Holly Messitt
Associate Professor
English
EMAIL: hmessitt@bmcc.cuny.edu
Office: N-751N
Office Hours: Monday/Thursday 2-3:30
Phone: +1 (212) 776-7278
Professor Messitt has research interest in contemporary fiction, poetry, and theater. She is co-editor, with James Tolan, of New America: Contemporary Literature in a Changing Society (Autumn House Press, 2012).
Expertise
Degrees
Ph.D., Drew University (English)
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 - 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 goals of this course are to stimulate an appreciation for, and an enjoyment of, poetic masterworks mainly of the 20th century. This course includes critical reading and writing; its approach is an in-depth study of poetry which has universal significance. Writers studied include T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, e.e. cummings, Pablo Neruda, Langston Hughes, Theodore Roethke, Gwendolyn Brooks and Sylvia Plath.
Course Syllabus - This course provides careful, in-depth readings from Shakespeare's tragedies, histories and comedies. The course examines some of the main characteristics of his work, including his major themes, the development of character and plot, and the special worlds that he creates through his poetic language.
Course Syllabus
Research and Projects
Prof. Messitt is currently working on a collected edition of Hilda Morley’s poems.
Publications
