Meet Dr. Sicari!

Today we are kicking off a brand new series of Meet the Faculty posts! These are a little get-to-know-you of your English professors. Not only do they teach your classes, but they are also researching, writing for publication, and presenting at conferences.

Dr. Stephen Sicari, Professor and Chair of English Dept.

Dr. Sicari is the Chair of the English Department, as well as a Professor teaching courses to undergrads and graduate students alike. He has been teaching for 26 years in total, sixteen of which he has spent here at St. John's. Before taking on the mantle of professor, Dr. Sicari attended Manhattan College for his undergraduate studies. He went on to earn both his M.A. and his Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Among the classes Dr. Sicari teaches at St. John's are introductory courses for undergraduates, Modern Poetry, Modern Novel, Modern Critical Theories, as well as single author courses in Pound, Stevens, Eliot, and Joyce. Although he does not have a real favorite among these courses, when pressed he chose Modern Poetry as his favorite class to teach.



When outside the classroom, Dr. Sicari is also at work researching and writing. His main research interests at the moment are religion and literature, specifically modern poetry and religion. This year, Dr. Sicari published Modernist Humanism and the Men of 1914: Joyce, Lewis, Pound, and Eliot. Some of his other book publications include Pound's Epic Ambition: Dante and the Modern World and Joyce's Modernist Allegory: "Ulysses" and the History of the Novel. Perhaps, then, you won't be surprised to learn that his favorite book is Joyce's Ulysses.

Dr. Sicari's most recent book

We learn an awful lot from our professors in the classroom, but they also have words of wisdom for us to use when we're not sitting at desks and seminar tables. So I'd like to end these Meet the Faculty posts with words of advice from professors to students. However long we anticipate our academic careers moving into the future -- whether we are counting down the days until that Bachelor of Arts or Science is ours or we are hoping to land to a professorship ourselves -- those who come before us have advice to help us on our way.

Words of Wisdom from Dr. Sicari:
Read as much as you can.