Current Graduate Course Offerings
Plan your class schedule
The accordion list below highlights the English department's course offerings for the coming semester. Click on course titles to expand their respective descriptions, and to help plan your immersion in the interdisciplinary study of language arts. Class times/instructors are subject to change.
Graduate Courses, Fall 2026
E501 – Theories of Composition | 3 credits | 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM | TR | Lisa Langstraat
Theories of Composition is designed to introduce you to the most influential theories of writing in the field of Rhetoric and Composition and to examine the ways in which the politics of writing and social justice efforts shape those theories. In this section of E501 we will engage a multitude of theoretical approaches—from Current Traditional Rhetorics to Post-Process Composition and beyond. These approaches are by no means static. Sometimes complimentary, sometimes competing, they reflect the identity of a discipline—and its practitioners. To that end, it is my hope that we come to understand these theoretical frameworks in light of what it means to do theory as teacher/scholars of composition and to understand how a variety of compositionists work toward social justice—in and out of the classroom.
E503 – Investigating Classroom Literacies | 3 credits | 5:30 - 8:00 PM | W | Naitnaphit Limlamai
This course prepares those interested in working in classrooms to participate in teacher action research and to (continue to) enter into professional conversations to advance educational change. Students in the course will have the opportunity to engage in their own research interests as they move toward the goals of the course. Students will develop a classroom literacy topic they are interested in exploring and work through a research cycle to investigate that topic: they will conduct a literature review, craft research questions, collect and analyze a manageable amount of data, and produce preliminary findings and discussion sections. Students will hear from a variety of researchers in the field and also explore their own identities and positionalities and how they come into their research interests and processes. The class is open to students in all programs.
E504 – Professional Issues in Composition & Writing | 3 credits | 2:30 - 3:45 PM | MW | Genesea Carter
This graduate course will have two focuses, the first on how composition programs have traditionally been theorized, designed, and positioned in the academy and the second on the discipline’s concerns about writing programs’ labor and resource challenges as academia becomes more systematized.
Overall, we will examine narratives of a discipline that is still being constructed by a wide range of creative and adventurous minds whose interests, while wildly varied, tend to share a commitment to strong pedagogy, attentiveness to language use, and the broad application of social justice but who also find themselves navigating the challenges of creating change within a neoliberal, capitalistic supersystem.
Along the way, we will demystify processes of publication, consider how to apply for academic positions, deepen our understanding of the demands of faculty work, and contemplate how writing program administration experience might be translated to life outside of the academy.
E506A – Literature Survey: A Classical Tour of Medieval Literature | 3 credits | 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM | TR | Lynn Shutters
We often imagine that the classics (ancient Greek and Roman literature) died out in the Middle Ages, only to be “reborn” in the Renaissance. Medieval authors, however, were steeped in the Roman classics, and the history of medieval literature can be construed as a history of the adaptation of classical works to new ends. In this class, we’ll be studying just such a literary history, beginning with the Roman poets Virgil and Ovid and then proceeding to medieval works including the Romance of Aeneas, Marie de France’s Lais, the Romance of the Rose, Dante’s Inferno, and various works by Geoffrey Chaucer. Topics of interest will include authorship and the anxiety of influence; foundation myths; secularity and religious difference (pagan vs Christian); temporality and historical perspective; and the feminist and queer potentials of a medievalized classical past.
E507 – Special Topics in Linguistics | 3 credits | 1:00 - 2:15 PM | MW | Luciana Marques
In this course, we will critically examine the role of English as an international language, exploring its historical development, socio-cultural and linguistic diversity. We will analyze English language patterns used in various speech communities, native and non-native, in the US and abroad. We will also consider issues of English language education and policy in the US and internationally.
E513A – Form & Technique in Fiction: Point of View and the Art of Structure | 3 credits | 4:00 - 6:50 PM | W | Andrew Altschul
Point of view comes prior to all other aspects of storytelling – without establishing source and perspective, no story can be told. Furthermore, by setting the terms of the reader’s access, point of view determines what stories are possible. In this course we will read novels and short stories with complex or unusual points of view and examine the ways perspective influences structure and vice versa. We will also read from Peter Brooks’ study of narratology, Reading for the Plot, to augment our discussions of how fiction provides an experience of complete, graspable meaning. Students will write pastiche assignments, narrative analysis, and a longer creative project.
E514 - Phonology and Morphology for ESL/EFL | 3 credits | 3:30 - 4:45 PM | TR | Gerald Delahunty
E514 introduces the descriptive study and linguistic analysis of English phonetics/phonology and morphology/word formation, and their connections to second language acquisition and teaching. You will be able to read and make use of linguistic descriptions of English and other languages, as well as appropriately select and present pedagogical material in a variety of teaching circumstances.
E526 – Teaching English as a Foreign/Second Language | 3 credits | 4:00 - 6:30 PM | M | Fabiola Ehlers-Zavala
E600A – Research Methods/Theory: Literary Scholarship | 3 credits | 1:00 - 3:30 PM | F | Aparna Gollapudi
E603 – Critical Digital Rhetoric | 3 credits | 9:30 - 10:45 AM | TR | Aly Welker
E607A – Teaching Writing, Composition, & Rhetoric | 3 credits | 12:30 - 1:45 PM | TR | Todd Ruecker
Addresses theoretical and applied understandings of reading and writing processes in the first-year college writing classroom; considers practical implications for professional practice in the teaching of writing; critically examines theory, disciplinary conventions, and policies in regard to writing pedagogy.
For first-year GTAs teaching CO 150. Contact department for registration.
E607B – Teaching Writing: Creative Writing | 3 credits | 12:30 - 1:45 PM | TR | Dana Masden
E607B is designed to help MFA students become confident and prepared teachers of E210, Beginning Creative Writing. E210, which explores craft and genre but is not bound by it, has the following goals: to help beginners gain experience in a writing community, build a sustainable writing practice, explore and practice creative critical literacy, learn to give and receive effective feedback, and develop an active and evolving writing identity. To best help our future students meet these objectives, in E607B, we will explore the science of learning, address important topics in creative writing pedagogy, and design lesson plans, assignments, and syllabi intended to meet the learning outcomes of E210.
MFA Creative Writing students only. Contact department for registration.
E608 – Integrating Writing in the Academic Core | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Kelly Bradbury
Theories and best practices associated with writing integration in the academic core.
E610 – Literature Program Colloquium | 1 credit | 3:00 - 3:50 PM | W | Lynn Badia
Organizational strategies for researching and writing a final project/thesis. Opportunities to address specific challenges in order to ensure high-quality work and a timely defense. Career opportunities and professionalization issues are addressed.
E635 – Critical Studies in Literature and Culture: Narrative Theory | 3 credits | 4:00 - 6:30 PM | R | Ryan Claycomb
Near the origins of the study of literature lie the questions, “What is a story? How does it get told?” Thus, narrative theory begins. This course will take on innovative and intriguing texts (mostly fiction, but also drama, film, and other narratives) to explore those simplest of literary questions and some more complex ones: what place does context have in discussions of form? Do formal features have any relevance in this cultural-studies-dominated era of literary criticism? Is there an ethics of form? Is narrative form relevant to social movements, or complicit in impeding them?
Throughout the course we will read texts that work to establish vocabularies for the workings of narrative, from rhetorical perspectives that have shaped much of the field’s growth in the latter part of the 20th c., and new directions that have emerged since – feminist and queer (and other cultural/political approaches), anti-mimetic, and cognitive studies approaches have all invigorated the technical study of the “how” of literary form and production. We will also stop to look at texts that themselves open up new ways of understanding narrative functioning – literary experiment as de-facto literary theory. Along the way, we will continue to look for gaps in the thinking, new directions for study, and new narratives that might themselves experiment with literary form.
E638 – Assessment of English Language Learners | 3 credits | 2:00 - 3:15 PM | TR | Tony Becker
This course prepares language teaching professionals with the knowledge and skills they need to design, implement, and utilize language assessments that are reliable, valid, and ethically based. Specifically, the course familiarizes students with the fundamental concepts and principles involved in the language assessment of second/foreign language learners, and it engages students in the planning and construction of both traditional and alternative language assessments.
E640A – Graduate Writing Workshop: Fiction | 3 credits | 4:00 - 6:50 PM | T | Ramona Ausubel
Individual projects with group discussion and analysis.
E640B – Graduate Writing Workshop: Poetry | 3 credits | 4:00 - 6:50 PM | T | Sasha Steensen
Individual projects with group discussion and analysis.
E640C – Graduate Writing Workshop: Creative Nonfiction | 3 credits | 4:00 - 6:50 PM | M | Sarah Perry
Individual projects with group discussion and analysis.
E684A – Supervised College Teaching (Composition) | 1-5 credits | 12:00 - 12:50 PM | W | Todd Ruecker
Composition Program GTAs participate in the Professional Internship in English (PIE), which includes the writing theory and practice course (E607A), ongoing professional development, small group discussions and mentorship, course observations, and colloquia designed to help you learn about the field of composition and rhetoric, including research on teaching writing at the collegiate level, rhetorical theory and application, and pedagogical approaches for writing instruction.
E687C – Internship: Literary Editing | 1-5 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Stephanie G'Schwind
Internship with Colorado Review.
More information can be found here: https://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/about/
E692 – Seminar in Writing, Rhetoric, and Social Change | 1 credit | 4:00 - 6:00 PM | M | Tobi Jacobi
Seminar featuring faculty and student research and projects and disciplinary and professional concerns related to writing, rhetoric, pedagogy, and social change.
This is a one-credit course required of all WRSC MA students in both their first and second years in our program.