Current Graduate Course Offerings
Graduate
Graduate Courses, Spring 2024
The accordion lists below highlight 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.
E515 - Syntax for ESL/EFL | 3 credits | 01:00 - 03:50 PM | M | Luciana Marques
Teachers of English as a second or foreign language must be familiar with the major syntactic patterns of English, their typical meanings and uses, and with the inflectional and derivational morphology they entail. Teachers must also be familiar with typical stages of acquisition of these patterns and with their presentation in current classroom materials. This knowledge will enable you to appropriately select and present this material in a variety of teaching circumstances, as well as to read and make use of grammatical descriptions of English and other languages.
In E515, you will understand linguistic concepts in ESL/EFL pedagogical materials and in SLA research; you will become familiar with variant terminology; you will become proficient in basic linguistic analysis and its application to learner data. The course will focus on topics in English syntax and relevant morphology, but comparative/contrastive data from other languages will be introduced, especially from those languages whose native speakers our graduates are most likely to teach or are spoken by students in the class. The topics are selected so as to maximize the overlap with the topics, constructions, and terminology current in the major ESL/EFL grammar texts.
E526 – Theories of Foreign/ Second Language Learning | 3 credits | 02:00 - 03:15 PM | TR | 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) language in addition to their native language and the factors that affect variability in their language development. Areas covered in this course include: background on the historical development of the field, characteristic features of the L2 learner, interlanguage development and variability, individual differences, and social factors affecting L2 learning. In addition, the course introduces a variety of experimental methods used in the SLA field to explore L2 development and highlights the implications of SLA findings for L2 teaching. Student will read and discuss research articles in SLA and engage in the analysis of learner data.
Required Textbook:
Lightbown, P., & Spada, N. (2013). How Languages are Learned (4th edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press. (The textbook is referred to as Textbook in the schedule.)
E526 – Professional ESL Teaching: Theory to Practice | 3 credits | 03:30 - 04:45 PM | TR | Tatiana Nekrasova-Beker
The course is offered to pre-service TEFL/TESL teachers as 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 help establish connections between theory and practice and to engage students in non-threatening interaction about language teaching experiences with colleagues.
E600B - Research Methods in Writing Studies | 3 credits | 09:00 - 11:50 AM | F | Doug Cloud
This course introduces research methods used in English to study the creation, circulation, and reception of discourse, in both classroom and public spaces. Students will craft research questions, learn information-gathering techniques (such as critical incident interviewing), and begin to collect sources and data for their own projects. We will also comment on early drafts of published scholars’ work. Traditions covered include discourse analysis, rhetorical analysis, ethnographic methods, and many others. Students from all programs welcome.
E605 – Critical Studies in Reading and Writing: Writing Studies, Neoliberalism and Affective Interventions | 3 credits | 09:00 - 11:50 AM | W | Lisa Langstraat
Over the last decade we've seen a proliferation of research about the impact of neoliberalism—the economic and political ideology which postulates that human well-being is best achieved by deregulating labor and financial markets, privatizing social services, and reducing (especially through austerity measures) governmental economic controls. This course addresses this research, particularly in light of neoliberalism's impact on our personal and professional lives as writers and teacher-theorists of writing. We will examine claims that writing curricula have become ever more susceptible to neoliberal mandates; that our emotional lives have been colonized by neoliberal schema; that efforts toward inclusivity and social justice are truncated under neoliberal policy and practices. Moreover, we will engage a variety of interventionist practices—including, among other approaches, memoir writing, speculative discourse, and curricular design--to address the effects of neoliberalism on our working and private lives.
E615 - Reading Literature: Recent Theories | 3 credits | 05:00 - 07:50 PM | W | Leif Sorensen
This course will introduce you to foundations of contemporary literary theory and then offer a survey of methods and approaches that are particularly vibrant at the moment. By reading theoretical texts in conjunction with different kinds of texts, we will illuminate how these theoretical stances can produce various interpretations of a range of cultural artifacts. The foundational movements covered will include New Criticism, Marxism, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, and Critical Race Studies, Postcolonialism, and Gender Studies. Recent movements covered will include trans* studies, new materialisms, environmental humanities, and Afropessimism. The goal will be to help students reflect on histories of reading and interpretation as they develop their own methods for approaching textual analysis.
E630A – Special Topics in Literature (Area Studies): Ambition, Submission, and Pleasure in English Renaissance Literature | 3 credits | 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM | TR | Barbara Sebek
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture offers a complex array of competing and overlapping forms of ambition: spiritual, social, sexual, political, military, economic, and intellectual. An emergent literary and global marketplace that fosters transgression of established hierarchies jostles against received notions of submission and hierarchy. The texts we will study are shot through with fantasies of upward mobility, efforts to envisage the complex interplay between submission and freedom, and a recognition (by turns uneasy, horrified, and ecstatic) of the tenuousness of supposedly natural hierarchies and the social and sexual identities formed by them. We will study figures as diverse as the speaker of Donne's Holy Sonnet 10 who effusively calls to be battered and ravished; Milton's Satan and Marlowe's ruthless conqueror Tamburlaine whose bald attempts at conquest evoke both outrage and thrill; and the figures of Salome, Graphina, Mariam, Lady Macbeth, and the Duchess of Malfi, who articulate or reinforce the most repressive form of the ideology of female submission even as they staunchly insist on women's desire or rule. We will read a selection of John Donne's elegies and holy sonnets, excerpts from John Milton's epic _Paradise Lost_ and his prose treatise "Areopagitica," and five or six plays by various dramatists (Shakespeare, Marlowe, Cary, Webster, Dekker). Students will keep a reading journal, take two short exams, and develop their own topic for the final project. These projects may be tailored to suit individual interests and graduate concentration (critical, creative, pedagogical, rhetorical, or a combination).
The course fulfills the pre-twentieth century requirement for Masters programs with this requirement.
E630B – Special Topics in Literature (Genre Studies): The Slave Narrative and Neo-Slave Narrative | 3 credits | 09:30 - 10:45 AM | TR | Zach Hutchins
The slave narrative is a genre peculiar to the Americas, a textual form which interrogates the dilemma of a colonial project imagined as an experiment in liberty that was, paradoxically, predicated on the subjugation and bondage of others. This class investigates the genre as it developed over the course of centuries, through oral tradition and the documentation of amanuenses to the fictionalization of chattel slavery experience in what are sometimes referred to as neo-slave narratives. In confronting both famous (Sally Hemings; Frederick Douglass; Toni Morrison; Colson Whitehead) and obscure names and narratives and novels, students will come to terms with the legacy of slavery’s perversities—its brutal violence and sexual abuse as well as more subtle emotional and spiritual traumas. In doing so, students will be invited to participate in the work of rememory by acknowledging our latent, abiding connection to the past as well as our present enmeshment in systems of oppression derived from slavery.
This course satisfies the Pre-1900 requirement.
E632 – Professional Concerns in English | 3 credits | 05:00 - 07:50 PM | M | Cindy O'Donnell-Allen
In case you haven’t noticed, mindfulness has gone mainstream. Self-help texts, meditation apps, and advertisements underscore the benefits of “intentional living,” “being present,” and “self-care” for the individual ensnared in a busy world. A simple internet search reveals descriptions of mindfulness practices that can reduce dental anxiety, calm children at bedtime, enhance athletic performance, and even increase one’s enjoyment of chocolate!
However, the popularization, trivialization, and monetization of mindfulness and mindfulness practices often colonize and co-opt the rich contemplative traditions in which they are historically embedded by centering whiteness and focusing excessively on the individual. Although mindfulness programs are on the rise in schools and other educational contexts, they, too, may reflect white supremacist views that disregard the identities and life conditions of historically marginalized students and the educators who work with them.
Thus in this course, we will trouble a view of mindfulness as encapsulated by an almost exclusive and optimistic focus on the “self.” Rather, we will emphasize the reciprocal relationship that exists between one’s “selves” and one’s communities, as these are situated in an increasingly diverse and decidedly more complicated world, including educational settings. The course will be grounded in texts informed by classic, contemplative traditions of mindfulness; critical literacy theory and culturally sustaining pedagogies; mindfulness-based teaching; neuroscience and neurodecolonization; and expressive writing.
Collectively, we will identify, analyze, and employ the literacies associated with mindfulness and sustainable teaching, with an explicit focus on working intentionally toward educational justice.
As such, this course will be relevant for students across program areas who are interested in the historicization of mindfulness traditions and practices; the critique and reframing of mainstream views of mindfulness that center whiteness; embodiment practices and engaged mindfulness; and the use of critical literacy pedagogies aimed at building a more just, equitable, and peaceful world.
For English Education students, this course fulfills the E632 requirement.
E634 – Special Topics in TESL/TEFL: Issues in Second Language Pronunciation | 3 credits | 1:00 - 3:50 PM | W | Luciana Marques
E634 expands theoretical and pedagogical approaches to the study of second language phonetics/phonology and pronunciation. The class’s ultimate purpose is to develop theoretically informed lessons to teach pronunciation to students of English as a Second/Foreign Language (ESL/EFL). In this class, you will review the phonological system of English, strengthen your transcription and acoustic analysis skills for examining and evaluating ESL/EFL learners’ phonological knowledge and how it compares to their respective L1. You will become familiar with theoretical issues in second language phonology and pronunciation teaching. You will develop a lesson/set of lessons that can be applied in the ESL/EFL classroom to aid in the acquisition of an English phonological feature of your choice based on common pronunciation issues found in second language (L2) English speakers. The specific phonological feature to be studied will vary. You will gain hands-on experience developing lessons to teach pronunciation and aid in acquisition of English phonology.
E638 – Assessment of English Language Learners | 3 credit | 01:00 - 03:50 PM | F | 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.
E640A Graduate Writing Workshop: Fiction | 1 to 5 credits | 04:00 - 06:50 PM | T | Nina McConigley
Individual projects with group discussion and analysis.
Maximum of 11 credits allowed in course. Contact instructor for registration.
E640B Graduate Writing Workshop: Poetry | 1 to 5 credits | 04:00 - 06:50 PM | T | Matthew Cooperman
Individual projects with group discussion and analysis.
Maximum of 11 credits allowed in course. Contact instructor for registration.
E640C Graduate Writing Workshop: Essay | 1 to 5 credits | 04:00 - 06:50 PM | M | Harrison Candelaria Fletcher
Individual projects with group discussion and analysis.
Maximum of 11 credits allowed in course. Contact instructor for registration.
E643 – Special Topics in Literary Craft | 3 credits | 02:00 - 03:15 PM | TR | Andrew Altschul
“Genres are not to be mixed,” wrote Jacques Derrida, “I will not mix genres” – before going on to demolish the idea of genre. Writing that bends or transcends genre represents some of the most exciting work in contemporary literature, while authors like Maggie Nelson, David Shields, and Geoff Dyer have written about the expanded horizons of meaning made possible by hybridization. In this seminar, we will read groundbreaking hybrid works; authors may include Nelson, Anne Carson, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Darcie Dennigan, Claudia Rankine, William Carlos Williams, Carole Maso, and others. Discussions will also cover “genre politics” – the policing of traditional genres by the publishing industry and academia. Students will write short papers, produce imitative creative pieces, and develop a final project that boldly goes where no writer has gone before.
E644 – Creative Science Writing | 3 credits | 09:00 - 11:50 AM | M | Erika Szymanski
This course will approach science writing for diverse audiences as a simultaneously creative and strategic endeavor, through principles that unite genres from the conference abstract and journal article to the newspaper op-ed, the personal research narrative, and the creative non-fiction story. Students will read and discuss foundational science writing and science communication theory, practice writing about their work for diverse audiences, and participate in extensive peer-review and workshopping. Our focus will be on how audience, purpose, and relationship are core to science writing across genres, on maintaining accuracy while controlling jargon and tone, and on collaborative writing. This course is intensively reading-, conversation-, and writing-based. We will practice communicating across differences in expertise, writing for multiple audiences, and writing about research beyond your comfort zone. We will also discuss (with the aid of some guests) how science and writing intersect in a variety of career paths. Students should expect to devote significant and consistent effort to reading, writing, workshopping, and revising throughout the semester, and to submit at least one revised piece for publication.
E679 – Community Service Learning in TESOL | 1 credit
More information & course description coming soon!
E692 – Rhetoric and Composition Seminar | 1 credit | 04:00 - 06:00 PM | M | Instructor TBA
Seminar featuring faculty and student research and projects and disciplinary and professional concerns related to writing, rhetoric, pedagogy, and social change.
Graduate Courses, Fall 2023
E501 Theories of Composition | 3 credits | 09:30 - 10:45 AM | TR | Dr. Genesea Carter
Overview of composition/writing studies including various pedagogical approaches to teaching composition and the contexts that shape effective writing.
E502 Politics of Literacy | 3 credits | 05:00 - 07:50 PM | W | Dr. Naitnaphit Limlamai
This course is driven by the key question, “In what ways are learning how to read and write the word and the world political?” We begin by developing complex understandings of literacy and literate practices through an examination of definitions, approaches, and contexts. Using these ideas, we'll examine contemporary debates in the field of literacy, including engagements with critical literacy, "reading wars," and banned books. Throughout the course we'll cultivate our own literacy skills as we investigate what forces and factors limit and expand our literacies and our access to it.
E505A – Major Author (British) – Novel Rivalries: Samuel Richardson vs. Henry Fielding | 3 credits | 03:00 PM - 04:15 PM | MW | Aparna Gollapudi
Did you know that the word 'novel' that today refers to one of the most popular forms of fiction, actually comes from the notion of a 'novelty'? The literary form that we now recognize as 'The Novel' was taking shape in the 18th century, when it was often seen as somewhat of a novelty. But the period was more than just a time when the genre of the novel was in its "infancy" or not fully developed. Indeed if you think of the history of the novelistic form as a progression from 'imperfect' experiments in early 1700s to the glimpses of perfection in the works of Jane Austen, you will not be fully engage in this course. Indeed, in the absence of a 'fixed' or well-established form with clearly recognizable narrative qualities, plots, or generic expectations, eighteenth-century British writers were producing varied modes of storytelling that were often quite different from each other. One of the most famous literary rivalries in the period was between Samuel Richardson, author of Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded, and Henry Fielding, who wrote The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. The course is focused on these two novels, though you will read a lot of contextual and scholarly material. You might not be familiar or comfortable or partial to older linguistic and narrative worlds - indeed there's good possibility you have never read long fiction written before Austen's time. So be prepared to get out of your comfort zone. learn to read differently, and engage with the way the literature of this time period unfolds! The rewards of such an engagement would be a deeper understanding of modernity and it's favorite literary form, the novel.
This course fulfills the pre-1900 requirement for MFA and Literature MA students
E507.001 Special Topics in Linguistics: Vocabulary (Words, Words, Words-All About Words) | 3 credits | 01:00 - 01:50 PM | MWF | Gerry Delahunty
Focus and area of study: The course will use words to address words: little ones, big ones; short ones, long ones; lexical ones, grammatical ones; Alice ones and Humpty Dumpty ones; dictionary ones, academic ones, and vocabulary ones (language teachers know what these are). It will address word forms (e.g., lexical categorization, inflection, and derivation) and word sources: making them up (e.g., googol, NB not Google); creating them lego-like from available parts (e.g., hen-deca-syllable); shmushing them together (e.g., fishtail, cronut, whachmacallit); cutting them down to size (e.g., COVID, detox, edit); begging, borrowing, stealing them from other languages (e.g., Avon, Carnival). It will devote valuable semester time to the ways in which word meanings change (e.g., (critter) mouse > (curser) mouse) and how they are adjusted in context (e.g., flat as a perfect oak floor or flat as Eastern Colorado; morpheme in linguistics and biology), as well as the contexts in which various types of words are likely to occur (e.g., phoneme in linguistics, pandemic everywhere else). It will embrace the form, meaning and function of words and provide a user-friendly introduction to linguistic, phraseological, and lexicographical approaches to the study of words.
Audience: The primary audience for the course will be TESL/TEFL MA students. However, English Education students may find it valuable too, as it will have a pedagogical orientation. However, students from all disciplines, English and beyond, are welcome. The course will be of particular and general interest because everyone, regardless of disciplinary addiction or affiliation, uses words and can benefit from their careful study.
E513B - Form & Technique in Poetry | 3 credits | 03:30 - 4:45 PM | TR| Matthew Cooperman
In this poetry-intensive literature and writing course we will examine our formal decisions, the techniques we use to execute them, and the theoretical underpinnings that give these decisions moral and aesthetic gravity. We will do this by reading widely in poetry and poetics, and applying our insights into actual poems and statements about poems. Specifically, we will trace the beginning of our modern poetic sensibility from the Romantics forward, hoping to glean, in the emergence of free verse, some sense of our current practice in the ‘open field’ of the 21st c. Toward the Open Field provides just such an historical narrative to our practice, with some of the most seminal essays ever written about modern poetry. These include forays into French and Spanish poetics, and so we will do some reading of the Symbolists. An Exaltation of Forms offers an excellent range of essays focused on traditional and experimental forms, alongside examples of poems that successfully embody these forms. We will use these two texts as a springboard for experiment. To take the spectral cue, the field is wide, and we are here to play it. Additional individual volumes of poetry will be added as formal and aesthetic models.
E514 Phonology/Morphology: ESL/EFL | 3 credits | 11:00 - 11:50 AM | MWF | Gerry Delahunty
E514 introduces the descriptive study and linguistic analysis of English phonetics/phonology, morphology/word formation, and lexis, and their connections to second language acquisition and teaching. This course is designed for students in the English MA in TEFL/TESL and students in the Joint MA programs in TEFL/TESL and Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. It will introduce some 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 other TEFL/TESL coursework and teaching. While the course will focus primarily on English phonetics/phonology, morphology/word-formation, and vocabulary but comparative/contrastive data from other languages may be introduced, especially from those languages 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 the major ESL pedagogical texts.
E526 Teaching English as a Foreign/Second Language | 3 credits | 12:30 PM - 01:45 PM | TR | Fabiola Ehlers-Zavala
Principles of teaching English as a foreign/second language. Development of a coherent method, including activities, materials, and course design.
E600A Research Methods: Literary Scholarship | 3 credits | 3:00 - 4:15 PM | MW | Lynn Shutters
You will read and think about what graduate literary study entails in order to shape your identity as a scholar. In addition, you will pursue a research project relevant to your individual interests -- whether Shakespeare, Medieval poetry, modern science fiction or contemporary graphic novels. In pursuit of the research project, your will familiarize yourself with and practice writing genres common to the discipline of literary criticism, including footnotes, annotated bibliographies, book reviews, and conference abstracts.
E601 – Research in Teaching English as a Second Language | 3 credits | 3:30 - 4:45 PM | TR | Tony Becker
This course will focus on introducing students to classroom-based research as a method of improving teaching and learning in language classrooms, particularly in those instructional settings with ESL/EFL students. Specifically, this course will focus on conducting classroom-based research as an important activity for refining teaching techniques and methods in the language classroom. Students will gain hands-on experience with conducting classroom research in the four skills (i.e., listening, reading, speaking, and writing) within the context of the language classroom. Finally, the course will explore the relative strengths and potential challenges of different approaches to classroom-based research, as well as how these pieces of information can contribute to gaining expertise in language teaching. This course is recommended for TEFL/TESL graduate students but is also open to any graduate students interested in conducting language research, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods approaches.
E607A Teaching Writing, Composition & Rhetoric | 3 credits | 02:00 - 03:15 PM | TR | Instructor TBA
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 | 02:00 - 03:15 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 | 10:00 - 10:50 AM | M | Instructor TBA
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.
E630A – Special Topics in Literature: In the American Grain | 3 credits | 4:00 - 7:00 PM | W | Sasha Steensen
In his autobiography, William Carlos Williams describes his motivation for writing In the American Grain as an attempt to “try to find out for myself what the land of my more or less accidental birth might signify” (178). This course charts the contradictory impulses that Williams found in American literature: the romanticizing and demonizing of the wilderness; the battle between our liberal transcendentalist and our conservative Puritan pasts; the contradictory relationship between individualism and democracy; and American literature’s struggle between Eurocentrism and the Poundian dictum “make it new!” After spending a few weeks exploring foundational texts by Puritan ministers, antinomians, slaves, captives, indigenous thinkers, and the founding “fathers,” we will consider the nineteenth-century shift away from the fear of the wilderness. Dickinson, Thoreau, Melville and others believed, just as their Puritan ancestors did, that the wilderness was inhabited. But rather than simply fearing these inhabitants, they attempted to harness their energy for their work. The twentieth century ushered in a self-conscious, poetic exploration of historiography itself. William Carlos Williams’s In the American Grain, Charles Olson’s Call Me Ishmael, D.H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature, and Susan Howe’s The Birth-mark: unsettling the wilderness in American literary history are texts that blur the lines between primary and secondary, between literature and literary criticism. We will pair these texts with chapters from Richard Slotkin’s Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860. Finally, we will look at more recent texts that begin to expose the many limitations of our racist, sexist and capitalist past and present, including Claudia Rankin’s Citizen, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, and Paisley Rekdal’s West,. By tracing this grain in American history back to its roots, we’ll see how American poets and essayists have acted as historians, mining early American texts and giving voice to those who have been silenced or forgotten by the traditional tomes of history.
E633 – Special Topics in Writing and Rhetoric: Autoethnography | 3 credits | 05:00 - 07:50 PM | R | Dr. Sue Doe
Welcome to auto-e, the challenging study of self within the structures and the dynamics of power in culture(s), and, paradoxically also the study of cultural concerns through an acknowledged awareness of self. Engaging in this dialectic, we will consider theoretical and critical examinations of autoethnographic representations, will examine methodological strategies associated with autoethnography as a form of research and field work, will examine others’ approaches to the challenging undertaking of autoethnographic writing, and will originate our own autoethnographic projects in directions relevant to individual interests as well as upon shared experiences at CSU.
E635 – Critical Studies in Literature and Culture: Modernist Poetry | 3 credits | 09:30 - 10:45 AM | TR | Philip Tsang
In this course, we will examine the development of modernist aesthetics in twentieth-century poetry. How did modernist poets situate themselves historically in relation to earlier poetic traditions? How did they respond to such diverse issues as immigration, exile, social reform, racism, gender and sexuality, world war, imperialism, and technology? What did they aspire to achieve through formal experimentation? How do poetic forms shape social communities? We will explore these questions through the poetry of Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Mina Loy, H. D., Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, David Jones, Claude McKay, Louis Zukofsky, Aimé Césaire, among others.
E637 - Histories of Writing & Rhetoric | 3 credits | 05:00 - 07:50 PM | W | Tim Amidon
Understanding writing as socially, historically, and technologically situated, E637 explores how composers act rhetorically to mediate self-identities, social communities, and material worlds. The central question that will motivate our inquiry in E637 will be: How has/does/can writing impact the individuals, cultures, and material worlds we inhabit? To address this question, we will rhetorically attune to a range of narratives, texts, artifacts, theories, and histories related to the practice of literacy and language. For instance, we’ll engage with decolonial theory and historiographies of the field of writing studies and apply concepts from actor network, post humanist, and activity theory to make sense of what and how writing might be understood as a situated socio-technical activity.
Broadly, we will consider how such practices mean with/for/across peoples, cultures, identities, nations, and historical eras where such practices might be located. In more narrow terms, we will study the ways that embodied, analog, and digital literacies are leveraged by specific individuals and social aggregates to realize epistemic and communicative goals. We will explore topics that range from the role of social media/digital composing technologies within disasters, social movements, and marketing campaigns to the kinds of corporeal writing practices such as tattooing, ecriture feminine, and pit-sense. In sum, we will seek to trace how writing allows humans to cultivate connections to ourselves, other humans, institutions, living beings, and the Earth. Assignments will include multimodal writing projects, ethnographic projects, and research projects designed for presentation at national conferences and/or publication within disciplinary journals.
Through our examinations, we will theorize what it means to historicize writing, and how writing, literacies, and language systems have been wielded to concretize power relationship across time, place, and cultures.
We will explore:
• the historiography of writing practices, technologies, and literacies; • contemporary histories which theorize writing, literacy, and authorship; • how to read rhetorically, using critical techniques and writings; • how reading and writing are socially and culturally constructed;
• how to develop research questions; • how to read and compose scholarly genres; • how to present research findings in a conference or journal.
Mostly, we’ll read, read, read, and write, then, we’ll read some more. We’ll talk about our reading and our writing. We’ll question how our own literacy, writing, and language practices are subject to ideological and historical forces. And, we’ll think about what reading and writing mean for us a scholars, teachers, and citizens of this place and time.
E640A Graduate Writing Workshop: Fiction | 3 credits | 04:00 - 06:50 PM | M | Andrew Altschul
Individual projects with group discussion and analysis.
Maximum of 11 credits allowed in course. Contact instructor for registration.
E640B Graduate Writing Workshop: Poetry | 3 credits | 04:00 - 06:50 PM | M | Dan Beachy-Quick
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 | 04:30 - 07:20 PM | T | Vauhini Vara
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.
The Rambler
The Rambler is a semesterly printable document that provides current preregistration advising information and descriptions of special courses available for the coming semester.