Upcoming and Current Courses

Fall 2025

COMM 5434-001: Readings in Community and Social Interaction

Instructor: Prof. Kristella Montiegel

Time: Tues/Thurs 2:00-3:15pm

Course description pending. 

COMM 6455: Community-Based Research Methods

Instructor: Prof. Leah Sprain

Time: Mon 3:35-6:05

COMM 6455 facilitates and supports graduate student-led community-based research. Working from multiple CBR traditions, students develop a thoughtful rationale for conducting CBR and practice a repertoire of CBR methods, including grounded practical theory and action-implicative discourse analysis. This objective is supported by two active community-based research projects as part of the class. Students will have choices about how heavily they get involved in the class projects and whether they develop their own project proposals as part of this class.

Note from Dr. Sprain: This is a methods class that will highlight two active projects that can both have CLASP aspects. 

EDUC 5615: Second Language Acquisition

CLASP Core Course

Instructor: TBD

Time: Mon 5:00-7:30pm

Introduction to linguistics for educators, overview of the theories related to language acquisition and development for bilinguals and second language learners.

EDUC 5620/8620: Language and Power

New CLASP Core Course

Instructor: Prof. Deb Palmer

Time: Wed 9:05-11:35am

Course examines the relationship between language and power from multiple theoretical and empirical perspectives, exploring topics such as standard/monoglossic language ideologies, raciolinguistics, and minoritized language education/language revitalization. 

EDUC 5425: Introduction to Bilingual/Multicultural Education

Instructor: TBD

Time: Tues 5:00-7:30pm

History, Policy, Program Models and Practice for Bilingual and multicultural education in US K-12 settings.

EDUC 6245: Latinx Education Across the Americas

Instructor: Prof. Andrea Dyrness

Time: Tues 5:00-7:30pm

The current political discourse in the U.S. framing Latinx people as “invaders”, outsiders, and “alien-citizens” ignores the long historical presence of Latinx communities in this country as well as the shared histories of conquest, migration, wars, trade, and cultural mixing that bind the United States to the people of Latin America. This course examines Latinx education across the Americas in comparative perspective, exploring critical issues, themes, and cross-border movements that link Latinx education in the United States and Latin American education. Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative studies of education in and out of schools, we will examine the socio-historical, cultural, and political contexts that shape the education of Latinx communities, paying particular attention to issues of race, language, cultural and national identity, and representation as these are negotiated in schools. Drawing on selected readings from U.S. Latinx communities and Latin America, the course covers three main thematic areas: 1) conceptualizing inequality, 2) cross-border movements, mixing, and comparisons, and 3) resistance to inequality. Throughout we will explore how schools and communities respond to cultural diversity, displacement, migration, and inequality, and the potential for transformative education.

EDUC 8730: Advanced Qualitative Methods: Ethnographic Research and Data Analysis

Instructor: Prof. Andrea Dyrness

Time: Mon 5:20-7:50pm

This advanced methods course examines ways of approaching ethnography that resist the extractive tendencies of dominant social science traditions (including anthropology) and advance possibilities for liberatory research, focusing on the intersections between critical ethnography, participatory action research, and Latina/Chicana feminist methods. Inspired by Kirin Narayan and other feminist and critical ethnographers of color, we will explore: How does one write feminist and/or critical ethnography? How does one interpret, draw upon and represent ethnographic data to tell meaningful stories about people’s lives and social worlds? What creative possibilities exist for doing, writing, and circulating critical ethnography? How can we make critical ethnography publicly accessible? Topics to be covered include: story and theory; writing about place; testimonio, pláticas, and mujerista participatory research; identity and relationality in ethnographic research; and possibilities for collaborative ethnography.

The course will be conducted as a workshop in which students bring ethnographic data (fieldnotes, interview transcripts, artifacts) already collected from a class project, pilot study, or dissertation. We will get inspired by reading excerpts of award-winning feminist and critical race ethnographies, and reflect on form and craft using texts on ethnographic writing and data analysis. We will practice writing and analyzing data in a variety of ways, and read and give feedback on each other’s work. The final assignment will be a complete dissertation chapter, article, conference paper, grant proposal, or other writing product depending on student’s goals.

LING 4630/5630: TESOL and Second Language Acquisition: Principles and Practices

Instructor: Prof. Raichle Farrelly

Time: Tues 3:30-6:00pm

This course is an introduction to the Principles and Practices of the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) field. The course provides students who are prospective, new, and/or experienced teachers of additional languages with a current overview of the field of TESOL and opportunities to build and expand pedagogical knowledge for language teaching and learning. We will read about, observe, and analyze methods and materials for teaching vocabulary, grammar, listening, reading, speaking, pronunciation and writing. During this course, languages other than English will be used for modeling and demonstration purposes. Assuming the role of a beginning language learner will foster theory-practice connections, provide experience with home language use for language learning, and raise awareness about the role of home languages in learners' lives and communities.  We will explore methods and materials for language teaching principles, discuss educational trends, and reflect on global and local contexts for English language teaching.

LING 7800: Open Topics in Linguistics: Language, Gender, and Sexuality

Instructor: Prof. Kira Hall

Time: Tues 3:30-6:00pm

This course serves as an advanced graduate introduction to the highly interdisciplinary field of language, gender, and sexuality. The required readings will include a range of classic and contemporary articles in the field, supplemented with theoretical articles in gender and sexuality studies. Special attention will be given to ideas that have arisen at the crossroads of sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, social semiotics, and socially oriented discourse analysis. The goal of the course will be to arrive at new understandings of the field that can illuminate today’s rapidly changing social and political climate. While learning about feminist, queer, trans, and nonbinary approaches to the study of language in social life, students will work to create a final paper involving original research that can serve as the first draft of an eventual publication.