The focus of the course wasn't writing criticism or particular authors. It was on how writing teachers can teach current and future researchers how to write research papers. A narrow field, perhaps, but at the research university where I worked there was demand for such writing courses, and my class looked at how such classes can be taught at a meta level. Many of the students themselves became writing teachers.
This was all before LLMs. The assumptions behind my class have since been upended, now that easily available chatbots can produce academic writing that, at least at the structural level, is perfectly fine.
This was all before LLMs. The assumptions behind my class have since been upended, now that easily available chatbots can produce academic writing that, at least at the structural level, is perfectly fine.