“Critical Race Theory: Understanding Racial Structures Beyond Color Blindness” – Senior Capstone Special Topics (ENGL 470) Critical Race Theory (CRT) began from its origins in Critical Legal Studies and has expanded exponentially within the last decade, seeping into the public discourses of average, everyday Americans. In this course we will look at popular and scholarly materials with particular attention to CRT’s intersections with the field of American Studies. CRT postulates that social institutions operate through structures of racism and that there is an underlying “racial contract” instead of the much more commonly discussed “social contract.” CRT advances the notion that there is no such thing as “color blindness” when it comes to race and that racism itself is endemic to society. The goal of this course theme is to create an academic space where individuals and institutions can grapple with the harsh realities of race and racism while also remaining committed to social justice and praxis. We will navigate these tensions and use CRT to provide a toolkit for understanding the current scholarship, and work toward social change in the realms of race and racism.
“Capturing the Crisis: Video Captioning, Mobile Streaming, and Media Accessibility” – Digital Rhetoric and Content Writing (ENGL 420) This course covers theories of post-critical production in the professional documentation and presentation of traditional and new media to investigate global and local cultural movements through the use of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, U-stream and other social media to better understand cutting-edge mobile apps and technologies as students learn to embed, caption, and share videos. In this class we will read, analyze, and draft digital publications for multiple audiences and flexible purposes and gain proficiency in the creative delivery of meaningful information designs.
“Knowing, Doing, Making: Effective Career Networks” – Business and Professional Writing (ENGL 344) This class allows every student to tailor their activities for individual needs and desires because today, more than ever, professional writing requires the savvy delivery and application of digital technologies for instantaneous collaboration and sharing. Students will manipulate texts, images, and data to design various documents (résumés, cover letters, career bios, memos, slideshows, reports, etc.) to advance an authentic web persona and business style that effectively differentiates between personal and professional uses of social media. To this end, a variety of learning paths and tiers may be selected. These include: hands-on application through digital communication with new media and social networking or traditional case study analysis through print-based writing of memoranda, proposals, and reports; basic assignment workshops for students who want extra support and one-on-one guidance delivering assignments or accelerated analytical activities for students who possess more experiential access and desire more of a challenge.
“Works [Re]Cited: Bronco Bloggers” – Issues in Professional Writing (ENGL 335) This writing intensive course, conceptualized as both seminar and practicum, introduces students to the rhetorics, theories, trends, and ethics of professional blogging and workplace writing. By examining rhetoric as institutional and agentive structures in professional occupations across private and public sectors (i.e., government—both civilian and military—as well as large corporations and private firms), students will communicate problem-based multimodal projects that model the complex challenges faced by professional, in-the-world writers. These tasks include engaging current debates in the field of Professional Writing on selected topics and contributing to a course blog. Students will learn the research tools, ethical practices, established conventions, and emerging technological genres of digital rhetoric and professional style.
Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, PhD 