Courses & Advising
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CSU English Department Courses
English department courses are opportunities for you to explore the ways in which we employ the language to meet demands of the twenty-first century. A vibrant and diverse group of teacher educators, linguists, literary scholars, novelists, composition specialists, and writers of creative nonfiction comprises your faculty.
Scroll down for descriptions of Summer 2025 and Fall 2025 course offerings (class time and instructor subject to change) and access important links to help you begin mapping out your English education today.
Course Registration, Availability, and the University Course Catalog
The course descriptions on this web page aim to provide a sense of our disciplinary scope. To search for course availability or register for courses, students with access can login to RAMweb. Incoming or prospective students can visit CSU's online course catalog to browse a general listing of English department courses.
Summer 2025 Courses
To view complete course information for all summer offerings, visit the CSU Summer Session website.
To learn more about the Environmental Humanities program at CSU's Mountain Campus, visit the Environmental Humanities website.
American Studies, Composition, and English Courses
AMST 101 Self/Community in American Culture Since 1877 | 3 credits | 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM | MTWRF | May 19 - June 15, 2025 | Grant Bain
America has always been weird, and in this course we’ll learn just HOW weird! This particular section will explore a series of supposed vampire attacks (you read that right: VAMPIRE ATTACKS) in the 19th century in terms of history, psychology, sociology, journalism, medicine, folklore and other disciplines. By examining these strange topics we’ll attempt to understand our present and who we are within that present. By completing this course, you will have a greater understanding of what (and just how weird) America is and what your role is in relation to it.
CO130 Academic Writing | 3 credits | 9:00 - 10:15 AM | MTWR | June 16 - August 10, 2025 | Luciana Marques
In CO130: Academic Writing, you will develop and practice how to read and write for academic audiences. In order to effectively communicate in academic contexts, you will learn how to identify rhetorical situations, learn how to identify and revise purposes for writing, practice writing in a variety of genres, and read and research various topics and texts. Since the process of reading and writing is just as important as the final written product, you will practice drafting, outlining, writing, revising, summarizing, analyzing, close reading, and research. These are skills that you will use throughout your time at CSU as well as in the workplace. CO130 will support your learning and work with other classes, audiences, and writing situations.
CO150 College Composition | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
In CO150: College Composition, you will be introduced to many of the key writing, reading, research, and communicating practices you need for success as a university student, professional, and citizen. In this course, you will learn to critically read and respond to a variety of texts, to write for a variety of rhetorical situations and audiences, to dialogue about different experiences and perspectives, and to develop and apply effective writing practices. You will have opportunities to practice the drafting, revising, peer editing, and polishing stages of writing and will produce several polished academic texts as well as lots of informal written reflections in this course.
Must have taken CO 130 or Composition Challenge Essay (score of 3, 4, or 5) or SAT Verbal/Critical reading score of minimum 570 or SAT Evidence Based Reading/Writing score of minimum 620 or ACT COMPOSITE score of minimum 26 or Directed Self-Placement Survey code of 15.
Sections may be offered online.
CO300 Writing Arguments | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
In CO300: Writing Arguments, you will expand your argumentative skills in your specific academic, professional, public, and personal contexts. We use contemporary rhetorical theory to develop sophisticated understandings of effective communication as we write various persuasive texts. We explore the nuances of the rhetorical situation, audience analysis, and Rogerian argument. To help prepare you to write in increasingly digital environments, we may also practice visual, aural, and multimodal arguments. In order to practice advanced reading, note-taking, researching, writing, and revising arguments, you will write to annotate, reflect, inquire, respond, inform, and persuade. You will write as scholars, aspiring professionals, citizens, and consumers/co-creators of culture. CO300 is a writing- and reading-intensive course, and you can expect to have lots of opportunities to read critically, engage in conversations about writing, and produce arguments for a variety of audiences over the course of the semester.
Prerequisite: CO 150 or HONR 193. Sections may be offered online.
CO301B Writing in the Disciplines: Sciences | 3 credits | Online | Multiple Instructors
In CO301B: Writing in the Disciplines--Sciences, you will write about complex scientific topics for diverse audiences, especially non-specialists. Audiences beyond scientific disciplines are often interested in scientific research for a variety of reasons, from entertainment to seeking information to inform making decisions in their daily lives. In CO301B you will write about science (including medicine and technology) for publications such as The New York Times and Scientific American, with particular attention to making choices about focus, structure, detail, and word choice with respect to what non-specialist audiences know and don’t know, want to know and need to know. In addition to learning practical strategies, you will think critically and strategically about how we consume science writing and their goals and purposes as science writers. You will also learn about rhetorical approaches to the function and structure of science writing, reading and analyzing articles from rhetoric and from the scholarship of science communication alongside many real-world examples.
Prerequisite: CO 150 or HONR 193. Sections may be offered online.
CO301D Writing in the Disciplines: Education | 3 credits | Online | May 19 - July 13, 2025 | Rosa Nam
Teachers write to know, and they write to learn. This course is designed to support future teachers to advance your own thoughts and to advance educational change. Students will read and explore current issues in education and consider examples of professional writing both in print and in multimodal form. Students will write to refine existing theories of education, examine personal teaching philosophy, and engage in professional conversations in the field.
E210 Beginning Creative Writing | 3 credits | Online | June 16 - August 10, 2025 | Bryce O'Tierney
In this course, you will be introduced to the basic techniques of writing fiction and poetry, including writer workshops. May also include some elements of drama and/or creative nonfiction.
E232 Introduction to Humanities | 3 credits | Online | June 16 - August 10, 2025 | Tom Conway
What are the humanities?
The humanities can be described as the study of how people express, process, and document the human experience. Since humans have been able, we have used philosophy, literature, religion, art, music, history and language to comprehend and communicate our “being-in-the-world.” These modes of expression have become some of the subjects that traditionally fall under the humanities disciplines for both creation and contemplation. Engaging with these records of human experience give us the opportunity to feel a sense of connection to those who have come before us, while also enhancing our understanding of contemporary forms of expression that are essential to human understanding.
In this course, we will investigate some of the history of the Western expression of human experience with authors who have left a lasting imprint on the Western mind. The philosopher, Kwame Anthony Appiah, explains that, “the very notion of something called ‘Western culture’ is a modern invention.” Thus, by no means will we discount the importance of non-Western traditions and we will often recognize the contradictions of arbitrary, socially constructed boundaries, seeing how the west/non-west distinction breaks down under scrutiny. We will question the western distinction at times and make important connections to the thought from other parts of the world. However, this class will focus primarily on the so-called “Western tradition,” as an examination of ideas that have influenced the “Western” mindset.
E238 Contemporary Global Fiction | 3 credits | Online | May 19 - July 13, 2025 | Mika Todd
E238 features contemporary fiction chosen for its relevance to global and cultural awareness. In other words, this course will explore the wide range of ways humans experience their position as an individual in relation to a broader societal context shaped by various outside forces, including family, community, religion, history, politics, art, technology, economics, and more. These works will allow the students to understand both fundamental human similarities shared by superficially different peoples in the 20th and early 21st centuries, but also to examine the fundamental differences in attitudes, issues, and concerns between peoples of widely varying cultures.
E238 introduces the basic formal elements of fiction (plot, characterization, point of view, narrative structure, setting, description, dialogue, conflict, symbolism, etc.) with coursework including close readings, in-depth discussions, and exploratory writing assignments designed to assist you in developing your own interpretations of these texts.
E311B Intermediate Creative Writing: Poetry | 3 credits | Online | June 16 - August 10, 2025 | Co-taught by slp (sarah louise) pieplow and Cass Eddington
This course is an online poetry workshop constructed to mix the best of in-person and online learning for an intimate and fruitful workshop experience. We will read new forms and new poets from a variety of styles, backgrounds, and identities; each module we will look at a different technique, poetic term, form, or concept, with writing prompts that get us generating new work in new ways. Our goal is to become thoughtful readers and to build a base of poetic knowledge and vocabulary while pushing ourselves to look beyond, and under—to understand what the poetic process is, and means, for us, as writers, in community. We also read a book from a contemporary poet, and often get to meet and talk with the author.
E311C Intermediate Creative Writing: Nonfiction – Travel Writing | 3 credits | Online | May 19 - June 15, 2025 | Tobi Jacobi
E320 – Introduction to the Study of Language | 3 credits | Online | June 16 - August 10, 2025 | Luciana Marques
E320 introduces the basic concepts and theories that linguists/applied linguists adopt in trying to understand how language works and how language is used. Language is studied from a structural perspective, with emphasis on morphology, phonetics and phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Additional topics of interest include language variation and language change. This course is recommended for, but not limited to, students interested in language description and its applications, such as TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), language documentation, computational linguistics, foreign language teaching, and teaching in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms.
This is a required core course in the Linguistics and Culture Interdisciplinary Minor and strongly advised for students with the Linguistics concentration.
E332 - Modern Women Writers | 3 credits | Online | June 16 - July 13, 2025 | Aparna Gollapudi
This is an online course that brings together twentieth- and twenty-first- century women writers from all over the world working in various literary forms. A poet from Russia, novelists from India and Zimbabwe, Asian American playwrights, a graphic novelist: these are some of the figures you will meet in this course. We will consider their works from a range of historical and theoretical perspectives. This is a very fast-paced course, so please be prepared for that. Course materials include recorded lectures. Activities and assignments include quizzes, exams, essay-writing, virtual presentations, reading responses, discussion posts, etc.
This course fulfills a Category 2 or 3 elective requirement for English majors.
Fall 2025 Courses
Click on course titles to expand their respective descriptions, and to help plan your immersion in the interdisciplinary study of English. Class times/instructors are subject to change.
American Studies, Composition, and Education Courses
AMST100 Self/Community in American Culture, 1600-1877 | 3 credits | 02:00 - 02:50 PM | MWF | Grant Bain
Critical analysis of the meaning and development of American culture, 1600-1877, through themes of self and community in art, politics, society, and religion.
AMST101 Self/Community in American Culture Since 1877 | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Catherine Ratliff
Critical analysis of the meaning and development of American culture since 1877, through themes of self and community in art, politics, society, and religion.
CO130 Academic Writing | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
In CO130: Academic Writing, you will develop and practice how to read and write for academic audiences. In order to effectively communicate in academic contexts, you will learn how to identify rhetorical situations, learn how to identify and revise purposes for writing, practice writing in a variety of genres, and read and research various topics and texts. Since the process of reading and writing is just as important as the final written product, you will practice drafting, outlining, writing, revising, summarizing, analyzing, close reading, and research. These are skills that you will use throughout your time at CSU as well as in the workplace. CO130 will support your learning and work with other classes, audiences, and writing situations.
CO150 College Composition | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
In CO150: College Composition, you will be introduced to many of the key writing, reading, research, and communicating practices you need for success as a university student, professional, and citizen. In this course, you will learn to critically read and respond to a variety of texts, to write for a variety of rhetorical situations and audiences, to dialogue about different experiences and perspectives, and to develop and apply effective writing practices. You will have opportunities to practice the drafting, revising, peer editing, and polishing stages of writing and will produce several polished academic texts as well as lots of informal written reflections in this course.
Must have taken CO 130 or Composition Challenge Essay (score of 3, 4, or 5) or SAT Verbal/Critical reading score of minimum 570 or SAT Evidence Based Reading/Writing score of minimum 620 or ACT COMPOSITE score of minimum 26 or Directed Self-Placement Survey code of 15.
Sections may be offered online.
CO300 Writing Arguments | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
In CO300: Writing Arguments, you will expand your argumentative skills in your specific academic, professional, public, and personal contexts. We use contemporary rhetorical theory to develop sophisticated understandings of effective communication as we write various persuasive texts. We explore the nuances of the rhetorical situation, audience analysis, and Rogerian argument. To help prepare you to write in increasingly digital environments, we may also practice visual, aural, and multimodal arguments. In order to practice advanced reading, note-taking, researching, writing, and revising arguments, you will write to annotate, reflect, inquire, respond, inform, and persuade. You will write as scholars, aspiring professionals, citizens, and consumers/co-creators of culture. CO300 is a writing- and reading-intensive course, and you can expect to have lots of opportunities to read critically, engage in conversations about writing, and produce arguments for a variety of audiences over the course of the semester.
Prerequisite: CO 150 or HONR 193. Sections may be offered online.
CO301A Writing in the Disciplines: Arts and Humanities | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
In CO301A: Writing in the Disciplines--Arts and Humanities, you will focus (primarily) on writing for a range of public audiences interested in issues and content of the arts and humanities. Thus, the specialized discourse emphasized in this course is characterized by strategies that frame for, and appeal to readers outside academe (focused narrative, description, definition and elaboration of key critical terms, illustration as well as critical analysis, evaluation, and argument). CO301A provides you with multiple opportunities to extend your writing skills. In particular, you will begin the course analyzing selected texts in terms of rhetorical context, framing, target audiences, kinds and arrangements of evidence, uses of source material, genre conventions, stylistic options, format, etc. You will extend your rhetorical knowledge by practicing oral and written analysis and critique of issues important to audiences within the arts and humanities. In addition to a focus on deepening your understanding of composition as rhetorical practice and ability to produce effective discourse about/in the humanities for varied public contexts, you will have opportunities to transform content knowledge about the arts and humanities into discourse that educates, enlightens, provokes, influences, and connects with audiences beyond the classroom. You will also have opportunities to explore stylistic elements such as the virtues of the writing (clarity, correctness, appropriateness, and distinction), diction, figures of speech, schemes, rhythm, or types of styles as we produce writing for specific audiences.
Prerequisite: CO 150 or HONR 193. Sections may be offered online.
CO301B Writing in the Disciplines: Sciences | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
In CO301B: Writing in the Disciplines--Sciences, you will write about complex scientific topics for diverse audiences, especially non-specialists. Audiences beyond scientific disciplines are often interested in scientific research for a variety of reasons, from entertainment to seeking information to inform making decisions in their daily lives. In CO301B you will write about science (including medicine and technology) for publications such as The New York Times and Scientific American, with particular attention to making choices about focus, structure, detail, and word choice with respect to what non-specialist audiences know and don’t know, want to know and need to know. In addition to learning practical strategies, you will think critically and strategically about how we consume science writing and their goals and purposes as science writers. You will also learn about rhetorical approaches to the function and structure of science writing, reading and analyzing articles from rhetoric and from the scholarship of science communication alongside many real-world examples.
Prerequisite: CO 150 or HONR 193. Sections may be offered online.
CO301C Writing in the Disciplines: Social Sciences | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
In CO301C: Writing in the Disciplines--Social Sciences, you will focus on 1) developing a nuanced rhetorical understanding of disciplinary writing within various fields of the social sciences, 2) studying contexts for professional and non-expert social science writing, and 3) practicing similar kinds of writing for non-academic audiences and purposes. This course offers you multiple opportunities to both read and analyze varieties of social science writing and to research, write, and revise their own compositions on social science topics relevant to their majors and their emerging areas of expertise. You will have opportunities to develop an advanced understanding of rhetorical analysis, non-agonistic argumentation, and other rhetorical and writing strategies. In CO301C you will be introduced to and practice writing a series of texts that represent the ways that social sciences writing circulates within popular, workplace, and/or academic contexts.
Prerequisite: CO 150 or HONR 193. Sections may be offered online.
CO301D Writing in the Disciplines: Education | 3 credits | 1:00 - 1:50 PM | MWF | Ted Fabiano
Teachers write to know, and they write to learn. This course is designed to support future teachers to advance your own thoughts and to advance educational change. Students will read and explore current issues in education and consider examples of professional writing both in print and in multimodal form. Students will write to refine existing theories of education, examine personal teaching philosophy, and engage in professional conversations in the field.
CO302 Writing in Digital Environments | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
In CO302: Writing in Digital Environments, you will expand your skills in writing in digital environments relevant to your specific academic, professional, public, and personal contexts. Over the semester, you will create content for a chosen discourse community while also developing techniques for peer-review, collaboration, and revision in media-rich digital contexts.
Prerequisite: CO 150 or HONR 193.
EDUC 463 – Methods in Teaching Language Arts | 3 credits | 10:00 - 11:40 AM | MW | Ricki Ginsberg
This course is designed to prepare middle and high school teachers to teach reading, writing, speaking, and listening in English/Language Arts classrooms. Our work will be centered in anti-racist and anti-oppressive pedagogies and will focus on the processes, principles, and practices of supporting learners. Upon completion of this course, students will be better able to ground their instruction in the standards, plan lessons and units, consider means for assessing learning, implement sound practices in their classrooms, and enter into professional conversations about the teaching of English. The course is designed in an experiential way in order for pre-service teachers to learn and practice skills and strategies to better understand their validity and usefulness in the classroom.
Undergraduate English Courses
E140 The Study of Literature | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
Basic principles of reading literary texts.
This course fulfills Category 3B: Arts & Humanities for the AUCC requirements.
E142 Reading Without Borders | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
Authors from a range of international, cross-national, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds focusing on themes of immigration, exile, or education.
E150 English Studies Symposium | 3 credits | 03:00 - 3:50 PM | MWF | Multiple Instructors
This experimental course is designed to ignite your curiosity and creativity and encourage you to think across our five disciplines within the English major.
Each fall, our instructors develop a new theme to act as a lens through which we will study the connections between literature, language, philosophy, education, and culture. Recent themes have included world-building, creation stories, and monster narratives. In this class, students learn alongside their teachers, asking questions and posing solutions together.
Ultimately, this course inspires imaginative thinking and practical application. By the end of the semester, you’ll not only grasp how inherently interdisciplinary and collaborative the study of English is, but you’ll also gain the theories and tools to meaningfully consider questions about language, text, and practice.
Credit not allowed for both E 150 and E 181A1.
E210 Beginning Creative Writing | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
In this course, you will be introduced to the basic techniques of writing fiction and poetry, including writer workshops. May also include some elements of drama and/or creative nonfiction.
Sections may be offered online.
E232 Introduction to Humanities | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
What are the humanities?
The humanities can be described as the study of how people express, process, and document the human experience. Since humans have been able, we have used philosophy, literature, religion, art, music, history and language to comprehend and communicate our “being-in-the-world.” These modes of expression have become some of the subjects that traditionally fall under the humanities disciplines for both creation and contemplation. Engaging with these records of human experience give us the opportunity to feel a sense of connection to those who have come before us, while also enhancing our understanding of contemporary forms of expression that are essential to human understanding.
In this course, we will investigate some of the history of the Western expression of human experience with authors who have left a lasting imprint on the Western mind.
This course fulfills Category 3B: Arts & Humanities for the AUCC requirements.
E236 Short Fiction | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
Examines form, technique and interpretation in short fiction.
This course fulfills Category 3B: Arts & Humanities for the AUCC requirements.
E237 Introduction to Science Fiction | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
How do we imagine the future in literary texts? From post-apocalyptic landscapes to the alternative worlds of Indigenous futurism, we will analyze a range of speculative realities offered to us in science fiction. This course explores the history of the science fiction genre and the topics that continually animate it, including utopia/dystopia/heterotopia, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and resource wars. We will examine science and speculative fiction through a range of media (novels, films, short stories, manifestoes, etc.) and think critically about the questions it poses concerning science, community, ecology, colonialism, and the future of the human species.
E238 Contemporary Global Fiction | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
Contemporary fiction chosen for its relevance to global and cultural awareness.
Sections may be offered online.
E240 Introduction to Poetry | 3 credits | 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM | TR | slp (sarah louise) pieplow
Development of critical skills necessary to understand and enjoy poetry.
E242 Reading Shakespeare | 3 credits | 03:00 - 04:15 PM | MW | Roze Hentschell
Reading of Shakespeare texts, using various approaches of interpretation for understanding and relation to our contemporary cultural situation.
This course fulfills Category 3B: Arts & Humanities for the AUCC requirements.
E245 World Drama | 3 credits | 02:00 - 03:15 PM | TR | Ryan Campbell
World drama in cultural contexts.
Sections may be offered online.
E270 Introduction to American Literature | 3 credits | 2:00 - 2:50 PM | MWF | Mark Bresnan
History and development of American writings from 16th-century travel narratives through early 20th-century modernism.
This course fulfills Category 3B: Arts & Humanities for the AUCC requirements.
E276 British Literature: Medieval Period to 1800 | 3 credits | 01:00 - 01:50 PM | MWF | Aparna Gollapudi
British literature from Beowulf through the 18th century in relation to its historical contexts.
This course fulfills Category 3B: Arts & Humanities for the AUCC requirements.
E277 British Literature: After 1800 | 3 credits | 10:00 - 10:50 AM | MWF | Philip Tsang
British literature from the Romantics to the present in relation to its historical contexts.
This course fulfills Category 3B: Arts & Humanities for the AUCC requirements.
E301 – Framing Texts with Critical Theories and Teaching Equity, Justice, and Activism | 3 credits | 03:30 - 04:45 PM | TR | Naitnaphit Limlamai
This course explores the ways in which literary critical theories and approaches can be used to frame texts and rethink pedagogy for secondary education. Students will apply lenses for understanding young adult texts and centering equity in education. All majors welcome.
This course satisfies the requirement for AUCC 4A and 4B.
E305 Principles of Writing and Rhetoric | 3 credits | 12:30 - 01:45 PM | TR | Lisa Langstraat
Considering the profession of Law? Teaching? Professional Writing? Former students in this course have entered all of these professions, as well as International Diplomacy, Environmental and Social Justice Activism—and so many more.
This course examines how writing and rhetoric work. In other words, it asks questions about the relationship of writing and power, the relationship between discourse and reality, alternatives to traditional notions of rhetoric as the "art of persuasion," and how to enhance your writing skills by understanding the history of rhetorical theories and practices.
We'll explore rhetorical case studies, such as Ida B. Wells' anti-lynching campaign in Jim Crow America, Native American rhetorics of survivance, the rhetorics of social media algorithms, and legal discourses, such as Victim Impact Statements. From Plato to AI, this course offers a historical and hands-on approach to the power of rhetoric and writing in our lives.
This is a required core course in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy concentration. It counts as English elective credit for all others.
E310 – Researching and Writing Literary Criticism | 3 credits | 02:00 - 02:50 PM | MWF | Barbara Sebek
This class is designed to practice skills in conducting research and writing literary criticism—skills that will facilitate your success in upper-division literature courses. We will also study strategies for translating these skills to research and writing occasions beyond the literature classroom. We’ll read and discuss an array of literary texts from ancient to modern, loosely gathered around the theme of “aestheticizing violence across periods and genres.” Graded assignments will consist of a series of structured research exercises that will culminate in formulating your own independent research project—an annotated bibliography and detailed prospectus for a longer work of literary or cultural analysis.
Required for Literature concentrators.
E311A Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction | 3 credits | Multiple Meetings Times | Multiple Instructors
Group discussion of student writing, literary models, and theory; emphasis on developing individual style.
Must register for lecture and recitation. Sections may be offered online.
E311B Intermediate Creative Writing: Poetry | 3 credits | 03:30 - 04:45 PM | TR | Matthew Cooperman
Group discussion of student writing, literary models, and theory; emphasis on developing individual style.
Must register for lecture and recitation. Sections may be offered online.
E311C Intermediate Creative Writing: Nonfiction | 3 credits | 03:00 - 04:15 PM | MW | Harrison Candelaria Fletcher
Group discussion of student writing, literary models, and theory; emphasis on developing individual style.
Must register for lecture and recitation. Sections may be offered online.
E320 – Introduction to the Study of Language | 3 credits | 11:00 AM - 11:50 AM | MWF | Anthony Becker
This course introduces the basic concepts and theories that linguists/applied linguists adopt in trying to understand how language works and how language is used. Language is studied from a structural perspective, with emphasis on morphology, phonetics and phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Additional topics of interest include language acquisition, language variation, and language change. This course is recommended for, but not limited to, students interested in language description and its applications, such as TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), language documentation, computational linguistics, foreign language teaching and teaching in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms.
E324 – Teaching English as a Second Language | 3 credits | 10:00 AM - 10:50 AM | MWF | Fabiola Ehlers-Zavala
This is a required core course in the Linguistics and Culture Interdisciplinary Minor and strongly advised for students with the Linguistics concentration.
E327 – Syntax and Semantics | 3 credits | 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM | TR | Gerald Delahunty
E327 introduces the linguistic study of sentences and meaning in natural languages. Focusing on English, you will learn the concepts, terminology and analytic skills needed to describe grammatical structures, and perform syntactic and semantic analysis in ways that are relevant for both Linguistics and TEFL/TESL.
This course is part of the Linguistics and Culture Interdisciplinary Minor and the Linguistics concentration, and it can be an upper-division elective in English.
E334 – LGBTQ+ Literature | 3 credits | 02:00-03:15 PM | TR | Sarah Perry
Full course description coming soon!
E337 Western Mythology | 3 credits | 09:30 - 10:45 AM | TR | William Marvin
The gods who emerged from the timelessness of pre-creation, the cannibal gods and the cosmic gods who with war shaped the order of existence, and the gods who loved sacrifice, ruled in discord, and had ado with mortals in the guises of human-and-animal-kind: These are the personified inscrutables that “western myth” built a coherent core of narration around, and to this narration attached plots and characters in endless variety. Even the story-telling itself, like creation, began in time immemorial. Its main cycles coalesced in spite of migrations and the wrack of civilizations, long even before the advent of writing and literature. But literature, when it came, changed everything. No longer was hieratic myth, the mythology of priests, to be solely the property of cult. This course is about how poets in the age of writing reshaped the potential of the gods. We will track the gods’ wanderings from their cultic origins in magic and hymn to their fluorescence in Sumerian and Greek creation myth, Indic and Germanic dragon slaying, Greek siege epic around the war for Helen of Troy, up to the point of the Roman de-sacralization of the gods in a modern kind of erudite, humane irony. We shall discover furthermore how myth first prompted literary criticism, when readers asked if what Homer said about the immortal gods was true? So, the course will also cover the history of reading myth from classical antiquity to the present, develop this history into a set of critical perspectives, and apply these as hermeneutic tools to the myths as we read them.
This course fulfills a Category 4 elective requirement for English majors and world literature for English Education concentrators. It also counts toward the Religious Studies minor.
E341 Literary Criticism and Theory | 3 credits | 10:00-10:50 AM | MWF | Mark Bresnan
This course will introduce you to several major schools of contemporary literary theory and provide an overview of the history of theory as an academic field. 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.
E344 - Shakespeare | 3 credits | 12:00 - 12:50 PM | MWF | Barbara Sebek
This course will focus on six plays by Shakespeare, studying them through a global lens. The very name of one of the playhouses in which our plays were staged—The Globe—attests to a lively, topical, and novel form of awareness of the wider world. How does this awareness register in the plays, and how do Shakespeare's plays continue to inform global consciousness today? We will read plays in their historical contexts and consider recent screen productions as creative appropriations that speak to our own moment. Final papers or projects will allow students to tailor their work to their specific concentrations within or beyond the English major.
This course fulfills a Category 1 or 4 elective requirement for English majors.
E371 – British Literature in Cultural Contexts: Childhood and Children's Literature | 3 credits | 03:00 - 03:50 PM | MWF | Aparna Gollapudi
E375 – Mindfulness Practices and Literacy Tools For Healing a Changing World | 3 credits | 01:00 - 01:50 PM | MWF | Cindy O'Donnell-Allen
This course will immerse students in a centuries-old conversation on mindfulness that is still more relevant than ever, considering the existential challenges we face in today’s world. After critiquing contemporary renditions of mindfulness, students will explore diverse texts that center “engaged mindfulness,” which is rooted in compassion for self and others; geared toward justice, community, and intentional social action; and supported by neuroscientific research. Students will actually apply the principles and literacy practices of engaged mindfulness through hands-on, choice-based projects that are geared toward their interests and programmatic tastes. All majors welcome.
E384.001 Supervised College Teaching: Classroom | 1 to 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
Supervised assistance in instruction.
Written consent of department chair. A maximum of 10 combined credits for all 384 and 484 courses are counted towards graduation requirements.
E401 Teaching Reading | 3 credits | 02:00 - 03:15 PM | TR | Kelly Burns
Teaching Reading is designed to introduce students to current theory, research, and instructional strategies founded on a critical literacy approach that amplifies a human-first approach for growing readers in secondary grades, within and beyond the classroom.
E403 – Writing the Environment | 3 credits | 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM | TR | Camille Dungy
We will explore some of the many things "nature" can teach us and apply these lessons to our own creative writing. Through careful reading, written responses, and discussion, we will study the land and what grows from it. We will think about what it means to write fluidly about oceans and rivers, beautifully about mulch, and informatively about ecosystems. We will consider the role of the human animal in the fight with and for the earth. We’ll discovery powerful ways to convey the urgency of this moment as we investigate the roots, opportunities, and restrictions of conventions employed in creative writing that engages with the natural world.
This course satisfies the Category 4 requirement for English majors.
E405 Young Adult Literature | 3 credits | 03:30 - 04:45 PM | TR | Todd Mitchell
E405 is designed to give future teachers, writers, and literature students a survey of mostly contemporary novels for young adults. During this course we'll read and discuss approximately a book a week, with a focus on applying a critical literacy lens to explore texts that engage adolescents. All majors welcome.
E407 – Genre Bending: Hybrids & Crossovers | 3 credits | 09:30 - 10:45 AM | TR | Harrison Candelaria Fletcher
This hands-on, studio-style course will examine alternative approaches to contemporary nonfiction, including lyric essays, prose poems, hermit crabs, erasures and image-text combinations.Through critical reading, group discussion and generative writing, we’ll explore how form, juxtaposition, metaphor and negative space can enrich, complicate and illuminate personal narratives. We’ll read widely from both short-form and book-length works, write extensively, and workshop our creations with peers. Bring an open mind and your inner child and prepare to color outside the lines.
E412A Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction | 3 credits | 02:00 - 03:15 PM | TR | Andrew Altschul
A workshop that delves into the techniques of fiction, paying particular attention to the ways in which “rules” and “conventions” are followed, re-interpreted, or subverted by different writers. We will examine a range of published fiction and write a number of shorter pieces before turning to longer student stories in the last third of the semester. For students who have previously passed E311A with a grade of B or higher.
Must register for lecture and recitation. Maximum of 6 credits allowed in course.
E420 – Beat Generation Writing | 3 credits | 12:30 - 01:45 PM | TR | Matthew Cooperman
What is Beat Literature? What does Beat mean? Who are the Beats? When and where are they? As an aesthetic, an identity, a regional activity and an historical period, Beat Literature is both highly specific and culturally pervasive. An interesting paradox: without the Beats, there would be no hippie movement, no sexual liberation, no drug culture, no punk explosion, no multicultural celebration of difference. In their writings—and more importantly in their way of life—the Beats initiated an enormous opening in postwar America and beyond.
The purpose of this class is to plumb these complexities. We’ll explore canonical writers such as Kerouac and Ginsberg, but also more fringe figures such as Bob Kaufman and Joanne Kyger. We’ll also scrutinize the Beats for some of their paradoxical blind spots, such as race and gender, and try to flesh out the period’s “other (d)” activity.
This course fulfills a Category 2 elective requirement for English majors or can be used for upper-division elective credit.
E432 – The 20th Century Novel: From The Rainbow to Gravity's Rainbow | 3 credits | 11:00 - 11:50 AM | MWF | Philip Tsang
E458 – Topics in Language, Law, and Justice | 3 credits | 09:00 - 09:50 AM | MWF | Jesse McLain
Societies are governed by laws and, ideally, justice is determined according to law. Laws are crafted in language, and, ideally, people should be able to read the laws they are subject to. However, the language of English law is very different from other uses of English. Few of us are skilled in reading legal texts because of the strangeness of their language. And we are only superficially knowledgeable about the laws that are most immediately relevant to us, e.g., those governing reasonable search and seizure, Miranda rights, and freedom of speech. We will investigate these and many other issues by studying the language in which laws are written, how laws govern language use and interpretation, and how legal actors have interpreted and manipulated those laws.
We will examine an instance where law and justice have not aligned for linguistic reasons and examine the ideologies of language that affected the jury's decision in that case, as well as media reactions to the speech of the most important prosecution witness. We will also examine cases in which expert testimony by linguists has prevented injustice and cases where such testimony has led to the release of people unjustly convicted. Linguists' study of language in legal settings has a substantial research history which is growing in influence in legal settings. This course will explore the intersections of these two important disciplines and pay particular attention to how laws about language, and the beliefs they are based on, affect access to justice by all, but especially by linguistically diverse populations.
This course fulfills a Category 3 or 4 elective requirement for English majors and can count as an upper division Supporting Course for the Linguistics and Culture Interdisciplinary Minor and the Legal Studies Interdisciplinary Minor.
E465 – Topics in Literature and Language: The Persistence of Memory (Capstone) | 3 credits | 12:30 - 01:45 PM | TR | Naitnaphit Limlamai
The Persistence of Memory explores how and why fields of English remember their histories and foundations in the ways that they do and the implications of those memories for ongoing work of the fields. By engaging with fiction and nonfiction texts that explore how our memory works, what we remember, how we remember, what is excluded from our memories, how, why, and implications of memory, students in this course will develop nuanced and critical lenses to examine individual and collective cultural memories in an effort to surface concealed and occluded memories to create more just worlds.
E466 – Building Fantastical Worlds and Languages (Integrated English Studies Capstone) | 3 credits | 09:00 - 09:50 AM | MWF | Team taught by Luciana Marques and Maurice Irvin
What makes a story memorable? Is it a catchy plot? A charismatic character? In fantasy fiction, the mark of a good story is a well-designed universe, in which we see planets, countries, cultures and characters very different from our own. In this course, you will combine skills in Creative Writing, Linguistics and Literature in the craft of fantasy fiction. Students will explore the relationship between this genre and linguistic structure by looking at well-known fantasy fiction literature and the languages created for them, called constructed languages – conlangs for short, and by crafting their own stories and languages. Students will analyze these stories considering the craft elements applied to fantasy fiction: universe, plot, characters and dialogues, with a focus on universe design, and the linguistic structure of the constructed languages: sounds, words, sentences and texts, their functions for their speakers in these stories, and how linguistic choices can reflect user and community identities.
E487B.001 Internship: Literary Editing – Greyrock Review | 1 credit | 7:00 - 7:50 PM | W | Stephanie G'Schwind
Students receive credit (one free elective credit per semester for up to four semesters) for an internship with Greyrock Review, CSU's annual, student-run, undergraduate literary magazine. During this year-long internship, students learn the intricacies of publishing, printing, and promoting a literary journal. As staff interns, students must attend weekly sessions to discuss promoting the call for submissions, reading submissions, copyediting, layout, proofreading, design, and publicity. Students must be junior or senior English majors or minors with a minimum GPA of 3.0 and should have taken E210 with a grade of B or better. Students must register for both Fall 2025 and Spring 2026—this is a one-year commitment. Interested students should contact Stephanie G’Schwind at Stephanie.GSchwind@ColoState.EDU.
E487C.001 Internship: Community Literacy Center | 1-3 credits | Tobi Jacobi
Students may receive credit (up to 3 per semester for up to two semesters) for an internship with the Community Literacy Center, an outreach arm of the English Department, which coordinates creative writing workshops for confined populations in the community. In this internship, you will have opportunities to blend academic and experiential learning through three primary focus areas: program design and facilitation, administration and leadership, and public engagement and dissemination. An interest in literacy and confined communities is useful, though no experience is required. Training provided in facilitation methods and responses.
Students must be Juniors or Seniors with a minimum GPA of 3.0 Qualified students must register for both Fall 2022 and Spring 2023. This is a one-year commitment. Interested students should contact Tobi Jacobi at tobi.jacobi@colostate.edu.
500-Level English Courses
E501 – Theories of Composition | 3 credits | 09:30 - 10:45 AM | 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.
E505B – Major Authors: Vladimir Nabokov | 3 credits | 04:00 - 06:50 PM | R | Andrew Altschul
Over half a century, Vladimir Nabokov published nearly twenty novels, dozens of short stories, a collection of poems, an autobiography (and its revision), a biography of Gogol, and several volumes of essays and translations. Though he is often described as a great literary stylist, this downplays the profound influence Nabokov had over contemporary Western writers and the development of postmodernist literary technique. In this seminar we will read several of his novels, including early works written in Russian and later works written in English, as well as short stories, essays, and his memoir, "Speak, Memory!" (An important warning: We will read and discuss "Lolita," a novel that centers the point of view of a man who repeatedly rapes a child.) Primary texts will be supplemented by critical essays examining Nabokov’s work and influence. In addition to close readings and a presentation, students will have the choice for a final project of either a significant research paper or a creative work that explores the author’s obsessions and technique.
E513B – Form & Technique in Poetry | 3 credits | 04:00 - 06:50 PM | W | Sasha Steensen
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 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 | 01:00 - 03:30 PM | M | Fabiola Ehlers-Zavala
Academic Success Coordinators
provide first-year students and sophomores with their advising code
review check sheets and undergraduate degree plans
Help English students navigate their degree plan
Connect English students with resources across campus that will help them succeed
Academic Success
Coordinators
New 200 Level Courses
Join us for interdisciplinary explorations and deep-dives into Creative Writing, English Education, Linguistics, Literature, and Rhetoric!
How can we develop inquiry in learning spaces, in our own lives, and in community with others? Learn how to use public debate and deliberation to address social issues and global concerns. You’ll have choice in assignments to explore your interests!
This course examines the interaction of language with individuals and larger social communities, as well as with the many cultures represented within those various communities. Students explore how language functions to establish and/or solidify notions of power, ethnicity, gender, in addition to social and cultural identities. As a result of this course, it is our hope that students will develop an appreciation of how language can serve as an object of scientific study and will identify ways to apply what they learn about language to everyday social and cultural interactions in their own lives and communities.
This course emphasizes the transformative possibilities of creative writing by exploring its relationship to the social, environmental, intellectual, aesthetic, and personal. Engage and develop the many ways that creative writing methodologies can change both the self and the world.
We’ve all heard the claim, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” Yet in our contemporary culture, it can sometimes be difficult to reach readers, to shape opinion and inspire action. This course is intended to help you develop tools to do just that. We will discuss a multitude of texts that have stirred audiences, motivated social and legal change, and encouraged social justice. We’ll examine a variety of genres of activist writing—fiction, poetry, memoire, manifestoes, social media campaigns, etc.--to understand how they reach their intended audiences, how they promote new feelings and ideas, and how they build solidarity. You’ll have an opportunity to explore a variety of issues and to write a variety of genuine activist texts, all while participating in a community of writers whose ideas, while differing widely, will inspire new ways of thinking and communicating.
Incoming Students: Ready to take the next step?
If you're ready to join a diverse and inclusive group, which values individual voice and the power of community, and if you're curious about studying challenging ideas and texts, take the next step toward your English education at Colorado State University.
Click one of the options to schedule a visit, apply to CSU, or find more of the information you seek.
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. It also includes a range of timely and important topics for English majors and minors.
Click the button above for this semester's issue of The Rambler, and find an archive of past issues in The Rambler archive, also linked above.
In each issue of The Rambler, you will find:
- Advising information
- Course descriptions
- Registration details
- Important dates
- Composition Placement Challenge & Re-evaluation essay information
- Award information
- Internship information