Spring 2019

All too often, English majors are told that their studies are impractical. W.H. Auden’s famous line, “Poetry makes nothing happen,” is often misunderstood as admitting the powerlessness of literature in general. In fact, though, literature has a track record of empowering social change. This course will examine the relative effectiveness...

How did the world become divided into “developed” and “developing” nation-states? Why are the costs and benefits of development so unevenly distributed across the world (and also internally, within a nation)? What are the indices by which we define development? Is development always a desirable goal? And how do projects...

Explores major literary and theoretical trends in the Anglo-American tradition after 1945.

Engages a wide range of NAIS methodologies with a series of case studies. Focuses on print, visual, and digital texts encompassing wide swathe of Eurowestern disciplines, while seeking to recuperate and restore Indigenous epistemic practices within our scholarship. Refines students' skills in intellectual debate in the spirit of shared inquiry...

In this class we explore a variety of Jewish-American literary works from the late nineteenth century to the present through writers such as Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierska, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, and Cynthia Ozick, among others. We examine a number of questions...

In a provocative 2004 speech entitled “I Have a Plan to Destroy America,” Richard D. Lamm, the former three-term Governor of Colorado, equated “multi-culturalism” with “the doctrine of ‘Victimology.’ ” A decade later, CU Boulder renamed the “Center for Multicultural Affairs” as the “Cultural Unity & Engagement Center.” Yet “multicultural...

This course introduces students to the work of authors from formerly colonized nations in the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia. Focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on prose fiction, we will examine how postcolonial writers engage with issues of national identity and decolonization; negotiate the competing imperatives of English and vernacular...

Studies specialized topics in the history, theory, and practice of media, such as the history of the book, the theory of digital media, and the theory and practice of multimedia forms. Specially designed for English majors. Topics vary year to year.

What do employers want? If you Google that question, you will find that they want, almost above all else, and in every field, people who can communicate effectively in both speaking and writing. This course teaches how to do it in the real world––the world after graduation. It does so...

Studies special topics in popular culture; specially designed for English majors. Topics vary each semester. May be repeated for a total of 6 credit hours for different topics.