ENGL 1410 Themes

The Dark Side of Immigration

Gina Baldoni-Rus

The United States is a country founded by immigrants. Our ancestors arrived on our shores in search of the promises of the “American dream.” We are often referred to as a “melting pot” or a “mixed salad” of people, cultures, and traditions. Immigrants have built our land, defended our country, invested in our economy, and strengthened our families and communities. They are our grandparents, parents, professors, doctors, and neighbors. Our history is enriched by immigration; nevertheless, the United States has also had a complicated and conflicted history with immigration. In every era of U.S. history, immigrants have been the subject of much criticism and the topic of heated debates.

Especially in recent years, the focus of discussions has turned to issues of deportation, detention, criminal and illegal aliens, exploitation, nativism, and violence at the border. Our exploration of immigration will engage issues of the “dark side,” including immigrant gangs, smuggling, and the trafficking of humans and drugs. Who are these immigrants, and how, if at all, are they involved? What’s really happening at our borders and in our very own cities? How do scholars, researchers, and filmmakers problematize these issues? Join us to discover the versions of truth.

Cash Rules: The Rhetoric of Money, Cost, and Value

Michelle Brown

For many, a cash-benefit-analysis is the first step in making any decision because money and finances dictate many of our behaviors and our beliefs. Apart from the actual study of economics and business, rhetoric plays a significant role in the way money, cost, and value is assessed, negotiated, and controlled in our society and in our lives. In this course we will examine the way money affects everything around us, for better and for worse.

Rhetoric of Exclusion

Michael Ferguson

Our country is founded on the idea of “Liberty, Justice, and Freedom for all,” and yet, there were centuries of slavery. There is no mention of the “peculiar institution” in our constitution, and yet it existed, and still touches every aspect of American life and politics. In industries like modeling, we see people of similar shapes and builds without companies mentioning exactly the type of appearance for which they’re looking. States, Cities, and neighborhoods across the country have places called “China Town,” or a “bad side of the tracks,” and society seems to accept these as naturally occurring phenomena with no explanation of how they came to be. We walk through life without thinking of who might be excluded, but if we stop to think about who gathers in the rooms we occupy, who lives on the streets we call home, who is on the TV shows we enjoy, there exists a reason and explanation for why and how these things came to be. In this 1410 class we will explore how exclusion is made acceptable and codified without ever mentioning who or what we want to be absent.

Artificial Intelligence

Sheldon Gaskell

For thousands of years, humans have considered themselves to be the most intelligent beings on the planet.  With the invention of artificial intelligence (AI), some scholars believe this is all about to change!  This research writing course explores how artificial intelligence exists as a force of power, change, intrigue, and fear in our society.  We will explore pressing issues such as algorithm bias, automation, surveillance, facial recognition software, AI art, and other devices/concepts that currently (often subtly) shape our world as well as challenging future possibilities with AI.  We will use stasis theory as a research process to define terms, observe causes and consequences of AI in society, determine the value of these technologies, and propose methods to enhance our relationship with this exciting (and overwhelming) societal phenomenon.  Students will read diverse scholarly articles in this course and create multi-modal texts, an annotated bibliography, a literature review, a researched argument essay, and other reflective genres.  Students are encouraged to research a topic within this theme that is relevant to their interests, majors, or future careers.

Artful Questions: Inspired Research

Catherine Grandorff

From the youngest child to the oldest elder, anyone can be affected by art. On occasion, art may serve as a prompt for reflecting on life, the human experience, or any number of topics. "Artful Questions" considers how various kinds of art can foster such inquiry and ultimately facilitate research. Upon contemplating selected works, we'll engage queries like "How can we define art? How does art shape our surroundings, or vice versa? What impact might a piece have on the world? What is the value of different kinds of art?" This class invites you to blur the line between curiosity and research to cultivate a practice that enhances both.

Wellness: Writing in the Health Sciences

Phillip Haisley

In this course, students will study the idea of “wellness” as it relates to themselves, college life, and beyond. Students will read and discuss central course texts on physical, mental, and emotional wellness. Students will begin the semester by writing a brief report-style paper on the wellness of college students. This report will use a mix of sources provided by the instructor and sources students collect on their own. Next, the students will undertake an in-depth research project on a topic of their choosing (related to wellness). Students will collect a mix of 16 scholarly and popular sources on the topic, take detailed notes on their sources, complete a literature review, and conclude with an argumentative paper using the sources they have collected. Since the course is targeted at health professionals, papers will be written in APA format and special attention will be given to relevant genres used in the field of health sciences.

American Food Culture

Keri Hemenway

Americans want their food to be fast, cheap, and tasty. What our culture demands, we get, but not without a cost to our health and our landscape. This course explores the development of America’s fast food culture and how its industrial nature led to changes in the way food has been grown and processed. This growth is highly political and even “molecular” in nature.

Due to the grass roots efforts of food enthusiasts and agrarians, there is a recent and renewed interest in America’s outlook on how food is grown and what it means for the future; there is a drive toward involving community in more sustainable methods of food production. This course uses popular books, news articles, and documentaries to discover these transformations in our agricultural landscape.

Films as Shapers of Culture

Cody Kaser

Films are vehicles of culture that provide us with not only entertainment but a sense of who we are as people of a particular place and time. They can inspire, disturb, and move us to tears, and beyond their emotional impact, they help us deal with the complex reverberations of an ever-changing world. Some uphold the status quo, such as the Transformers series, while others challenge it, like 2009’s District 9.

Classic social commentaries, such as Charlie Chaplin’s 1939 satirical comedy, The Great Dictator, warned the world about Adolph Hitler, or the original Godzilla, which offered a monstrous allegory for the nuclear destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. More recently, we have Black Panther, addressing the legacy of postcolonialism, or Iron Man 3, Avengers: Endgame, and Joker, each commenting on mental health in its own way. And, even more recently, 2022’s Oscar-nominated Don’t Look Up satirized capitalism and environmental destruction.

Films not only address social issues but often serve as a catalyst for examining or reexamining culture. Pixar’s 2022 animated film, Turning Red, is not strictly a social commentary but it stirred conversations about Asian representation in media. As another example, the massively popular superhero genre has changed the way we think about male and female body image, both reaffirming potentially harmful stereotypes while slowly breaking free of them. And even Transformers caused tongues to wag and fingers to furiously type about racism and sexism in Hollywood blockbusters. And often, fan communities passionately debate changes to beloved franchises; take, for example, the controversies surrounding Disney’s recent Star Wars films.

In this research and writing intensive class, you will write an annotated bibliography, source synthesis, inquiry essay, and your own commentary, each centered on a topic involving film and culture. Therefore, you won’t be writing analyses or reviews of individual films but writing about film, culture, and your place in our culture as someone both a shaper and consumer of movies.

Crime and Punishment

Chelsea Lawson

How does modern society classify crimes? Why are some actions that are technically illegal largely viewed as morally acceptable, such as stealing food to feed one’s family? Should society prosecute those actions in the same way as other crimes? How does society justify some killings and not others? How do we appropriately punish those who commit crimes? Are the mentally ill capable of receiving equitable treatment in the justice system? What are some of the issues that plague the justice system and prevent it from being efficient and truly just? There are just a few questions we will explore as we navigate the topics of crime and punishment. There exists a great deal of contention on how to treat those we deem criminal and how to define “criminal” appropriately. This course seeks to explore various attitudes towards crime and punishment through a rhetorical lens. We will examine our modern society’s reaction to and definition of what constitutes criminal action and justice, how definitions have evolved over time, what has impacted this shift, and how shifting attitudes have impacted our culture as a whole.

Public Sounds, Sounding Publics

Chris Martin

While honing our academic research-writing skills, we’ll think about how we inhabit, engage, and shape the soundscapes we encounter daily. This course will consider topics out of the interdisciplinary field of sound studies, which encompasses such off-beat explorations as

• 1970s ear-cleaning exercises that don’t involve a Q-tip
• antique sound technologies like the laugh box
• speculative sound technologies like the cat piano
• the soundscapes of the sewer, the car, and Guantanamo Bay
• cassette tapes as radical community-building
• therapeutic silence and the history of the stethoscope
• vocal fry, upspeak, and the politics of noise
• and more.

In addition to the standard (written) academic research paper, students will also have the option to present their research findings in the form of an audio essay, taking as their model some of the podcasts and sound documentaries we’ll encounter during our foray into sound studies.

Sports Rhetoric

Omar Montoya

Sports—be it basketball, baseball, golf or soccer—are a powerful industry that has diverse if controversial implications for regional, national, and global culture and identity: Be it the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team and their fight for equal pay, the United Nations’ use of sports as a development and gender equity tool, or current legislative debates around trans athletes’ rights, football players' mental health and CTE, or the debate on college athlete “pay for play.” Sports are helping to grow economies, drive policy, and change society but are often overlooked, as a “commonplace” for local, regional, national, or global politics. This course will combine analysis, argument, and research skills—through the lens of Stasis Theory—to assist students in constructing an original persuasive argument on their sports-related topic of choice and its rhetorical, social, and cultural impact.

Propaganda

Nathan Price

It is often argued that the best way to avoid being a victim of propaganda is to study propaganda. It is through this purpose that we examine the use of propaganda in historical and social events. We analyze these events for the use of rhetoric, the manufacturing of messages, and the formation of in-groups and out-groups. We look for timeless patterns, techniques, and strategies that allow communicators to craft messages that seek to manipulate people's emotions, in hopes that we can become more skillful, compassionate, and contentious rhetoricians ourselves.

Humor and Comedy

Leslie Rapparlie

Amy Schumer. Robin Williams. Louis C.K. Aziz Ansari. These comedians have all come to fame by providing people with one of the pleasures of life: humor and comedy. But to what end do people use humor? Why does jest have such an impact on humanity and how can understanding that help us? This course allows students to investigate humor, comedy, and laughter through a variety of academic lenses. Students research and analyze topics such as political satire, popular cartoons, stand-up routines, comedians, ethnic and cultural humor, sit-coms, YouTube antics, humor and yoga, bloopers, vaudeville, The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, The Daily Show, film, video, comic books, and more.

Beasts of Mind: The Sociopolitics of (De)Humanization and Animalization

Christine Robinson Coon

You might be a fan of science fiction or the zombie genre; or you might be interested in ethics, social politics, or the power of language; or perhaps you ARE a member of the undead or another kind of “beast” in need of social justice. If any of this applies to you, register for this theme because this course explores how and why our society’s definition of "humanness" is entangled with our constructions of Others including minorities, animals, aliens, cyborgs, and zombies. In essence, this theme examines the making of a beast—those considered less than human.

Mental Health Matters! A Research Initiative

Kristen Robinson

This course utilizes argumentative and research-based inquiry to delve into the topic of mental health. Oftentimes, mental health is viewed as a binary; you are emotionally healthy or you’re not. You are ill or you are well. You have a mental illness or you don’t. We'll deconstruct this binary to ask: What is normal? And how do we, as humans, experience mental health?  Initially, you'll read, evaluate, and integrate sources to enhance your knowledge of analytical and rhetorical practices in classical stasis theory. You'll then apply this theory to explore complex issues within mental health, including looking at your own emotional hygiene and mental health practices.

Playing Life: The Role of Games

Kacey Ross

Games teach us about being human and about having fun. They are one way we learn to interact. Games help us develop strategies for handling problems, successes, and failures. Game theory influences everything from education to economics, and games can shape the ways we think, behave, and operate in the world. In this class we’ll play games and we’ll think about how games shape our personal lives and our culture. There are all kinds of games, and they influence all kinds of people; playing, discussing, studying, and researching games will help us to recognize their powerful influence.

American Music: Listening Our way to Culture and Identity

Martin Salgado

Our lives are intertwined with pop culture. Music specifically is an important vehicle which carries messages that are important and specific for each generation. We will read, analyze and discuss the importance of American music and its influence on culture and communities in America. We will explore queries such as: How does music define a generation? How can music represent a community? Or even, what is American music? We will explore the importance of music and how it helps us relate to our culture as a society and affects our personal identity. We will explore the sounds of Motown being blasted in 1960s Detroit, the sounds of war protest and division of generations in 1970s California, all the way to the online sounds of hip-hop and Lo-fi in the 21st century.   

Metaphor and ________

Adrian Shaw

You fill in the blank!  Because whatever it is you’re curious about—whether it’s astronomy, philosophy, consciousness, medicine, dreams, theology, music, rivers, technology, education, aliens, or time (or any other topic you could possibly be interested in!)—metaphor is a tool that can help us learn about that.  

In our research, we’ll investigate the surprising (and often hidden) metaphors at the heart of our thinking and our experience of the world around us, revealing the extent to which metaphor necessarily shapes our understanding of the concepts and the questions we care about most.

A Rhetoric of Walking

Nate Siebert

A Rhetoric of Walking considers walking as an object of study, as a method of investigation, and as a practice for composing. As an object of study, walking has both a history and a politics. The very idea of going for a walk originates at a particular time in a particular place, and the question of who can go for a walk safely—where, when, and how—is often a contested one. As a method of investigation, walking lets us witness process unfolding in place. It gives us access to places otherwise inaccessible, and a walk repeated in the same place at a different time reveals changes imperceptible at faster speeds. As a practice for composing, walking brings the whole body to the writing process. A consistent walking practice can lend clarity to thought and rhythm to language and has even been known to cure bouts of writer’s block.

Walking is a frequent and required part of this course, with two caveats. First, this is not an exercise course. Longer or faster walks are of no more value than shorter or slower walks. Second, all bodies are welcome in this course. Race, gender, age, physical ability, and sexual orientation all play a role in determining where, when, and how people feel safe when they go for a walk. Students are given wide latitude and support in designing and redesigning walks to suit the particularities of their own bodies.

Within and Beyond ‘Normal’: Inclusive Health and Wellness

Andrea Wenker

Notions of body and mind that inform our thinking about health and wellness often assume a universal normality that is now in question. In this course, students will explore viewpoints grounded in neural, hormonal, gender, physiological, and other diversities to discover new and more inclusive landscapes of health and wellness. For all students interested in the subject for its social, civic, or personal importance, and a good choice for those entering or considering a career in health sciences fields.

Exploring Local History

DeLyn Winters

Journey back in time to the early days of Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak region to examine historical issues from a fresh perspective. Students engage in inquiry through podcasts, audio and video recordings, lectures from local historians, original texts, and visits to local libraries and museums. What mystery still awaits an answer?

Veterans Programs and Resources

With five military bases in Colorado Springs, UCCS has a diverse military-affiliated population. In this research-based course, we will explore goods, services, and programs specifically designed for and by veterans. This is a service-learning course designed not only to introduce veterans to a variety of known and lesser-known programs available to them, but to use research skills to help connect these resources to other veterans and their families.