Offers writing-intensive instruction to students across the disciplines by means of readings in various fields. The course includes giving oral presentations; gaining facility with PowerPoint and other technical tools; and using various modes of research. This course serves native and non-native speakers of English who will practice the skills necessary to essay writing in all its forms.
Readings in core texts of western literature produced by civilizations of the ancient world.. Representative texts include works by: Homer, Sophocles and Virgil, and readings in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. Sections of this course may takes up great books of science such as Vitruvius' Ten Books on Architecture read in conjunction with Virgil's Aeneid.
HLI 114:Western Literature: Middle Ages to the Present
Readings in core texts of western literature from medieval times to the present. Representative authors include Chretien, Dante, Racine, Shakespeare, de Lafayette, and Kafka. Instruction in basic elements of rhetoric and composition is also emphasized. Group A, 100-level course.
In this course, students explore the tools and techniques of advanced writing and research. Students write four research papers and give several oral presentations. This course is required for single degree B.A. students and strongly recommended for double degree students.
This course investigates the views man has expressed about the advent impact of technology and science across recorded history. Questions that might be addressed include: What is the relationship between religion and technology? Has man always viewed technological innovations as positive? What relationship is there between man’s vision of utopian society and technology? Readings may include, but are not limited to, novels, philosophical treatises, and the literature of various societies.
Selected plays by Shakespeare will be read and analyzed both as literary and performance texts. Students are required to attend a professional production of a Shakespearean play in New York City.
This course includes Geoffrey Chaucer’s major works The Canterbury Tales and the dream vision poems. The latter are based on accepted contemporary psychological theory that dreams teach solutions to real life problems. In The Canterbury Tales, pilgrims who meet at a roadside tavern tell each other stories about contemporary morals, love, religion, and war as they journey to Canterbury Cathedral. Students will encounter a range of medieval literary genres (e.g., romance, epic, fabliau, and saint’s life) while studying the mores and customs of the fourteenth century. Topics include medieval ideas on fate and religion, marriage, magic, science, and technology.
A study of the Indo-European origins and development of English from Old English Anglo-Saxon, to Chaucer's Middle English and the Modern English Period.
This course along with HLI 412, 416 includes a survey of comparative literature of the medieval period, the increasing focus on the individual in society in medieval romance, and the legend of King Arthur. Works and authors studied include: The Quest for the Holy Grail, The Death of King Arthur, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Song of Roland, Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, Gottfried von Strassburg, Dante, and Boccaccio.
This course focuses on the developing interest in the individual in society in medieval romance. Works and authors studied include: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chretien de Troyes and Gottfried von Strassburg. The course follows the adventuring knight on his quests.
The course covers a variety of texts beginning with the earliest chronicle reports of a great battle leader -- Arthur, king of Britain -- and ending with high medieval romances such as The Death of King Arthur. The course explores the birth of the Arthurian legend. Was there ever a historical Arthur? Did he arise to save his people? Will he come again as legend has promised? How has his story developed in literature and popular culture? Delving into the mythic past of Europe, the readings include folk-tales and historical chronicles, and students will immerse themselves in some of earliest sword and sorcery literature, and observe along the way how developing technologies enhanced warrior cultures.
An individual program of study arranged between student and instructor. A tutorial plan must be prepared (and presented to the Tutorial Committee) outlining the program and indicating the nature and scope of the project. Upon completion of the program, the student receives a grade and credit for a Humanities elective.
COMM 500:Foundations of Business and Professional Communications
The course covers topics that include brainstorming, organizing, writing and revision of technical documents, as well as preparation of verbal presentations with visual aids. In this overview class, students will be exposed to these skills, and have time to generate their own documents and presentations for feedback, but Hum 500 is primarily designed to give the students a foundation so that they may continue on with other, more specialized, classes in this field. Students in need of ESL/ESD attention will receive it. The course may be offered as a week-long intensive class designed to get students familiar with the basic concepts and tools they will need to master in order to pursue the Certificate Program in Professional Communications or other Stevens graduate degrees or programs
This course introduces professional communications: how should professionals construct technical documents for the business or scientific/technical community? What are the techniques writers need for specialized, clear writing? Topics include: genres of technical writing; successful writingstrategies; design principles; format and contents. Students will practice the techniques presented through weekly writing assignments
This course will present a range of professional presentation techniques: oral, web-based, audio-visual. Students' existing skills will be sharpened and enhanced with knowledge of current best professional practices.Weekly assignments will guarantee students will master newtechniques.
This course sharpens students' ability to deliver written descriptions, explanations and instructions to a diverse audience who may not share the writer's technical expertise. Students will create overviews and abstracts; lay out guidelines for readers; craft orderly instructions and explanations; insert necessary illustrations that enhance the documentation; build links to the next set of instructions; summarize effectively; and format for maximumcomprehension.
This course introduces the foundations of writing a business plan. Topics include: what investors and lenders are looking for; the key elements of a business plan; special considerations when writing a business plan for aninternational endeavor or web-based or web-supplemented businesses. Students will demonstrate their knowledge of the material presented through weekly writing assignments
This course is an introduction to writing for engineers. As technical writers, engineers may often feel their task to be only one of "informing," but as has been dramatically illustrated over the last few years, "informing" can be vital to successful system deployment and operation. Lives are often affected by not only the accuracy of an engineer's calculations, but by a clear and understandable presentation of conclusions and recommendations. The ability to write clearly and effectively is essential to an engineer.
This course introduces the issues related to writing for international markets. What factors make writing for an international market different from writing for a domestic market? Topics covered include: the influence on writing of the key elements that make each nation different; the behavior of foreign consumers; translation issues; considerations when writing presentations, instructional texts, business plans, and web content for international audiences.
This course is concerned with the communication of financial information in writing: How should financial professionals construct documents? What are the writing techniques needed to make the numbers tell their own story? Topics include genres of financial writing; successful writing strategies; organizing information; using tables and charts.
This course introduces essential concepts for writing in pharmaceutical houses, medical advertising agencies, and other medical settings. Topics covered include basic medical terminology, appropriate AMA style, and form and format in the use of professional research; preparation of meeting and conference materials for professionals in the field, and working with physicians.
This course dispels the myths about writing for the web and provides students with the skills to move successfully from print to web. The dynamic medium of the Internet not only demands concise, clear, well-organized copy, but an ability to operate in a non-linear world. This course will enable students to: reinforce good technical writing practices; incorporate usability issues when designing information for the web; think in non-linear ways; recognize the different functions of web copy and how to write for each (educational, promotional, information-seeking); understand the different delivery methods and how they influence the layout of the information and audio-visual choices.
This course introduces the writing tasks that are critical to project management as it is used across a wide variety of industries. Topics covered include: the language of work breakdown structures; addressing project requirements; the semantics of risk analysis; assessing scope; and designing and building a project plan. Students will review online project management tools. Students will apply the techniques of writing for project management by creating a project plan to manage some aspect of an academic or extra-curricular activity.
COMM 560:Writing For and About the Science Community
This course introduces the interpretation and analysis of complex scientific information – and the translation of difficult scientific concepts into lively and readable prose. Topics include: effective interview techniques; information-gathering skills; news and feature article structure; editing; writing for the general public, scientists and industry. Students will practice these skills through in-class and take-home writing assignments. Writing assignments will progress from short, weekly articles to longer pieces. By the end of the semester, each student will write a feature article.
COMM 565:Publicity Writing: Techniques of Packaging Information
This course introduces the technical aspects of publicity writing. Topics include: writing a press bio; writing a topic summary; the art of the press release; the basics of the op-ed; and organizing the short informational feature. The course will include “how-to” discussions regarding inquiries from the press and the public, and ways to negotiate direct contacts with both. Guest speakers from the press/marketing field will make occasional presentations during the length of the course.
This course helps students developing a case for support for a nonprofit organization, making long-range programmatic and financial plans, researching potential funders, and preparing proposal materials. Students will learn how to find funding sources and will make regular presentations on their research and writing samples. The class will compile a comprehensive set of funding resources, as well as sample grants and planning documents. Guest speakers will share professional insights and experiences.
This course helps students prepare to write their masters theses. Topics covered include use of databases in research; appropriate organization and development of masters-level research writing; review of technical writing; and general grammar and syntax overview. This course is of special use to speakers of English as a Second Language.
Prerequisites: Enrollment in a relevant masters program.
HLI 421:Power and Politics, Kinship and Kings I: Ancient to Renaissance
From the ancient times to the present, literature has engaged political issues. This course traces the intrigues of civil and familial power as captured in significant literary works which offer profound statements, creatively wrought, about vital moral, social and political principles concentrating on works up to the Renaissance. Questions such as whether civilizations can expect their leaders to be ethical in addition to powerful or what happens to society when leaders confront evolving social conditions such as wars, civil unrest or new legal systems or what interplay there may be among the leader (often a man), his family, and the led will be examined in a variety of genres, such as tragedy and epic, and can be explored by invoking the moral imagination. By considering these questions through the vehicle of fiction, literature elicits not only the audience or readers’ intellect, but their emotions as well – in both cases, by means of reader-response. One pressing question we will tackle is whether fiction that engages issues of power and politics does – or can function to – change the world.
School: College of Arts & Letters
Department: Literature
Research & Education
Education
Ph.D., The Graduate School and University Center, C.U.N.Y., 1987
M.A., The Graduate School and University Center, C.U.N.Y., 1986
M.Ph., The Graduate School and University Center, C.U.N.Y., 1985
The Summer Latin Workshop, University of California, Berkeley, 1980
B.A., magna cum laude, Queens College, C.U.N.Y., Phi Beta Kappa, 1978
Research
Eustache Deschamps
Medieval comparative literature especially 14th century French poetics
Rhetoric, composition and professional communications
Experience & Service
General Information
Much of my research has focused on the 14th century poet Eustache Deschamps and includes editions and translations -- the first into English -- of this important poet. Deschamps wrote the first ars poetica in French in 1392 almost 200 years before the first such English treatise. Contemporaneous with Chaucer, Machaut and Christine de Pizan, Deschamps was a courtier-poet who knew the most powerful political people of his day. My work also includes edited collections on medieval rhetorical practices. Finally, as director of graduate and undergraduate writing and communications programs, I have been interested in rhetoric and composition especially in technical situations and assisted by new technologies.
Institutional Service
Selected service:
Director, Academic Writing Programs, 2009-present
Director, Writing and Communications at the Institute, 2007-2009
Chair, Academic Standards Committee, 2009-present
College of Arts and Letters Curriculum Committee, 2007-2009
Graduate Curriculum Committee, 2004-present
Academic Planning and Resources Committee, 2004-2009
Ad-Hoc Day Care Initiative, 2004-2005
Undergraduate Promotions Committee, 2000-present
Chair, President’s Task Force on the Recruitment and Retention of Women Faculty, 2001-2003
Chair, Steering Committee, President’s Task Force on the Recruitment and Retention of Women Faculty, 2001-03
Member, Search Committee, Dean for SASLA, 2000
Director, Graduate Certificate Program in Professional Communications, 2003-present
Director of the Samuel, Minerva and David Lee Humanities Resource Center, 1992-2009
Director of Writing Programs, 1991-2007
Institute Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, 1999-2000
School of Applied Sciences and Liberal Arts Curriculum Committee, 1998-1999
For several years, beginning in 2002, I have had Technogenesis students working on digitizing the collected works of Eustache Deschamps. All 11 volumes of the poet's work have been digitized, and are searchable in a database that continues to be the subject of student research. Students have not only been awarded summer Technogenesis support, but have earned class credit for database management both as part or all of a Computer Science course. In addition, one student wrote her BA thesis on the digitizing of this collection.
Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi. (2000). "Eustache Deschamps' L'Art de dictier: Just What Kind of Poetics Is It?: Or, How Robert O. Payne Launched My Career in Deschamps Studies", Reconstructive Polyphony, John Hill and Deborah Sinnreich-Levi, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. 29-44.
Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi. (1998). "The Female Voice of the Misogynist Poet: Deschamps' Poems in Women's Voices", Eustache Deschamps, French Courtier-Poet: His Work and His World, Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, AMS Press. 123-130.
Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi. (2006). "Teaching The Song of Roland in Modern English Translation", Approaches to Teaching The Song of Roland, William Kibler and Leslie Zarker Morgan, MLA. 188-193.
Report
Deborah Sinnreich-Levi, Allen Mandelbaum and Frederick Goldin. (1992). "Voices in Translation: The Authority of "Olde Bookes" in Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor of Helaine Newstead", New York: AMS Press.
Deborah Sinnreich-Levi,. (1994). "Eustache Deschamps' L'Art de dictier. East Lansing, MI", Colleagues Press.
Deborah Sinnreich-Levi, Editor, Eustache Deschamps, French Courtier-Poet:. (1998). "His Work and His World. Intros. Stephen Nichols and Glending Olson", New York: AMS Press.
Deborah Sinnreich-Levi, Laurie. Columbia, SC: Bruccoli, Clark Layman, Inc.,. (1999). "The French and Occitan Middle Ages: Dictionary of Literary Biography ", 208.
Deborah Sinnreich-Levi. (2000). "Reconstructive Polyphony: Studies in the Rhetorical Poetics of the Middle Ages. Co-ed.", John Hill. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, .
Deborah Sinnreich-Levi, I.S. Laurie, David Curzon, Jeffrey Fiskin. (2003). "Selected Poetry of Eustache Deschamps. Co-eds. and co-trs. ".
Deborah Sinnreich-Levi. (2011). "Le Miroir de Mariage.", Ian S. Laurie and R. Barton Palmer.
