Department of
English

Mental health, community-building, and the challenges of a global pandemic

In the Department of English at CSU, initiatives that seek to bolster mental health, such as reading, writing, and thinking reflectively, creatively, and critically have long played an important role among students and the broader community: Initiatives that include the Writing Center, the Veterans Writing Workshop, and Speak Out! These opportunities to explore both joyous and difficultexperiences require an emotional labor, a re-tooling during pandemic times, and an awareness that not all mental health healing can come from the mind. 

Winter 2019/Spring 2020

In Poems: Claiming a culture

In her thesis and poetry debut, Abigail Chabitnoy explores assimilation, acculturation, and a disconnected past with her Alaskan Aleut heritage. This work seeks to redefine history through family, Aleut culture and story to address questions of the relationship of culture, place, and the individual.

Spring 2019

Rhetoric and Risk: From firefighter to digital rhetorician

Tim Amidon is both a firefighter and a rhetorician, examining the ways in which communication, literacy, and technology are used in high-risk, high-stress situations. Amidon’s research investigates how communication and the various technologies we use help us to create and participate in the world around us.

Winter 2018

Slow, Still, Defiant: A poet meditates on water

In his latest book of poetry, Walks Along the Ditch, Bill Tremblay (CSU Professor of English, 1973 to 2006) introduces us to the flow that has long provided a cadence to his life: poetry, water, t’ai chi.  The poems walk us along the ditch with the poet: the water, the familiar Mountain West geography, the “smell of money” from Greeley, the morning song of meadowlarks.

Spring 2018

Curiosity, Generosity, and New Knowledge

From electronic art to silver mining in Bolivia, the German Enlightenment to Congressional productivity, our faculty are able to extend their research based on donor support from Great Conversations.

Imagining the Possible: the power of public rhetoric to inspire social change

For assistant professor of English Doug Cloud, rhetoric can be used for social justice. “It goes beyond describing reality as it is and articulates new and sometimes radical visions of how things could be.”

Winter 2017

Uncharted waters and an unexpected calling

Paul DeMaret wrote a mini-book about sharks in the fifth grade. Instead of foretelling a future as a marine biologist, the book foreshadowed DeMaret’s future as an English major and distinguished teacher.