Current Graduate Course Offerings

E502 – The Politics of Literacy | 3 credits | 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM | TR | Tobi Jacobi

Literacy practices—broadly and richly construed—are central to how we understand the world through language. This graduate seminar invites exploration of the social, political, and cultural pressures that influence, shape, and assess reading and writing processes and products. We will examine both historical and contemporary debates to understand the contexts, tensions, challenges, and resistances in literacy studies as a core human practice (for communication, for community-building, for self-reflection, for learning, etc.).

Our aim will be threefold: to read deeply in varied contexts and experiences, to invite our own literacy experiences into conversation with others, and to imagine new meaningful literacy pathways through individual and community projects (including work with the CSU 2026 Democracy Project and The Human Library).

E513C – Form & Technique: Essay

E515 – Syntax for ESL/EFL

E515 - Syntax for ESL/EFL | 3 credits | 1:00 - 3:30 PM | F | Luciana Marques

Knowledge of English grammar is essential for ESL/EFL teachers, along with teaching skills. In this course, you will learn the syntactic and pertinent morphological structures of English, compare them with structures of other languages, and examine pedagogical approaches and materials to teach grammar to English language learners in adult education settings.

E527 – Theories of Foreign/ Second Language Learning

E527 – Theories of Foreign/ Second Language Learning | 3 credits | 1:00 - 3:30 PM | W | Tatiana Nekrasova-Beker

This course provides an introduction to the field of second language acquisition (SLA) focusing specifically on how humans learn a second (or third, etc.) language in addition to their native language and the factors that affect variability in their language development. You will learn about a variety of experimental methods used in the SLA field to explore language development as well as the implications of SLA research for language teaching.

E528 – Professional ESL Teaching: Theory to Practice

E528 – Professional ESL Teaching: Theory to Practice | 3 credits | 3:30 - 6:00 PM | T | Fabiola Ehlers-Zavala

The course offers individuals interested in teaching English as a second/foreign language a guided opportunity to learn about and apply principles for planning, designing, and carrying out effective classroom instruction and assessment. The main goal of the course is to engage students in non-threatening interaction about language teaching experiences with colleagues and learners of English from the community.

E600B – Research Methods/Theory: Writing Studies

E600B – Research Methods/Theory: Writing Studies | 3 credits | 4:00 - 6:30 PM | W | Sue Doe

This course introduces research methods used in writing studies and to some extent English Studies more broadly, with particular emphasis on those methods used in qualitative research pertaining to the relationship of writing to culture. The course builds on three assumptions:

research is intimately related to theory and practice
research—introspective or empirical, quantitative, qualitative, mixed, autoethnographic, or creative—is an act of systematically selecting and interpreting information
research always invites and requires interrogation and critique, including critique of the researcher’s positionality

Throughout the course, we will explore the implications of these assumptions and how they affect specific research methodologies. Further, we will look for ways in which these assumptions shape the work of researchers using different research methods and approaches.

The approach in this course will be to analyze selected examples for the use of research methods to answer specific research questions. Simultaneously, students will craft their own research questions and begin to collect sources and data to contextualize and answer their own questions. Students will also try out varied research methodologies and consider how their research would change based on the differing methods.

E601 – Research Methods in TESOL

E601 – Research Methods in TESOL | 3 credits | 2:00 - 3:15 PM | TR | Anthony Becker

This course introduces students to classroom-based research as a method for improving teaching and learning in ESL/EFL contexts. Students will gain hands-on experience conducting research on the four language skills while examining the strengths and challenges of different research approaches. The course is recommended for TEFL/TESL graduate students but is open to any graduate students interested in language research using quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods.

E615 – Reading Literature: Recent Theories

E615 - Reading Literature: Recent Theories | 3 credits | 12:30 - 1:45 PM | TR | Lynn Badia

This course will introduce you to several major schools of contemporary literary theory. By reading a wide variety of theoretical texts, we will think about how everyday acts of interpretation, expression, and thought shape the world and our relationship to it. The primary goal of the course is to make students critically aware of the way that acts of reading, writing, and making art are connected to a range of political, social, cultural, and nonhuman forces at work in the world around us.

E630B– Special Topics in Literature (Genre Studies): Word & Image

E630B – Special Topics in Literature (Genre Studies): Word & Image | 3 credits | 9:30 - 10:45 AM | TR | Aparna Gollapudi

"What’s the use of a book…without pictures?" thinks Alice before she tumbles into her adventures in Wonderland. This course hopes to explore the multi-faceted implications of that indignant query. Pictures and words co-exist on the same page in works as different as medieval illuminated books, seventeenth-century emblem books, children’s picture books, and comics.

The course will explore the boundaries between word and image in books of different genres and historical periods within the context of recent theory about text-image relations. We will not only study text-image interactions as they appear on the surface of the page, but consider the page itself, as well as the materiality of the book it belongs to.

Some of the questions we will consider are:

What is the similarity or difference between the nature of the word and of the image?
How do they signify or create meaning?
How does the dynamic of the text-image juxtaposition function -- do they reinforce each other’s meaning, qualify it, or contradict it?
Do words often seem to colonize and dominate images?
And can images function as a subversive, carnivalesque element in the book? Do images have a ‘language’ and can the text sometimes cross the line and function as an image? How do we “read” not just the black marks inside the book but the book itself as a visible, material, object?

This course fulfills the pre-20th century requirement for MFA students.

E630C– Special Topics in Literature (Theory & Technique Studies): Literary Afterlives, Postcolonial Appropriations

E630C – Special Topics in Literature (Theory & Technique Studies): Literary Afterlives, Postcolonial Appropriations | 3 credits | 2:00 - 3:15 PM | TR | Barbara Sebek

This course will tackle three central case studies of literary texts that share narrative, poetic, and dramatic materials. We’ll put Euripides’s Medea in conversation with works by Ovid, Lars Von Trier, and Luis Alfaro; Shakespeare’s The Tempest with Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest and Marina Warner’s Indigo; and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre with Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.

How are core stories and tropes reconstituted and re-imagined across different periods, cultures, and media? How do these ancient, Renaissance, Victorian, and modern adaptations illustrate or complicate notions of postcolonial resistance narratives? Students may pursue final projects relevant to their graduate concentration, whether pedagogical, rhetorical, creative, or critical.

This course fulfills the pre-1900 requirement for MFA and Literature MA students.

E632 – Professional Concerns in English Education: Critical Approaches to Diverse Young Adult Literature

E632 – Professional Concerns in English Education: Critical Approaches to Diverse Young Adult Literature | 3 credits | 5:00 - 7:30 PM | M | Ricki Ginsberg

This course engages students in the study of some of the most controversial and frequently censored critical theories and diverse young adult texts. Moving beyond traditional literary criticism, we will explore frameworks such as critical race theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory, and other theories that challenge dominant narratives and power structures. Students will be offered choices in the young adult texts that they will read in this course, and assignments will be adaptable to reflect each students’ own interests and communities.

Through student-centered pedagogical approaches, this course fosters a collaborative learning environment that values multiple ways of knowing and being. Assessments will prioritize student choice, allowing for deep integration of course content into each student’s academic, creative, and professional goals. Local teachers not enrolled at CSU are welcomed to enroll in the course, and students from all programs are enthusiastically invited.

E633– Special Topics in Writing and Rhetoric: Language, Identity, and Social Change

E633 – Special Topics in Writing and Rhetoric: Language, Identity, and Social Change | 3 credits | 1:00 - 3:30 PM | M | Doug Cloud

What is identity and how do we study it in language? What is social change and how does it show up in language? Can we use language to create social change and what are its limitations? In this special topics graduate course, we’ll tackle these and other timely, interrelated questions across multiple contexts, including human rights and environmental sustainability. The course finishes with a project in which students choose topics relevant to their research areas and/or creative artistry.

E640A – Graduate Writing Workshop: Fiction

E640B – Graduate Writing Workshop: Poetry

E640C – Graduate Writing Workshop: Essay

E684A – Supervised College Teaching: Composition

E687C – Internship in Literary Editing

E692 – Rhetoric and Composition Seminar