Current Graduate Course Offerings

2:00 – 3:15 PM | TR | Taught by Dan Beachy-Quick

The Sightless Seer: so Homer lives on in our imagination now, a potent echo from ancient days, where the primary paradox fascinated thinkers then as much as it does us today—how can it be that the one with no vision sees most clearly? Over the course of the semester we’ll immerse ourselves in a single book: Homer’s Iliad. Composed of extant oral tales by the poet Homer (whose myth and history are wholly intertwined) some 800 years after the events it portrays, we’ll patiently listen in on the ancient song that lives on as one of the primary roots of the Western imagination. Collection of myths, of heroes, of bronze-age socio-political order, we’ll supplement our patience by a wide-ranging reading—verging from ancient miscellanea related to Homer’s biography, to the 5th century tragedians widening and altering the mythology around central heroes, to modern returns in poetry and philosophy considering the Iliad anew—to create (as best we can manage) a nuanced and complex 15-week approach to a depthless book. My hope sounds a simple one, and is itself an echo of the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides: To think about what is there to think about. That little riddle is to say that the work of the class is pointed toward what the epic poem is, has always been, and continues to be—and to speak honestly and ambitiously into that conversation that has been ongoing for nearly 3000 years, to be humbled and triggered by the realization that for a semester, we’re participants in the symposium that hasn’t ever yet ceased.

2:30 – 3:45 PM | MW | Taught by Luciana Marques

Teachers of English as a second or foreign language need a strong understanding of how English grammar works and how learners acquire it. This includes familiarity with the major syntactic patterns of English, the meanings and functions associated with those patterns, and the inflectional and derivational morphology involved in forming different types of words and grammatical forms. Developing this knowledge will prepare you to select, explain, and teach grammatical structures effectively in a variety of classroom contexts. It will also help you understand and use grammatical descriptions of English and other languages as resources for language teaching and analysis.

3:30 – 4:45 PM | TR | Taught by 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(s) 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 learner, interlanguage development and variability, individual differences, and social factors affecting language development.

5:00 – 7:30 PM | T | Taught by Tony Becker

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.

12:30 – 1:45 PM | TR | Taught by Todd Ruecker

Research design principles emphasizing qualitative methods in writing studies; an introduction to quantitative concepts.

5:00 – 7:30 PM | M | Taught by Fabiola Ehlers-Zavala

Introduces classroom-based research as a means of improving teaching and learning in ESL/EFL and other language-learning contexts. Students gain hands-on experience designing and conducting research related to listening, speaking, reading, and writing while examining quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods approaches. Emphasis is placed on evaluating the strengths and challenges of different approaches and using research to inform language teaching practices. Recommended for TEFL/TESL graduate students and open to other graduate students interested in language research.

9:30 – 10:45 AM | TR | Taught by Kelly Bradbury

This graduate course examines current social and political contexts shaping reading and writing instruction, with particular attention to two calls the field is currently answering and the literacy myths each calls into question. The first is linguistic justice, a decades-long argument, beginning with the CCCC’s 1974 “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” and continuing through contemporary calls like “This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice!”.

The second is generative AI, a newer and more contested call, which unsettles long-standing assumptions about authorship, originality, and what it means to write “one’s own” text, even as it generates new literacy myths of its own about what AI will erode and what “AI literacy” now demands. Reading these two calls together and tracking where they intersect (in the language norms AI tools default to, in who gets flagged by AI-detection technologies, in what counts as a writer’s own labor), we will ask what they reveal about what it means to write, read, and teach writing across classrooms and disciplines today.

3:30 – 4:45 PM | TR | Taught by Philip Tsang

Recent developments in critical and cultural theories of discourse.

1:00 – 3:30 PM | F | Taught by Lynn Badia

Course description forthcoming. For immediate assistance, contact instructor for more information.

5:30 – 8:00 PM | R | Taught by Sandra Saco

This course explores the study of youth participatory action research, methods, and the importance of community. We will examine the ways in which research can engage students and communities alongside sociopolitical and sociocultural practices of civic engagement and literacy practices. Students will learn strategies they can use to support and empower young people as activists, writers, and civically engaged community members. All are welcome and invited to enroll.

3:00 – 5:50 PM | W | Taught by Sarah Cooper

This course explores the intersections and possibilities of archival and rhetorical studies, asking: What are the central terms and concepts of critical archival studies? How might a familiarity with this conversation enrich archival research in rhetorical studies? Conversely, what contributions might rhetoricians offer to theoretical and methodological conversations in archival studies?

4:00 – 6:50 PM | T | Taught by Nina McConigley

Individual projects with group discussion and analysis.

4:00 – 6:50 PM | T | Taught by Matthew Cooperman

We’ll read some books of poems, read some poetics, and workshop your poems.

4:00 – 6:50 PM | M | Taught by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher

Individual projects with group discussion and analysis.

6:00 – 8:30 PM | W | Taught by Sarah Perry

This seminar-based class will examine literary true crime by combining creative and craft-based experiments with traditional literary critical approaches. Texts will include In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey, In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, and others.

Craft issues will range from mediating truth to representing real people to infusing intimate stories with the preoccupations of one’s historical moment. Creative and craft experiments will occur at the intersection of true crime and creative nonfiction, serving as opportunities to work on writing skills, including creating a self on the page, building characters, constructing scenes, crafting images and metaphors, and incorporating research. All disciplines welcome.

2:00 – 3:15 PM | TR | Taught by Erika Szymanski

An approach to science writing for diverse audiences as a simultaneously creative and strategic endeavor, through principles that apply to science writing from the journal article to the personal essay, with a particular focus on writing for audiences beyond the discipline. Read and discuss foundational science writing and science communication theory, practice writing about work for diverse audiences, and participate in extensive peer-review and workshopping.

1-5 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Taught by Stephanie G’Schwind

Internship with Colorado Review.

More information can be found here: https://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/about/

4:00 – 6:00 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.

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