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 haveCLASPaspects.
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, andmujeristaparticipatory 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.
Critical courses instrumentalin developing student understanding of current theory
I recommend this program to anyone that is interested in looking at the interconnections between language and culture critically. Courses through theCLASPprogram, such as those by Dr. Jeremy Calder and Dr. Kira Hall, were instrumental in developing my understanding of existing theory. This program also granted me the flexibility to explore new avenues.
-Aubrey Marshall
MA Linguistics 2023
Innovative Participation
The CLASP program contributed to my education at CU by bringing together a group of like-minded students under the CLASP umbrella.
-Nick Williams
PhDLinguistics2016
The environment
The program fostered an intellectual environment where I could get feedback from faculty and other students on ideas and analyses that I was working on. I built many strong and important professional relationships through the CLASP lab, CLASP conferences, and other CLASP-related events.
-Rich Sandoval
PhDLinguistics2016