Erik Urena-Morales’s Profile

This course explores historical, cultural, and theoretical perspectives on the relationship between language, race, and ethnicity in the United States and its territories. It examines how language is understood to reflect, reproduce, and/or challenge and defy racial and ethnic boundaries, and how ideas about race and ethnicity influence the ways in which people use and construe language. It covers topics such as racialization and racism, ethnicization, notions of authenticity, repertoire, codeswitching and style shifting, linguistic mocking and linguistic racism, language ideology, and identity formation. This course will examine language varieties such as Black American English and its cross-racial uses by other groups, Chicano English and Spanglish, Asian American English, Hawaiian English, and American Indian English.

This course explores historical, cultural, and theoretical perspectives on the relationship between language, race, and ethnicity in the United States and its territories. It examines how language is understood to reflect, reproduce, and/or challenge and defy racial and ethnic boundaries, and how ideas about race and ethnicity influence the ways in which people use and construe language. It covers topics such as racialization and racism, ethnicization, notions of authenticity, repertoire, codeswitching and style shifting, linguistic mocking and linguistic racism, language ideology, and identity formation. This course will examine language varieties such as Black American English and its cross-racial uses by other groups, Chicano English and Spanglish, Asian American English, Hawaiian English, and American Indian English.

This course focuses on writing fundamentals for visual media and specifically focuses on the short form. Students study storytelling basics such as protagonist, want, obstacles, antagonist, complication / rising action, climax, along with three-act structure, which is common to screenplays. With assignments in both fiction and non-fiction scriptwriting, the class covers such areas as: Basic research methods How to create character and story How to SHOW action, rather than TELL it How to write outlines and treatments How to format both Nonfiction A/V scripts and Fiction screenplays Learning how writing is rewriting. Designed as a workshop in which students will develop multiple drafts for the fiction and nonfiction scripts, the course also teaches how to give and receive good criticism on peers’ work. The aim of the course is to help students develop basic skills necessary to write and revise scripts for upper-level VAT production classes and beyond.

This course focuses on writing fundamentals for visual media and specifically focuses on the short form. Students study storytelling basics such as protagonist, want, obstacles, antagonist, complication / rising action, climax, along with three-act structure, which is common to screenplays. With assignments in both fiction and non-fiction scriptwriting, the class covers such areas as: Basic research methods How to create character and story How to SHOW action, rather than TELL it How to write outlines and treatments How to format both Nonfiction A/V scripts and Fiction screenplays Learning how writing is rewriting. Designed as a workshop in which students will develop multiple drafts for the fiction and nonfiction scripts, the course also teaches how to give and receive good criticism on peers’ work. The aim of the course is to help students develop basic skills necessary to write and revise scripts for upper-level VAT production classes and beyond.