabus
Research and Projects
Publications
Honors, Awards and Affiliations
Participant, “Cell Phone Filmmaking,” NYU Faculty Resource Network Summer seminar, June, 2019.
PSC/CUNY grant cycle 50 for research on eco-media and activist art in response to mining and climate change by Indigenous Sami artists.
Creative Writing Residency, KulttuuriKauppila Artists Residency, Ii, Finland, Sept. 2018.
Faculty Publication Program Grant, 2017/18, to revise essay for publication.
Seed Box Visiting Scholar-in-Residence, Linköping University, Sweden.
Chancellor’s Research Fellowship, for research by CUNY community college faculty (2016-2017).
Calvin B. Grimes Scholar-in-Residence, New York University Faculty Resource Network. June, 2015. Research for a paper on Sami Film as response mining/resource extraction in the Arctic North.
Additional Information
Publications include: BOOKSBlack and White Women’s Travel Narratives: Antebellum Explorations (University Press of Florida, 2004).
A Stranger in the Village: Two Centuries of African American Travel Writing co-edited with Farah Griffin. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999)
essays: “Environmental Justice in Literature and Film: From the Toxic to the Sustainable” in Teaching North American Enviromental Literature Eds. Laird Christensen et al. New York: Modern Language Association, 2008: 294-305
“Enviromental Justice in Harlem: Buckminster Fuller and June Jordan’s “Architextural” Collaboration,” in Discourse: A Journal of Cultural and Media Studies
“The Toxic Body Politic: Ethnicity, Gender and Corrective Ecojustice” in Ruth L. Ozeki’s My Year of Meats and Judith Helfand’s “Blue Vinyl” of MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literature) of the U.S. on race and environment, Edited by Scott Slovic and Joni Adamson.
“Ecocritical Terror”: U.S. Direct Action Fiction and Film in the Name of Ecodefense,” (trans. into Finnish). In Noisy Spring: Ecocritical Literary Studies eds. Toni Lahtinen and Markku Lehtimaki Helsinki: The Society of Finnish Literature, 2008.
“Rhetorics of Terrorism in American Literature about Environmental Degradation,” (translated into Finnish) in Perspectives on Terrorism: Interpretations and Problematics. Editor Kari Laitinen. Espoo: Police College of Finland: Research Series Esd 2007.
Entry and guide on Nancy Prince, Heath Anthology of American Literature, Ed. Paul Lauter (fifth edition, 2005).
“Journeys and Warnings: Nancy Prince’s Travels as Cautionary Tales for African American Readers,” in Women at Sea: Travel and the Margins of Caribbean Discourse, Eds. Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert and Ivette Romero-Cesareo. New York: Palgrave, 2001: 225-243.
“‘Unconnected Intelligence’ and the Public Intellectual: Margaret Fuller’s Letters and Critical Writing,” in Margaret Fuller’s Cultureal Critique: Her Age And Legacy. Ed. Fritz Fleischmann. New York: Peter Land, 2000: 153-65.
“Voices of Restless (Dis)Continuity: The Significance of Travel for Black Women in the Ante-bellum Americas,” Women’s Studies, An Interdisciplinary Journal, 26:5 (July, 1997): 475-95.
“Someone to Watch Over Me: Politics and Paradoxes in Academic Mentoring,” essay in Working Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory. Eds. Michele M. Tokarczyk and Elizabeth Fay. Amherst: UNiversity of Massachusetts Press, 1003: 179-96.
Other essays: “Cash Test Dummy: Surviving Parenthood on One Income,” in Choosing Motherhood: Single Mothers by Choice Share Their Stories. Ed. Karyn Slutsky. New York: Falling Fences, 2007.
