Department of
English

Archeo-phonics: Music, Memory, & Preserving What We’ve Lost

Part poem, part sound-art, part architectural experiment, part foray into literary theory – The Aylesworth Suite, a collection of three pieces of music, each seeking to preserve not simply the memory but the sonic imprint of the now destroyed Aylesworth Hall, is a work that unexpectedly always adds up to more than the sum of its parts. 

Spring 2021

Fascinating and full of enthusiasm: Alumna and husband give $1M in honor of emeritus English professor

Linda Randall (’68) and her husband, Gerald Hazelbauer, both professors emeriti of biochemistry at the University of Missouri, have given a $1M bequest and annual cash support to the English department via the Marty Bucco Award for Creative Teaching & Scholarship fund.

Together, we examine and create

In the Department of English, together, we investigate, engage, persevere, and adapt. From communicating the invisible and abstract to receiving a poetry award, from a new first-year student symposium to responding to pandemic-induced mental health concerns in students, faculty and students are moving beyond traditional boundaries and paths that help us understand our lives.

Winter 2020

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.