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 Spring 2024 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. New students can apply to CSU or reach out for more information. New undergraduates can schedule a visit.
Spring 2024 Courses
Undergraduate Courses, Spring 2024
AMST100 Self/Community in American Culture, 1600-1877 | 3 credits | 9:00 - 9:50 AM | 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 | Multiple Instructors
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
Academic writing, critical thinking, and critical reading through study of a key academic issue.
CO150 College Composition | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
Understanding and writing for rhetorical situations; critical reading and response; writing source-based argument for academic and public audiences.
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
Reading, analyzing, researching, and writing arguments.
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
Learning writing strategies for addressing general audiences in arts and humanities.
Prerequisite: CO 150 or HONR 193. Sections may be offered online.
CO301B Writing in the Disciplines: Sciences | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
Learning writing strategies for addressing general audiences in sciences.
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
Learning writing strategies for addressing general audiences in social sciences.
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 | Rosa Nam
Learning writing strategies for addressing general audiences in education.
Prerequisite: CO 150 or HONR 193. Sections may be offered online.
CO302 Writing in Digital Environments | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
Writing strategies, patterns and approaches for online materials.
Prerequisite: CO 150 or HONR 193.
CO401 Writing and Style | 3 credits | 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM | TR | Genesea Carter
Advanced expository and persuasive writing emphasizing modes, strategies, and styles for a variety of audiences and purposes.
CO402 - Principles of Digital Rhetoric and Design | 3 credits | 3:30 - 4:45 PM | TR | Tim Amidon
Advanced study of rhetorical contexts shaping online texts. Includes instruction in coding and digital design.
Must have completed AUCC category 2.
E140 The Study of Literature | 3 credits | 08:00 - 09:15 AM | TR | Dana Masden
Basic principles of reading literary texts.
E142 Reading Without Borders | 3 credits | 10:00 - 10:50 AM | MWF | Edward Lessor
Authors from a range of international, cross-national, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds focusing on themes of immigration, exile, or education.
E202 - Language Use in Society | 3 credits | 09:00 - 09:50 AM | MWF | Luciana Marques
We use language every day, in virtually every aspect of our lives. Language is an integral part of our social interactions, as it simultaneously draws from and shapes how we see ourselves and others in our communities. In this course, you will be introduced to the relationship between language and society, examining language patterns used in various speech communities and how these patterns can help to shed light on important social issues. As a survey course, we will start with a brief overview of sociolinguistics as a sub-field of linguistics, and then more closely examine how the English language nowadays varies according to different social factors, including (but not limited to): place, ethnicity, age, social class, and native language. Drawing on a variety of theories and research methodologies, this course will explore questions such as: How is meaning worked out during social interactions? To what extent does spoken language differ across certain groups of English language speakers (e.g., male vs. female, old vs. young, more vs. less educated)? How are certain spoken and written features of the English language distributed geographically? How do innovations in words and slang spread in youth language? This course is intended for undergraduate students interested in surveying the study of language use in society within the field of linguistics.
E204 - Creative Writing as Transformative Practice | 3 credits | 02:00 - 03:15 PM | TR | Harrison Candelaria Fletcher
A hands-on studio course exploring such alternative storytelling approaches as hermit crabs, flash forms, erasures, lyric essays, and image-text poems.
Engage and develop the many ways that creative writing methodologies can change both the self and the world.
E206 - Activist Rhetoric and Writing | 3 credits | 02:00 - 02:50 PM | MWF | Lisa Langstraat
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 change, and encouraged social justice. We’ll examine a variety of genres of activist writing—fiction, memoir, activist posters, manifestos, 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.
E210 Beginning Creative Writing | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
Basic techniques of writing fiction and poetry, including writer workshops. May include some elements of drama and/or creative non-fiction.
Sections may be offered online.
E232 Introduction to Humanities | 3 credits | 02:00 - 02:50 PM | MWF | James Roller
Literature of Western cultural tradition from ancient times to present.
E236 Short Fiction | 3 credits | 11:00 - 11:50 AM | MWF | Karen Montgomery-Moore
Examines form, technique and interpretation in short fiction.
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 | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
Development of critical skills necessary to understand and enjoy poetry.
E242 Reading Shakespeare | 3 credits | 12:30 - 01:45 PM | TR | Lynn Shutters
Reading of Shakespeare texts, using various approaches of interpretation for understanding and relation to our contemporary cultural situation.
Sections may be offered online.
E245 World Drama | 3 credits | 01:00 - 01:50 PM | MWF | Mitchell Macrae
World drama in cultural contexts.
Sections may be offered online.
E270 Introduction to American Literature | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Mark Bresnan
History and development of American writings from 16th-century travel narratives through early 20th-century modernism.
Sections may be offered online.
E276 British Literature: Medieval Period to 1800 | 3 credits | 12:00 - 12:50 PM | MWF | William Marvin
British literature from Beowulf through the 18th century in relation to its historical contexts.
Sections may be offered online.
E277 British Literature: After 1800 | 3 credits | 09:00 - 09:50 AM | MWF | Elizabeth Steinway
British literature from the Romantics to the present in relation to its historical contexts.
Sections may be offered online.
E301 – Framing Texts with Critical Theories and Teaching Equity, Justice, and Activism | 3 credits | 10:00 - 10:50 AM | MWF | Rosa Nam
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.
E311A Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction | 3 credits | 02:00 - 03:15 PM | Todd Mitchell
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 | 11:00 - 11:50 AM | MWF | Instructor TBA
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.
E322 – English Language for Teachers | 3 credits | 02:00 - 02:50 PM | MWF | Naitnaphit Limlamai
Foundations of language structure, emphasizing grammar, sounds, spelling, word structure, linguistic variation, usage, acquisition, and pedagogy.
E327 – Syntax and Semantics | 3 credits | 11:00 - 11:50 AM | MWF | Luciana Marques
E327 introduces the linguistic study of sentences and meaning in natural languages. You will learn the concepts, terminology, and analytic skills needed to describe grammatical structures, and perform basic syntactic and semantic analysis. Syntax is the study of sentence structure and grammatical relations, such as subjects and objects. Semantics is the study of meaning relationships at the lexical, such as antonyms and synonyms, and at the sentence level. E327 focuses on the syntax and semantics of English, though examples from other languages might be used to illustrate relevant linguistic phenomena. The course will focus on topics in English syntax and semantics in ways that are relevant to students who are interested in (English) linguistics and to those interested in teaching English as a second or foreign language (TESL/TEFL).
E331 – Early Women Writers | 3 credits | 03:30 - 04:45 PM | TR | Aparna Gollapudi
In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf says in rather memorable hyperbole: “All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn.... It is she--shady and amorous as she was--who makes it not quite fantastic for me to say to you tonight: Earn five hundred a year by your wits." Aphra Behn, the first professional female writer who made her living primarily by her literary endeavors is at the head of a long line of eighteenth-century women writers who competed with male authors and amongst themselves in a burgeoning print market. This course studies British women writers of the long eighteenth century (1660-1800), tracing the emergence of professional women writers, the markets they came to dominate, the authorial personas they crafted, and the ideological contexts they negotiated in their writings. Poetry, fiction, drama, and feminist ‘manifestoes’ by eighteenth-century women writers will be contextualized within modern critical discourses that theorize and historicize women’s writings from the period.
This course fulfills a Category 1or 3 elective requirement for English majors.
E339 - Literature of the Earth | 3 credits | 12:30 - 01:45 PM | TR | Camille Dungy
How are contemporary American writers writing about the land? What does it mean to engage with diverse communities of people as we write and read about the Greater than Human World? In this class we will read essays, short stories, and poems that consider what it means to live on Earth. Climate change, resource extraction, environmental justice, environmental stewardship, connections between human and nonhuman animals, the history of our place on the Earth, and the pleasure we take from the wild world: all these and more are topics we will consider. You’ll be both reading and writing this semester, as we interrogate assumptions about who can write about the Earth and how and why. Look forward to opportunities to speak directly with practitioners of contemporary environmental writing as you learn more about what it means to construct literature of the Earth.
This course fulfills a Category 2 or 3 elective requirement for English majors.
E341 Literary Criticism and Theory | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
Theory and practice of modern literary analysis and evaluation; writing about literature.
E344 – Shakespeare | 3 credits | 02:00 - 03:15 PM | TR | Barbara Sebek
Theatre historians estimate that, between 1576 and 1640, 25,000 people per week attended theatrical performances in and around London, totaling 50 million visits. Shakespeare remains the most familiar of those who wrote for this flourishing institution. Our over-arching theme for the course will be “Shakespeare 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 also study how Shakespeare's plays register and intervene in debates about politics, religion, gender, family, and other social conflicts. In addition to reading the plays in their historical contexts, we’ll 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.
E350 – The Gothic in Literature & Film | 3 credits | 09:00 - 09:50 AM | MWF | Online | Philip Tsang
Mystery, fear, haunting, evil forces, supernatural events: These are some of the defining elements of the Gothic, one of the most popular and enduring genres in Western literature. In this course, we will ask why writers from the eighteenth century onward would turn to the Gothic to explore larger social and political issues. We will begin with William Godwin’s Caleb Williams and his daughter Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Then, we will trace the transformation of Gothic conventions in nineteenth-century British and American fiction by looking at Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, Herman Melville’s Pierre, and one of the most iconic novels of all time, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Finally, we will read two twentieth-century variants of the Gothic: William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo. In addition, we will watch some classic Gothic films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, among others; as well as David Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks.
E371 – British Literature in Cultural Contexts | 3 credits | 09:30 - 10:45 AM | TR | Lynn Shutters
In this course, we will study how British authors and societies re-imagined the Middle Ages AFTER the Middle Ages were over. From the 1500s onward, British cultures looked back on the medieval past and re-imagined it to various aesthetic, cultural, and political ends. Sometimes, the Middle Ages were positioned as the barbaric past from which a glorious British Empire arose. Alternatively, the Middle Ages served as the source of "English" identity: think King Henry V and King Arthur. Finally, the idea of the medieval also creates space for identities not always embraced by mainstream British culture, including queer and non-white identities. To understand the long history of British medievalism*, we will study key canonical authors who re-imagined the medieval, including Shakespeare, Keats, and Tennyson, as well as medieval re-imaginings of more contemporary authors, including J.R.R. Tolkien, Kazuo Ishiguro, Nicola Griffith, and Patience Agbabi. We will also study films, including Monty Python's Holy Grail and David Lowery's The Green Knight. In sum, we will delve into the profound role of medieval re-imaginings in the shaping of British culture.
Please note: knowledge of the British Middle Ages IS NOT a prerequisite for this class.
*medievalism: term for the reimagining of the Middle Ages after the Middle Ages are over.
This course fulfills a Category 1 or 2 requirement for English majors.
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 | 04:00 - 07:20 PM | W | Kelly Burns
Theory and pedagogy for understanding, interpreting, and evaluating print and visual texts.
E402 Teaching Composition | 3 credits | 04:00 - 07:20 PM | R | Kelly Burns
Theory and practice of the analysis and the teaching of writing.
E405 Young Adult Literature | 3 credits | 03:30 - 04:45 PM | TR | Todd Mitchell
Survey of literature for young adults emphasizing development of critical ability, appreciation, and taste.
E406 – Topics in Literacy | 3 credits | 09:30 - 10:45 AM | TR | Kelly Bradbury
At a time when the invasion of A.I. has us asking ourselves What role does writing play in our intellectual development?, What do we lose and gain from adding tools such as ChatGPT to our literacy practices?, and What are the fates of individual and collective literacy?, we will look to the present AND to the past to understand the evolution of literacy and its relationship to learning, to power, and to (in)equity. We will question to what extent literacy has been liberatory and to what extent it has been oppressive. We will examine past and present literacy myths and their consequences. And, we will explore what our own literacy practices have made accessible or inaccessible to us and to those around us.
E412A - Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction | 3 credits | Multiple Meeting Times | Multiple Instructors
Individual projects with group discussion and analysis.
Must register for lecture and recitation. Maximum of 6 credits allowed in course. Sections may be offered online.
E412B - Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry| 3 credits | 12:30 - 01:45 PM | TR | Sasha Steensen
Individual projects with group discussion and analysis.
Must register for lecture and recitation. Maximum of 6 credits allowed in course. Sections may be offered online.
E412C - Creative Writing Workshop: Nonfiction | 3 credits | 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM | TR | Vauhini Vara
Individual projects with group discussion and analysis.
Must register for lecture and recitation. Maximum of 6 credits allowed in course. Sections may be offered online.
E433 – Literature of the American West | 3 credits | 02:00 - 03:15 PM | TR | Matthew Cooperman
What is the American West? Where is it? When? Do we still live in the American West or is that term more accurately applied to Gunsmoke and spaghetti westerns? There’s something mythic about the West, something heroic and solitary and innocent. Something democratic. So too, something radical, illicit, savage, outlaw. It’s a moving target, fugitive in its wandering. Yet the ambiguities surrounding our definitions have shaped our national character, our sense of democracy and our institutions. In this course we will explore our various experiences and conceptions of the American West. We will do so by examining a range of sources and types of literature, from novels to histories to poetries to movies. We will also explore its material history—the horse, the pistol, water, barbed wire—the implements and elements by which its space was “won.”
Possible Texts: Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop; Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose; Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian; Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge; Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony; Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces.
This course fulfills a Category 2 elective requirement for English majors.
E455 – European Literature after 1900 | 3 credits | 09:00 - 09:50 AM | MWF | Paul Trembath
Course description coming soon!
E460 – Chaucer | 3 credits | 10:00 - 10:50 AM | MWF | William Marvin
Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343-1400) is the earliest canonical English poet whose life we know something about. Here be 5 reasons to keep reading his works today. (1) Language. Chaucer wrote in the 14th-century dialect of English that would evolve into modern Standard English. For this reason, his work is accessible today without too much trouble. (2) Writing. Chaucer had a day job but for the love of poetry he read and experimented and reflected about reading and writing. He did so as an amateur and dedicated his work to new kinds of secular fiction. (3) Rhetoric. Being mostly self-taught, Chaucer read the school-books so as to qualify himself in the tropes and colors of classical tradition. He was the first to render many of them in English. (4) Literature. Chaucer rejected most all the poetic traditions of England and set his sights on France, Italy, and classical antiquity—i.e., on master-poets of the Mediterranean. The excellence with which he did this had a sharp and lasting impact on the history of English literature. Chaucer has always been readable, and every poet of marque has read him. (5) Future English teachers will appreciate that Chaucer’s most teachable stories are filthy and funny in equal measure. Because of Chaucer, “farting like a horse” became the kind of thing that canonical poets and professors might consider a topic to ponder.
We shall read as much as we can of The Tales of Canterbury, and other poems chosen by the class. There will be some in-class exams and an essay to write.
This course fulfills a Category 1 or 4 elective requirement for English majors.
E465 - Wonder & Wander: Research and Investigation in Creative Writing (Capstone) | 3 credits | 01:00 - 01:50 PM | MWF | Joanna Doxey
What qualifies as research within creative thought and poetic expression? What processes of science can be used in the literary arts and how can observational processes be seen as valid both in writing and in scientific discovery? In this capstone, we’ll discuss how writers’ singular topics can be exponentially expansive and reveal new truths and tendrils of knowledge, how research guides writing often leading to new personal and global discoveries. This exploration will be deeply immersed in the question of research and what qualifies as research in the creative and writing mind, as students are empowered to engage in their own personalized research projects. Through literary and interdisciplinary examples, we will examine how this research and imaginative explorations can offer new perspectives and insight into climate crises, landscape & home, social inequities, and our own collective humanity – all in wonder! The hope, too, is to decenter disciplinary authoritative structures and open up possibility for new literary and artistic discoveries. This is not a methods class, but rather an investigation of the personal as valid information, extending the personal deep investigation and surveying various models of this creative wonder and generative wander.
Our readings will be largely poetic, hybrid genre, lyric essay, and creative nonfiction, though there will be opportunities for students to engage in researched-fiction for their own writings. Some writers and interdisciplinary artists we may explore are: Jen Bervin, Allison Cobb, Kazim Ali, Robin Wall Kimmerer, CD Wright, Anna Tsing, among others who often have research notes, annotated bibliographies, interviews, and behind-the-scenes into their research. As we look towards our literary and artistic models, students will also be asked to delve into research and examine their own process in the creation of a research-based creative writing portfolio or a literary inquiry into a topic & obsession of their choice.
This can count as a category 2 or 3 class for English education students or for literature or creative writing students who have already taken a capstone.
E470 – Individual Author: Octavia Butler | 3 credits | 03:00 - 03:50 PM | MWF | Leif Sorensen
A study of the major works and enduring cultural influence of the pathbreaking African American speculative fiction writer, Octavia Butler. We will not try to cover all of Butler's published fiction, but will sample the major works of each period of her career (Kindred and the Patternist series from her early career in the late 70s and early 80s, the Xenogenesis/Lilith's Brood books of the mid nineties, and her Parable books from the end of her career). We will also discuss adaptations of her works into graphic novels and streaming media and examine speculative anthologies that directly seek to continue her legacy after her untimely death in 2006 at the age of 58. Our discussions will also be informed by the growing body of scholarship on her work which includes work in critical race studies, science and technology studies, and ecocriticism in addition to work in science fiction studies and analysis of popular culture.
This course satisfies a Category 2, 3, or 4 requirement for English majors.
E487B.001 Internship: Literary Editing – Greyrock Review | 1 credit | 07:30 PM - 09:50 PM | M | Stephanie G'Schwind
Students can 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 a staff intern, you will be expected to attend weekly staff meetings to discuss promoting the call for submissions, reading submissions, copyediting, layout, proofreading, and publicity.
Students must be Junior or Senior English majors or minors with a minimum GPA of 3.0 and should have taken E210. Qualified students must register for both Fall 2023 and Spring 2024—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.
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