Courses & Advising

Experience and Engage

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.

Browse the CSU Course Catalog

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Spring 2024 Courses

Undergraduate Courses, Spring 2024

AMST100 – Self/Community in American Culture, 1600-1877

AMST101 – Self/Community in American Culture Since 1877

CO130 – Academic Writing

CO150 – College Composition

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

CO301A – Writing in the Disciplines: Arts and Humanities

CO301B – Writing in the Disciplines: Sciences

CO301C – Writing in the Disciplines: Social Sciences

CO301D – Writing in the Disciplines: Education

CO302 – Writing in Digital Environments

CO401 – Writing and Style

CO402 – Principles of Digital Rhetoric and Design

E140 – The Study of Literature

E142 – Reading Without Borders

E202 – Language Use in Society

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

E206 – Activist Rhetoric and Writing

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

E232 – Introduction to Humanities

E236 – Short Fiction

E238 – Contemporary Global Fiction

E240 – Introduction to Poetry

E242 – Reading Shakespeare

E245 – World Drama

E270 – Introduction to American Literature

E276 – British Literature: Medieval Period to 1800

E277 – British Literature: After 1800

E301 – Framing Texts and Critical Theory in Equity

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

E311B – Intermediate Creative Writing: Poetry

E322 – English Language for Teachers

E327 – Syntax and Semantics

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

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

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

E344 – Shakespeare

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

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

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.

E384A – Supervised College Teaching: Classroom

E401 – Teaching Reading

E402 – Teaching Composition

E405 – Young Adult Literature

E406 – Topics in Literacy

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

E412B – Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry

E412C – Creative Writing Workshop: Nonfiction

E433 – Literature of the American West

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

E460 – Chaucer

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 14^th-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)

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

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 – Internship: Literary Editing – Greyrock Review

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 – Internship: Community Literacy Center

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.

Browse the CSU Course Catalog

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

Call Academic Success Coordinator

Kim Daggett

Academic Success Coordinator

Eddy 209

Academic Success
Coordinators

Joanna Doxey

Academic Success Coordinator

Eddy 209A

New 200 Level Courses

Join us for interdisciplinary explorations and deep-dives into Creative Writing, English Education, Linguistics, Literature, and Rhetoric!

E200 – Inquiry-Based Teaching, Learning, and Communicating

E202 – Language Use in Society

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.

E204 – Creative Writing as Transformative Practice

E206 – Activist Rhetoric and Writing

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.

Colorado State University students walking to and from classes on the Lory Student Center Plaza, May 3, 2019.

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.

Schedule a visit (undergraduates)

Apply to Colorado State University

College of Liberal Arts Info

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.

The Rambler: Spring 2024 courses, advising information

The Rambler Archive beginning 2013

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

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Experience and Engage

CSU English Department Courses

Course Registration, Availability, and the University Course Catalog