I took this course the winter quarter of my junior year as it was a required course for CHID students before beginning their thesis work. The course was essentially a survey of critical theory from the early 1900s to the present. Each week we read a new piece of theory and spent hours dissecting it. We summarized the authors' arguments and then looked at the working parts of the argument so that we not only understood what was being said, but also how it was being said. We began with Nietzsche and moved all the way through the quarter, ending with Karen Barad's theory of agential realism. It was a wild ride and gave me a great sense of what kinds of theory have been in dialogue for the past century.

 

But aside from the beneficial overview of theoretical traditions, this class was also one of the most important pedagogical and academic experiences I have ever had. The instructor, Stacey Moran, was absolutely brilliant and expected us to be too. As a rhetoritician by training, Stacey had an eye for a well-crafted argument with sound logic (and she also knew exactly where any argumentative weaknesses might be hiding). If she found a flimsy section of your work, she made sure you knew about it. Also, since her personal scholarship was about the writing process, she made it clear that her secondary project in the classroom was giving us strategies and practice for improving our writing skills. Stacey held us all to high standards, whether it was content comprehension or a solid rough draft.

 

This class lit a fire under me, caused a series of minor panic attacks and resulted in one of the very best papers I have ever written. I am exceptionally proud of the work I did in this class. This class experience even lead me to seek out Stacey as my CHID thesis advisor because I knew she would push me to do the absolute best work I was capable of.