CHERYL J. FISH, Ph.D.
40 Harrison Street #30J
New York, NY 10013
212-227-6008; 917-952-8313 (cell)
E-mail:
EDUCATION
Ph.D. in English and American Literature. Women's Studies
Certificate. The Graduate School and University Center, City
University of New York.
Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Creative Writing, Brooklyn College.
Bachelor of Arts, Journalism and English. Michigan State University.
ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS
Tenured Professor of English, Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York. Teach Environmental Humanities; American Literature; Composition at all levels; Women in Literature; Multi-Ethnic Writing and Culture; Creative Writing. Use computerized classrooms, Blackboard, and Web-based assignments.
Appointed Adjunct Lecturer, Department of World Cultures, University of Helsinki, Finland. 2012.
Visiting Professor, Women’s Studies Certificate Program, CUNY Graduate Center. Teach feminist theory and graduate prose seminar to master’s and Ph.D. students.
Administrative Coordinator, Intensive Writing Program, English Department, Borough of Manhattan Community College. Oversee developmental writing program, curriculum development, assessment; run faculty development workshops, and student programs in basic writing, 2008 to 2011.
Spring, 2007. Fulbright Lecturer/Researcher, North American Studies, University of Tampere, Finland. Graduate seminar in Environmental Studies, and lecture course in Multi-Cultural American Literature and Film. Master’s and Ph.D. thesis advising. Visiting lecturer or keynote speaker in American Studies programs at various Finnish, German and French universities.
Fall, 2004 Visiting Professor of American Studies, Mt. Holyoke
College. Teach senior capstone seminar on environmental justice in journalism, literature and film. Serve on campus sustainability committee.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Books and Journal Volumes:
Black and White Women's Travel Narratives: Antebellum Explorations, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004.
Co-Editor, with Farah J. Griffin, A Stranger in the Village: Two Centuries of African-American Travel Writing. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.
Guest Editor, with Yi-Chun Tricia Lin, Women’s Studies Quarterly “Then and Now” commemorating 30 years of academic women’s studies, Fall/Winter 2002/03 Vol. XXX Numbers 3&4. “
Selected Scholarly Essays:
“Lost and Found: Liselotte Wadjstedt’s ‘The Lost One,’ essay on installation and film by Sami artist, Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden. Forthcoming in book on exhibit “Eight Sami Artists,” 2015.
“Sami Film, Identity, and the Circumpolar North,” in Critical Norths: Space, Nature,Theory. Eds. Kevin Maier and Sarah Jaquette Ray. Forthcoming, University of Alaska Press, 2015.
“Surveillance and the Self: Sami Filmmakers Explore National, Environmental and Personal Sovereignty,” in Rivers to Cross: Sami Land Use and the Human Dimension. Eds. Peter Sköld & Krister Stoor. Umeå, Sweden: Umeå University Press, 2013.
“Editing Sophia Peabody’s Cuba Journal: Travel, Editing, Recovery.”
(Written with Jana Argersinger). Documentary Editing 31, Winter/Spring 2011: 68-78.
“Place, Emotion and Environmental Justice in Harlem: June Jordan and Buckminster Fuller’s 1965 ‘Architextural’ collaboration,” special issue on Race, Environment and Represenation, Discourse, Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture. 29.2&3. 2009 Wayne State University Press: 330- 345.
“The Toxic Body Politic: Ethnicity, Gender and Corrective Ecojustice in Ruth Ozeki’s and Daniel B. Gold’s My Year of Meats and Judith Helfand’s Blue Vinyl.” Special Issue of MELUS on Ethnicity and Ecocriticism. Edited by Scott Slovic and Joni Adamson. Vol. 34, Number 2. Summer 2009: 43-62. (Winner of 2009 Florence Howe Award for best essay in English, Women’s Caucus of the MLA)
“Environmental Justice in Literature and Film” in Approaches to Teaching North American Environmental iteratures. Eds Laird Christensen et al. New York: Modern Language Association, 2008: 294-305.
Entry and guide on Nancy Prince, Heath Anthology of American
Literature, Ed. Paul Lauter et al (fifth edition, 2005, sixth edition, 2009)
“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, 2007.
Creative Writing--Poetry
Books and Selected journals:
Make It Funny, Make It Last Belladonna Chapbook #171, 2014
Wing Span. Lewiston, NY: Mellen Poetry Press, 1992
My City Flies By (San Francisco: E.G. Press, 1986) Chapbook.
Obliging Night (New York: Hurricane Books, 1984) Chapbook.
“Volcanic/Panic” and “Blind Spot,” published with text and audio,Terrain.org, A Journal of Built and Natural Environment Issue 31 “Ruin and Renewal, Part 2.” January, 2013.
“Generation X, Crown Heights,” in The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry,” edited by Deborah Ager and M.E. Silverman. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013.
“Pleasure Dome,” “Supine Dome,” “Flying Dance,” published in Confluence: Far from the Centers of Ambition, A Tribute to Black Mountain College.Editor: Lee Ann Brown. Lorimer Press, Lenoir-Rhyne University,2013.
Fiction
“Never Buy Dope in Washington Square,” featured in exhibit on Between C&D innovative fiction of the 1980s, 80 Washington Square East Gallery, NYU, Dec. 2014-Feb. 2015
“Hovering,” short story published and performed, Liars’ League series at KGB Bar. www.liarsleaguenyc.com November, 2013.
Excerpt from novel manuscript Off the Yoga Mat, semi-finalist in L Magazine’s Literary Upstart Contest for Pocket Fiction, 2013
SELECTED HONORS and GRANTS
PSC/CUNY Faculty Research Grant, 2013-2014.
Faculty Publication Grant, Office of Academic Affairs, BMCC 2012-2013. For research leading towards publication.
Sabbatical, Fall 2011-Spring 2012, BMCC. For research on Sami film.
Writer-in-Residence, Spring Creek Project, Oregon State University,
To participate in July, 2010 Pulse Gathering of Scientists at Mount Saint Helens Volcanic National Monument. Write on ecology and change, collaborate with scientists on 30th anniversary of 1980 eruption.
2005/06 Faculty Fellow, Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society,
CUNY Graduate Center. Interdisciplinary faculty and graduate student seminar on Civil Society, Governance, and Justice.
PSC/CUNY Faculty Research Grant, 2004-2005.
Sabbatical, Fall 2003-Spring 2004, BMCC.
INVITED SPEAKER AND PANELIST
Institute for Research on the African Diaspora and Caribbean (IRADAC)-- Works-in-Progress lecture on Environmental Justice and June Jordan’s Harlem Redesign Project—February 26, 2015, CUNY Graduate Center.
Speak on Margaret Fuller’s Letters and Writing, English Dept. Faculty Forum, BMCC, Sept. 2014
Environmental change/nature/culture, Postnatural: 27th Annual Meeting of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, University of Notre Dame, October 3-6, 2013.
“Toxic Bodies, Young Adult Activists: Children’s Emerging Role in Environmental Justice Ecocritism and Film,” Green Feminisms Conference, SUNY New Paltz, June, 2011.
2011 Rose Gladney Lecture on Justice and Social Change celebrating the 40th anniversary of New College, University of Alabama.
“Environmental Justice Makeovers,” Lecture, Dept. of World Cultures,
University of Helsinki, Finland, Sept. 2010.
“Surveillance and the Self: Sami Filmmakers Explore National, Environmental and Personal Sovereignty.” Rivers to Cross Conference
In Sami Studies, Umeå, Sweden, 2010.
“Towards a Poetics of Race, Space & Place: The Harlem Skyrise Project.” Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center, Asheville, NC, Aug, 2010
“Ecocriticism and Environmental Justice,” guest speaker, Goucher College, Critical theory seminar, October, 2009.
Featured keynote panelist, “Writers & the Environment,” at Fulbright
Association’s 30th Anniversary conference, “People and the Planet,” Nov.
2007, Washington, D.C.
Amerika Institute, Ludwig- Maximilians Universität, Munchen.
“Transatlantic Travel and Race,” May, 2007.
CAISA International Center, and Finnish American League keynote
address, “Democracy And Dissent in American Poetry: Walt Whitman
and Langston Hughes,” (Helsinki, April, 2007)
SELECTED PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Mentor to new faculty, English Dept., BMCC/CUNY.
Member, CUNY-wide and BMCC, Sustainability Committees.
Participant, Writing Across the Curriculum Faculty Seminar (WAC), fall 2009, spring 2012.
Member, Writing and Literature committee, BMCC.
Coordinator, Intensive Writing Program, English Dept, BMCC. 2008-2011.
Elected to Non-Fiction Prose Division, Executive Committee, Modern Language Association, 2002-2006.
Elected Member at Large, Margaret Fuller Society, 2003-2005.
Elected Member-at-large, NY Metro American Studies Association.
Reader/Referee for PMLA, Signs, American Quarterly, African-American Review,Clio, A Journal of Literature, History and Philosophy of History, MELUS.
Founder, Women’s Studies Project, interdisciplinary program and faculty interest group, BMCC.