| International Business Major/Common Core | Writing Minor |
| Business Policy and Strategy | Creative Writing, Poetry |
| International Politics | Cultural Narratives |
| Contemporary Issues in the Global Economy | Green Rhetoric |
| Global Health | Theories of Writing |
| Authoring Addiction | Writing Design and Circulation |
FSEM 1111: Authoring Addiction(Fall 2016)
Common Curriculum: Professor Allen Borst
This seminar considered why first-person “experience-based” accounts of drug and alcohol abuse have become so common and so vital to our understanding of addiction. This course examined how such addiction narratives draw upon other narrative genres like the coming-of-age story, the confession, the travel memoir, and the cautionary tale. In doing so, this course generated discussions about how addiction narratives create certain expectations and even promise to supply their readers with inspiration, moral lessons, vicarious thrills, or access to other worlds/states of mind. Finally, we considered how anti-drug reform, self-help, and therapeutic culture have contributed to the genre’s prominence. The final project in this class was a critical review in which I viewed an additional addiction narrative and composed a film review on the movie “Trainspotting”.
Assignment: Trainspotting Movie Report
ANTH 3060: Cultural Narratives (Fall 2019)
Theory, History, Research of Writing: Professor Bonnie Clark
This course approaches cultural narratives from two angles. First, it explores the ways that anthropologists, usually trained in the social sciences, make use of and study narratives, whether through ethnographic observation, conducting an interview, gathering folklore or archaeological interpretation. Second, the class investigates narratives that, although produced by non-anthropologists, engage with anthropological issues such as kinship, gender, work, tradition and identity. The narratives range broadly from fiction, to poetry, to film. These two approaches are framed by theoretically informed readings about narrativity, both from the social sciences and the humanities. The final project in this class was very open-ended, and there was lots of room for creativity, it was to create our own narrative. I chose to do a narrative about my family tree, using stories and photos to paint a picture of who I am.
MGMT 3500: Business Policy and Strategy (Fall 2019)
Common Curriculum: Professor Donald Bergh
This course focused on the strategic management of an organization as a whole. This course introduced me to key decisions that top executives make when developing and implementing strategies, methodologies for informing those decisions, and how to interpret information to guide strategic decision-making. Overall, from the perspective of leading an organization, we learned how strategic decisions impact upon a firm’s performance and success. We looked at many case studies in this course in order to understand strategic decisions companies make.
Assignment: Carnegie Book Report
INTS 1700: International Politics (Winter 2019)
Common Curriculum: Professor Paul Kemp
This course was designed to provide a broad introduction to this fascinating subject of international politics, focusing on the theoretical tools necessary to make sense of both change and stasis in world affairs. While international politics obviously encompasses such major events as wars, migration crises, and cross-border environmental catastrophes, it also consists of less visible, but often very consequential, developments in areas such as international trade and monetary policy. This course explored both of these dimensions – the dramatic and the mundane – while seeking to grasp the linkages between them. There were lots of class debates and discussions in this course, which pushed me to think about international political conflicts from multiple perspectives. The final project in this class was to choose a stance on the large worldwide theoretical debate: whether nuclear weapons were a blessing or a curse to society.
INTS 1500: Contemporary Issues in the Global Economy (Winter 2019)
Common Curriculum: Professor Keith Gehring
This course introduced the global economy through the analysis of politics in directing production, exchange, distribution, and consumption. We discussed topics such as globalization, the role of the state, class divisions, inequality, poverty, economic development, the environment, and others. The final assignment in this course was a response to the following question: “Financial instability, rising inequality, and entrenched poverty are persistent characteristics of the global economy. Which theoretical perspective provides the most compelling reasons for and solutions to these issues? Why?” I thought this paper was a fun culmination of all of the theory we had learned in class, and I could put my own opinion into my response.
ENGL 1000: Creative Writing, Poetry (Spring 2019)
Applied Writing: Professor Kelly Krumrie
This course investigated a variety of texts, across genres, in order to consider how authors’ strategies might play out in their own writing. In this course we wrote, experimented, contorted, and created. Our readings and weekly writing exercises explored three themes: 1) what writers know, 2) what writers learn/research, and 3) what writers imagine/invent. Questions for discussion included: What does it mean to “write what you know”? How and why do writers use historical or current events in their work? What grounding do fictional texts have in the “real” world? This lens helped us dissect published writing as well as reflect upon our own practices, try new things, and talk about other classmates’ work. A big part of this class was workshop. Workshop was where we would bring in our own creative writing of different genres to be critiqued and discussed with the class for revision. At the end of the quarter, we created hand-made portfolios with our revised work in them.
WRIT 2701: Green Rhetoric (Winter 2020)
Applied Writing: Professor Bradley Benz
This course examined the green rhetorical tradition in American nature writing, including the creation, idealization, evocation, degradation, and conservation of the American wilderness. Course readings focused on American non-fiction, including memoirs, historical and government documents, as well as established and emerging green rhetoric genres, among others. In this course we wrote a nature memoir and to analyze an environmental rhetoric case study. Additionally, we selected, developed, and designed a green rhetoric campaign about a local environmental issue by writing in several genres for public audiences (an op-ed, an infographic, and select social media). In this course, my final portfolio was comprised of a nature memoir I wrote about my experience of my move from Maryland to Colorado op-ed about DU’s action to divest from fossil fuels, an infographic about divestment, and social media posts featuring divestment as well. This course taught me how to facilitate different types of mediums to feature different types of genres according to my audience.
WRIT 2000: Theories of Writing (Winter 2020)
Professor Richard Colby
This course introduced a number of theories of writing, providing an overview of complex issues and research into the state and status of writing and writers. This class discussed such questions as these: What is writing? Where did it come from? How did it develop – and did it do so the same or differently in other cultures? How do writers develop – and what accounts for differences? What are different types of writing, different situations for writing, different tools and practices – and how do these interconnect? What does it mean to study writing? How have major figures theorized writing, and what tensions emerge among their theories? What are relationships among thought, speech, and writing – and among imagine, film/video, and sound? How do such theories change our notions of what texts are and what texts do? In this course, we learned how various theorists, historians, and researchers answer these questions, and we applied that knowledge to their own projects. My final project in this course was to conduct a research study on some writing related topic for an academic audience interested in the topic you select. This research study was question-driven rather than thesis-based. I chose to write about social media as an outbreak communication platform, and its effectiveness in the COVID-19 communication of information and awareness.
Assignment: Research of Writing
INTS 2490: Introduction to Global Health (Winter 2020)
Common Curriculum: Professor Leah Persky
This class was an introduction to the field of global health and explored
relationships between social, political, cultural, and economic conditions of mostly low and middle-income countries and their impact on health and health services. Topics we discussed in this class included: maternal and child health, the impacts of poverty on health, communicable diseases, the rise of noncommunicable diseases, nutrition and obesity, common measures of global health, mental health topics, and other current global health issues. This course presented an overview of the multiple factors that influence global health and emphasizes the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to respond to global health challenges. The final paper was a case study of a specific health issue in a chosen country, and I chose to write about mental health in the United States.
WRIT 3500: Writing Design and Circulation (Spring 2020)
This was the capstone course for my Minor in Writing Practices. The primary goal of this class was to create a professional electronic/web-based portfolio for circulation that showcased and offered reflective insight into our writing.
Capstone Course: Professors Kara Taczak and Richard Colby
Laura's Writing Portfolio 