E501 Theories of Composition | 3 credits | 10:30 - 11:45 AM | MW | Lisa Langstraat

Overview of composition/writing studies including various pedagogical approaches to teaching composition and the contexts that shape effective writing.

E503 Investigating Classroom Literacies | 3 credits | 05:00 - 07:30 PM | M | Ricki Ginsberg

How do we engage in equity-informed research of our classroom approaches? This course is open to students in all programs, and students will have a considerable amount of choice to meet their needs and interests. The course is designed for students to investigate equity-informed classroom literacies and learn about different ways they might engage in teacher action research. Our classroom community will explore various ways that educators are engaging in teacher action research grounded in justice-oriented instruction. Throughout the semester (in scaffolded sections), students will develop literacy topics they are interested in exploring and learn how to: conduct a mini literature review, write a research question, select a research method, collect and analyze a small amount of data, and produce preliminary findings and discussion sections. The goal of this course is to prepare educators (K-12 or college) with sound, ethical research knowledge to later engage in their own equity-informed research endeavors. All are welcome, and no prior experience with research is required.

E505B – Major Authors: Toni Morrison | 3 credits | 02:00 PM - 03:15 PM | TR | Leif Sorensen

In the aftermath of her passing in the summer of 2019 this course provides students with the opportunity to engage in an in-depth study of the work of one of the most important fiction writers of the contemporary US. Focusing on Morrison’s work will allow students the opportunity to study the development of her remarkable career as a fiction writer and to contextualize her works of fiction alongside her scholarly non-fiction and her early career as an editor who nurtured the careers of other major African American women writers. Moreover, because Morrison’s work spanned crucial years in the development of African American literary studies, ethnic studies, feminist and gender studies, and critical race studies, students will be able to trace the emergence of a scholarly field by studying Morrison’s critical reception.

Although our primary focus will be on Morrison’s literary output we will also have the occasion to consider the way that her most celebrated novel, Beloved, has influenced popular culture both through its film adaptation and as a touchstone for other artists. Additionally, we will consider how Morrison became a global public figure and discuss the role of literary prizes and other forms of cultural consecration in shaping her career and her reception in the US and around the world. We won't be able to cover the entirety of Morrison's corpus but our readings will definitely include: The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Paradise, Playing in the Dark, and selections from her essays, interviews, and printed speeches.

E507 – Special Topics in Linguistics – Current Professional Concerns in TESOL/Applied Linguistics: Decolonization and related topics  | 3 credits | 02:30 - 03:45 PM | MW | Fabiola Elhers-Zavala

Central to current discussions among applied linguists and TESOL professionals is the need to decolonize our field. Indeed, our field and professional organizations have been heavily criticized for our complicity with colonialism and the empire, ignoring other ways of knowing. This course is intended to address these issues. It will offer participants the opportunity to build background knowledge on key topics/terms necessary to participate in this important project and, ideally, help advance this ongoing professional discussion. Therefore, the following will be at the center of our class discussions: decolonization, decoloniality, hegemonic epistemologies (i.e., epistemologies from the North), epistemologies from the South, positionality, etc. Together, we will tackle questions such as: Why does it matter that we work on decolonizing our field? What will it take? What role do we play in this process? What can we do to legitimize other ways of knowing? How do we go about decolonizing our own research and educational praxis? This course is intended to be a highly interactive and participatory one. We will engage in much critical reflexivity throughout the course. While it is intended for graduate students in the TEFL/TESL concentration, graduate students from other concentrations are also welcome.

E513C - Form & Technique in Creative Nonfiction | 3 credits | 04:00 - 06:50 PM | W | Harrison Candelaria Fletcher

Selected readings in and discussions of modern literature and criticism from the writer's point of view with emphasis on form and technique.

Full course description coming soon!

E514 Phonology/Morphology: ESL/EFL | 3 credits | 04:00 - 06:30 PM | R | Gerry Delahunty

E514 introduces the descriptive study and linguistic analysis of English phonetics/phonology, morphology/word formation, and lexis/vocabulary, and their connections to language acquisition and teaching. This course is designed primarily for students in the English MA in TEFL/TESL, students in the Graduate Certificate in TESOL Education, though English Education students will find much of value to them in it, as will anyone interested in these fundamental aspects of language. The course will introduce basic assumptions about language, then focus mainly on the primary topics of the course and encourage you to explore these topics in ways that connect with your coursework, teaching, and other interests. While the course will focus primarily on English phonetics/phonology, morphology/word-formation, and vocabulary, comparative/contrastive data from other languages will be welcome, especially from those languages students know or are learning, and those whose native speakers our graduates are most likely to teach. The topics are selected so as to maximize the overlap with the topics, constructions, and terminology current in major pedagogical texts for ESL and native English-speaking students.

E526 Teaching English as a Foreign/Second Language | 3 credits | 02:00 - 03:15 PM | TR | Tatiana Nekrasova-Beker

This course provides an overview of second language (L2) methods and materials, focusing on the teaching and learning of four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Additional attention will be given to vocabulary and grammar. The goal of the course is to guide participants in developing the knowledge and skills needed to effectively design and implement language instruction for a diverse group of English language learners. This course is also designed to incorporate classroom observation.

E600A Research Methods: Literary Scholarship | 3 credits | 03:00 - 04:15 PM | MW | Aparna Gollapudi

In this class you will read and think about what graduate literary study entails in order to shape your identity as a scholar and a humanities professional. In addition, you will pursue a research project relevant to your individual interests -- whether Shakespeare, Medieval poetry, modern science fiction or contemporary graphic novels. You will approach this research project in two ways -- as a literary scholar and as a public humanities intellectual. In pursuit of the research project as a literary scholar, you will familiarize yourself with and practice writing genres common to the discipline of literary criticism, including footnotes, annotated bibliographies, book reviews, and conference abstracts. As a public humanist you will shape your research project into a community facing product of your choice; it could be a wikipedia page on a literary topic,  video essay,  podcast, magazine article, etc.

E603 – Critical Digital Rhetoric | 3 credits | 09:00 - 11:30 AM | F | Tim Amidon

E603: Critical Digital Rhetoric is a graduate level seminar that invites students to investigate how technologies, particularly digital technologies, influence the practice of literacy and communication in our world.

The seminar introduces learners to concepts, theories, pedagogies, and methodologies used in the fields of digital rhetoric, technical and professional communication, user experience design, computer mediated communication, and computers and writing. Learners in the course are encouraged to think about technologies as rich tapestries that include embodied, analog, and digital dimensions, which are mobilized in coordination between humans and non-humans to realize epistemic, communicative, computational, and mediational goals. Learners explore the nexus of technology, rhetoric, and literacy through a socio-cultural lens, asking how computer-mediated, digitally-networked, materially-emplaced technologies impact, displace, and/or enrich human activities. Over the course of the semester, students consider five key themes that have received critical attention within digital rhetoric:  

E607A Teaching Writing, Composition & Rhetoric | 3 credits | 12:30 - 01:45 PM | TR | Genesea Carter

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 - 01:45 PM | TR | Dana Masden

E607B is designed to help graduate students in the MFA program become confident, competent teachers of Beginning College Creative Writing (E210). In this class, students will explore various teaching philosophies, techniques, materials, and the basic elements of craft for writing Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction. Students will also get to explore writing exercises and practice teaching. Upon successful completion of the course, MFA students will design their own E210 class and syllabus and become eligible to teach E210, Beginning Creative Writing, for compensation.

MFA Creative Writing students only. Contact department for registration.

E608 Integrating Writing in the Academic Core | 1 credit | Multiple Meetings Times | TR | Kelly Bradbury

Theories and best practices associated with writing integration in the academic core.

E610 – Literature Program Colloquium | 1 credit | 02:00 - 02:50 PM | W | Philip Tsang

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.

E630B – Special Topics in Literature: Literary Mapping | 3 credits | 05:00 - 07:30 PM | W | Camille Dungy

A mixed-genre course exploring ways writers map the world around them. We'll experience writers as cartographers, transcribers, observers, interrogators, designers, and admirers of land, landscapes, and human-built environments. Reading and responding to novels, memoir, poetry, and other textual experiments, many set in Colorado and the American West, we will consider techniques for charting the landscapes and cultures we know and imagine. Authors include: Paisley Rekdal, Tommy Orange, Pam Houston, Laura Pritchett, and Lorine Neidecker.

E633 – Special Topics in Writing and Rhetoric: Graduate Seminar on Prison Writing and Rhetoric | 3 credits | 09:00 - 10:15 AM | MW | Tobi Jacobi

"Language gave me a way to keep the chaos of prison at bay and prevent it from devouring me; it was a resource that allowed me to confront and understand my past, even to wring from it some compelling truths, and it opened the way toward a future that was based not on fear or bitterness or apathy but on compassionate involvement and a belief that I belonged" (5).

So writes Jimmy Santiago Baca in his memoir, A Place To Stand , claiming his place in the landscape of contemporary American (prison) writers. This course is intended to introduce and strengthen understanding of selected historical and contemporary prison writings and contexts. As cultural and rhetorical critics, we will study works sanctioned by the academy (and other cultural arts bodies) as well as writings that depend upon less conventional means of circulation (local writing workshops, contests, and on-line publications). The following questions will guide our exploration: What is prison writing, and how does such writing circulate? Is prison writing spectacle, art, therapy, or rehabilitation? How might incarceration influence composing processes? How are prison writings received by ‘free’ audiences? Whose writings get published and why? In considering how a diverse set of incarcerated writers approach writing as a meaning making process and in reading texts across gender, ethnicity, race, ability, and time, this course aims to complicate and expand our disciplinary knowledge and the ways we make connections between texts and the material world.

E635 – Critical Studies in Literature and Culture | 3 credits | 01:00 - 03:30 PM | F | Lynn Shutters

Narrating Sexual Consent and Assault

With the rise of the #MeToo movement, sexual consent and assault have become increasingly prominent in U.S. culture: think of the media coverage of criminal and civil cases involving Harvey Weinstein, Johnny Depp, and Donald Trump, or recent films and television shows like I May Destroy You, Promising Young Woman, and Tár. We often imagine that thoughtful accounts of sexual consent and assault only emerged in the late twentieth century, when in fact there is a long history of narrating such events. This course will focus on fictional accounts of consent and assault in both early and modern literary works and will employ feminist theory and sociohistorical studies to examine and contextualize these accounts. Because we will be working with literary works and fictional characters, we will also face the challenges and intellectual pay-offs of examining consent and assault outside of juridical settings. For example, a fictional work can present a sexual encounter as simultaneously consensual and non-consensual. How do we, as readers, address such ambivalence? Authors and works we might consider include excerpts from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament, and Augustine’s City of God; Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale; Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece; Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles; Djuna Barnes’s Ryder; Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye; and Teju Cole’s Open City, as well as some of the films and television shows listed above. We will also study works of contemporary feminist theory including those by Sara Ahmed, Roxane Gay, Kate Manne, Catherine MacKinnon, and Amia Srinivasan.

This course fulfills English graduate programs’ pre-1900 requirement.

E636 – Environmental Literature and Criticism  | 3 credits | 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM | TR | Lynn Badia

This course is a focused examination of environmental literature, film, and theory from the early twentieth century to the present day, and it serves as an introduction to the fields of Environmental and Energy Humanities. We will cover a range of literary genres and learn to think critically about how texts not only represent the natural world but also narrativize and shape our interactions with it. We will examine texts utilizing critical frameworks informed by environmental justice, feminism, (post)colonialism, and Indigenous perspectives. Authors may include Stacy Alaimo, Amitav Gosh, Helon Habila, Donna Haraway, Kyle Powys Whyte, and Jeff Vandermeer.

This course fulfills the E635 requirement for the MA in Literature degree.

E638 – Assessment of English Language Learners: Assessment in the TEFL/TESL Classroom | 3 credits | 01:00 - 02:15 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 fair. Specifically, the course familiarizes students with the fundamental concepts and principles underlying the language assessment of second/foreign language learners (e.g., reliability, validity, authenticity, impact, interactiveness, practicality) and it engages students in the planning and construction of both traditional (e.g., tests, quizzes, essays, etc.) and alternative language assessments (e.g., portfolios, role plays, journals, etc.). Furthermore, the course develops students’ ability to analyze and interpret assessment results (both quantitative and qualitative), for the purposes of guiding instruction and improving language program effectiveness.

Finally, the course invites students to investigate the ways in which assessment results can be used to account for and evaluate student performance, as well as improve language teaching practices. Any graduate student interested in language and assessment is invited to take this class.

E640B Graduate Writing Workshop: Poetry | 3 credits | 04:00 - 06:50 PM | T | Sasha Steensen

Individual projects with group discussion and analysis.

Maximum of 11 credits allowed in course. Contact instructor for registration.

E640A Graduate Writing Workshop: Fiction | 3 credits | 04:00 - 06:50 PM | T | Ramona Ausubel

Individual projects with group discussion and analysis.

Maximum of 11 credits allowed in course. Contact instructor for registration.

E640C Graduate Writing Workshop: Essay | 3 credits | 04:00 - 06:50 PM | M | Instructor TBA

Individual projects with group discussion and analysis.

Maximum of 11 credits allowed in course. Contact instructor for registration.

E687C Literary Editing | 1 - 5 credits | Stephanie G'Schwind 

Colorado Review.

E692 Seminar in Writing, Rhetoric, and Social Change | 1 credit | 04:00 - 06:50PM | M | Tim Amidon

This is a one-credit course required of all WRSC MA students in both their first and second years in our program.

We encourage a relaxed, yet professional, atmosphere in the Colloquium because we believe that conversation about our field and the many roles we assume as rhetoric and composition teacher-scholars is vital for developing our disciplinary identities.

E692 is designed to:

• build community and professional relationships among WRSC students and faculty, particularly since not all faculty and students will have coursework together in students’ first year at CSU;
• provide formal opportunities for faculty (at CSU and beyond) and students to share their research interests and experiences; and
• discuss contemporary issues and trends in our field from multiple perspectives.