Honors in the Major

Graduating English majors may apply for graduation with honors in English. Candidates must have a grade point average of 3.5 or higher and must take an independent study with a full-time faculty member in order to write an honors-quality paper, which will be submitted to the Honors Committee on the dates described below.

The paper submitted need not be a new work; it may be a revision or extension of a paper previously submitted in a course. Research papers, critical papers, and original works of prose or poetry are acceptable. Candidates should ask an English Department faculty member of their choosing to supervise the preparation of the paper; papers submitted to the Honors Committee must have the signature of this faculty member on the title page.

Honors projects should demonstrate superior originality, depth, and research, and critical or creative intelligence. Papers must be technically correct and research papers must have accurate MLA (if Literature or Writing) or LSA (if Linguistics) citations.

Since a paper may need substantial revision before being submitted to the Honors Committee, you are strongly urged to begin preparing your honors project the semester prior to graduation. 

Submissions must be typed in clear, letter-quality print and be free of comments by faculty members or others.  Papers should be 14-20 pages in length.  Please submit an electronic copy in PDF format (signed by the mentoring professor) to Professor Sarah Schulman at sarah.schulman@csi.cuny.edu.

Papers for majors graduating in January must be submitted by December 1; papers for majors graduating in June or August must be submitted by May 1.  These dates are departmental deadlines.