Mark Schiebe

Mark Schiebe

Assistant Professor

Office: H428-4B

Email: mschiebe@qcc.cuny.edu

Education:

2012 Ph.D. in English, with Certificate in American Studies
The Graduate Center, City University of New York

2009 M.Phil. in English
The Graduate Center, City University of New York

2000 B.A. in English
Skidmore College

Courses I regularly teach:

English Composition II
American Literature II
Introduction to Literary Studies

Teaching Philosophy:

As a teacher of literature and language, my chief aim is to help my students grow in literacy, mind, and imagination. I strive to impart the unique pleasures of rigorous literary study, strive to teach with a respect for the past, the present, and the future of my discipline, and strive to be mindful of the original encounter each student will have with the works we share, stemming in part from the diverse backgrounds and ability levels of the community college classroom. I want my students to leave my class at the end of the semester with the feeling that they are at the beginning, not the end, of an intellectual journey.

My teaching practice is grounded in the notion that writing opens up a crucial space for exploration, critical engagement, and deeper reflection about the subject at hand. My composition and literature classrooms are therefore places where students are given many chances to write, and to re-write, and to do so in a variety of contexts, both formal and informal. Students in my classes learn that composition is a process and that effort and engagement with challenging subject matter are the necessary ingredients of intellectual growth.

I believe students learn best, and have a greater chance of retaining what they've learned, when they share memorable experiences with their classmates. I like to add elements of theater and spontaneity to the classroom experience: my students inhabit literary characters by acting out scenes and rehearsing dialogue from the stories we read, they sketch pictures of fictional settings and objects; sometimes we leave the classroom altogether and read poems in the grass and under the sky.

Publications:

"Stereo Rivalry in James's 'The Jolly Corner.'" American Literary Realism. Vol. 50, No. 1 (Fall 2017), pp. 49-62

"'Society's very choicest brands:'" Hank Morgan's Brand Magic in Camelot." Mark Twain & Money. Ed. Henry B. Wonham and Lawrence Howe. Tuscaloosa: Alabama UP, 2017, pp. 70-82.

Review, Optical Impersonality: Science, Images, and Literary Modernism. Christina Walter. Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association. Vol. 49, No. 2, (Fall 2016) pp. 209-212.

Review, A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation. Nancy Easterlin. Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association. Vol. 47, No. 1, (Fall 2013/Spring 2014), pp. 161-165.

"Car Trouble: Hazel Motes and the Fifties Counterculture." Wise Blood: A Re-Consideration. Ed. John J. Han. Dialogue #11. New York: Rodopi, 2011.