Course Descriptions

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to English grammar. It begins with a definition of grammar and then moves on to a discussion of prescriptive and descriptive ideas about grammar, grammatical prototypes, and several kinds of grammatical analysis-the traditional Reed- Kellogg diagramming and phrase structure trees. Topics include parts of the simple sentence, word classes, phrase and clause structure, sentence types, aspect, mood, voice, and the grammatical aspects of prose style.

Special Topics courses include ad-hoc courses on various selected topics that are not part of the regular curriculum, however they may still fulfill certain curricular requirements. Special topics courses are offered at the discretion of each department and will be published as part of the semester course schedule - view available sections for more information. Questions about special topics classes can be directed to the instructor or department chair.

A study of the theory and practice of literary criticism. Students will learn about and apply a variety of theories, such as formalist, psychoanalytic, structuralist, feminist, deconstructionist, reader-response, historicist, and post-colonial.

Independent study is open to junior and senior students only. At the time of application, a student must have earned a 3.0 cumulative grade point average. A student may register for no more than three (3) semester hours of independent study in any one term. In all cases, registration for independent study must be approved by the appropriate department chairperson and the Vice President for Academic Affairs.

Arts & Letters-Literature. This course will introduce students to the basic reading and analytical skills needed to understand and appreciate literature. Students will become familiar with reading different literary genres (prose, poetry, and drama) and learn to use basic terms and techniques of literary analysis. They will develop multiple interpretations and responses to literary texts and support their interpretation and responses with textual evidence, both in discussions and writing. Also, they will discover how texts communicate cultural values and ideas through a variety of approaches to the reading and appreciation of literature. Offerings each semester range from an overview of literature through conventional genres to exploration of a limited historical period or topic in literature.

Intermediate Writing. Arts & Letters-Literature. This course will introduce students to the basic reading and analytical skills needed to understand and appreciate literature. Students will become familiar with reading different literary genres (prose, poetry, and drama) and learn to use basic terms and techniques of literary analysis. They will develop multiple interpretations and responses to literary texts and support their interpretation and responses with textual evidence, both in discussions and writing. Also, they will discover how texts communicate cultural values and ideas through a variety of approaches to the reading and appreciation of literature. Offerings each semester range from an overview of literature through conventional genres to exploration of a limited historical period or topic in literature.

Arts & Letters-Literature. This course introduces students to a range of voices and narratives about and by marginalized communities in North American and global contexts through a study of contemporary (20th and 21st century) revisions of classic literary and cultural texts in western and non-western contexts. Examples of texts include the Brother Grimms' fairy tales and Angela Carter's short story, "The Bloody Chamber" as well as Jane Campion's film, The Piano; Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys' rewrite, Wide Sargasso Sea; One Thousand and One Nights and selected poems from Mohja Kahf's Emails from Scheherazad.

Arts & Letters Literature. Cultural Diversity. This course will focus on lived experiences of conflict, trauma, and resistance within colonial/postcolonial/neocolonial spaces-and the role of literary, cinematic, and cultural texts in bearing witness-in different parts of the world. We will examine key conversations and debates on colonization and decolonization; orientalism; globalization and neo-colonialism; race, gender, and class struggles; and generational trauma and memory across a wide variety of literary, visual, and oral genres/media. Selected course texts will include Aimé Cesaire's A Tempest (a postcolonial adaptation of Shakespeare's tragicomedy The Tempest); Toufic El Rassi's Arab in America (a comic book about the author's hyphenated identity and growing up experiences in pre- and post-9/11 U.S.); Basharat Peer's Curfewed Night (a memoir that chronicles conflict in Kashmir, one of the most militarized regions in the world); spoken word poems that challenge Orientalist stereotypes about non-Western women as exotic and/or oppressed; and critically acclaimed films, such as Maquilapolis and Trick or Treaty, which document Indigenous communities' experience of and resistance to globalization and settler colonialism. This course will include both analytical and reflective components that will foster critical thinking skills and encourage students to make self-reflexive connections between the multiple "worlds" that are depicted in the course texts and students' own locations and experiences.

Arts & Letters-Literature. The study of literature written in Britain from 1830-1900. The course focuses on representations of individual and national identity emerging amidst sweeping social, political, and economic change. Representative works include novels by the Brontes, Dickens Eliot, Hardy, Wilde; non-fiction prose by Carlyle and Mill;- poetry by Tennyson, the Brownings and the Rosettis.

Arts & Letters-Literature, Cultural Diversity. Special Topics courses include ad-hoc courses on various selected topics that are not part of the regular curriculum, however they may still fulfill certain curricular requirements. Special topics courses are offered at the discretion of each department and will be published as part of the semester course schedule - view available sections for more information. Questions about special topics classes can be directed to the instructor or department chair.

Arts & Letters-Literature. Cultural Diversity. A study of early twentieth-century American literature (called "modernism"), from World War I through the 1930s. The course explores the work of white modernist writers (many of whom were part of the expatriate community in Paris during the period) alongside that of the African American writers of the same period who lived in the United States and participated in the movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Among the writers studied may be Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, T.S. Eliot, H.D. William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Nella Larson, and W.E.B Du Bois.

Arts & Letters-Literature. Cultural Diversity. A study of literature written by women, exploring what it means when women become the center of their own stories. The subtitle of the course will help define the focus: it may focus on writings by women from Britain, the U.S., any ethnic and/or national group, or a combination of any of the above. The course may focus on one century, a more limited historical period, or span several. Feminist literary and cultural theory may be an added focus. Writers may include: Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Rich, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, Sandra Cisneros, Gloria Anzaldua.

Arts & Letters-Literature. Cultural Diversity. A study of literature written by American Indian authors, beginning with the cultural traditions and influences within oral literature, then moving through the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This exploration continues through the works of the twentieth century, surveying poetry, fiction, and non-fiction by authors such as N. Scott Momaday, Gerald Vizenor, Wendy Rose, Paula Gunn Allen, Leslie Marmon Silko, Luci Tapahonso, Louis Owens, Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, and Montana American Indian authors D?Arcy McNickle and James Welch.

Arts & Letters-Literature. A study of the dramatic and poetic art of William Shakespeare. Plays from both the Elizabethan and Jacobean pe-riods will be selected to illustrate the development of the author?s style and theatrical conventions, with representation from the histories, the comedies, the Roman plays, the tragedies, the problem plays, and the late romances. Students will develop their critical faculties by applying a variety of recent approaches to Shakespearean scholarship.

This course covers the basic elements of writing-grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and paragraphs to help prepare students for college writing. It is also concerned with audience, voice, and techniques for generating and organizing ideas into an essay, as well as introduction to the library.

Special Topics courses include ad-hoc courses on various selected topics that are not part of the regular curriculum, however they may still fulfill certain curricular requirements. Special topics courses are offered at the discretion of each department and will be published as part of the semester course schedule - view available sections for more information. Questions about special topics classes can be directed to the instructor or department chair.

Intermediate Writing. The study and practice of advanced exposition, including creative non-fiction genres and argumentation. Students read professional writers and critique classmates' drafts. The course emphasizes techniques for revising and polishing expository prose.

Intermediate Writing. This course prepares students to meet the demands of workplace writing in business, administrative, and technical fields. Focused on understanding the reader as a basis for planning and drafting documents, students work on discovering the purpose, structure, and appropriate level of detail for on-the-job writing. Practice is offered in a variety of workplace genres, including flyers, instructions, brochures, webpages, proposals, letters, memos, resumes, formal and informal reports. Students also cultivate workplace style, especially in the areas of clarity, concision, cohesion, and correctness. Attention also given to formatting documents in professional ways.

In-depth study and practice of a major genre or mode of contemporary writing, such as drama, memoir, or nature writing. Topic selected by the instructor.

Advanced Writing. Advanced Creative Writing is a weekly meeting of experienced writers of poetry and fiction (and other genres) for the purpose of honing their skills through a semester of extensive writing and rigorous workshops with other advanced student writers. Students who take the course for fewer than three credits are given reduced submission requirements, but must still attend and participate in all workshop meetings. Since the course is a workshop, the content varies from year to year.

Special Topics courses include ad-hoc courses on various selected topics that are not part of the regular curriculum, however they may still fulfill certain curricular requirements. Special topics courses are offered at the discretion of each department and will be published as part of the semester course schedule - view available sections for more information. Questions about special topics classes can be directed to the instructor or department chair.

The senior thesis is designed to encourage creative thinking and to stimulate individual research. A student may undertake a thesis in an area in which s/he has the necessary background. Ordinarily a thesis topic is chosen in the student's major or minor. It is also possible to choose an interdisciplinary topic. Interested students should decide upon a thesis topic as early as possible in the junior year so that adequate attention may be given to the project. In order to be eligible to apply to write a thesis, a student must have achieved a cumulative grade point average of at least 3.25 based upon all courses attempted at Carroll College. The thesis committee consists of a director and two readers. The thesis director is a full-time Carroll College faculty member from the student's major discipline or approved by the department chair of the student's major. At least one reader must be from outside the student's major. The thesis director and the appropriate department chair must approve all readers. The thesis committee should assist and mentor the student during the entire project. For any projects involving human participants, each student and his or her director must follow the guidelines published by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). Students must submit a copy of their IRB approval letter with their thesis application. As part of the IRB approval process, each student and his or her director must also complete training by the National Cancer Institute Protection of Human Participants. The thesis is typically to be completed for three (3) credits in the discipline that best matches the content of the thesis. Departments with a designated thesis research/writing course may award credits differently with approval of the Curriculum Committee. If the thesis credits exceed the full-time tuition credit limit for students, the charge for additional credits will be waived. Applications and further information are available in the Registrar's Office.

An Integrative Learning course where students receive CORE credit in both Arts & Letters-Literature and Social Science as well as Cultural Diversity.

This course will examine social justice and human rights issues in global and local contexts through critical engagement with world cinema. We will interrogate the relationship between the aesthetics and the politics of world cinema within multiple cinematic traditions (e.g. Neo-Realism, Third Cinema, Indigenous Media, etc.) and genres (narrative cinema, documentary, etc.). We will focus on the intersections between the global and the local, between history and memory, and between the self and the "other." Students will apply their knowledge of the critical frameworks and themes learned through the course to their examination of similar issues in their community.

An Integrative Learning Course for which students receive CORE credit in both Arts & Letters: Literature and Natural Science with a lab. The Missouri River Plains: Words and Watersheds. This course is a summer, field-intensive course that is centered around multi-day field trips along the Wild and Scenic Upper Missouri River in Montana and the Lower Missouri River in Kansas/Nebraska. The primary focus is the diverse interactions that form the ecosystems of the Missouri River Plains in the central United States. We will explore the interplay between Biology and Literature by experiencing the effect that biological systems have on our culture and society as well as the way literature affects the way we experience nature. Additional emphasis in the course is placed upon the scientific method, the evaluation, analysis, and synthesis of information, and on communicating scientific information and integrating it with cultural, historical, political, economic, and artistic endeavors. This course fulfills the Natural Science and Literature core distribution requirements. Prerequisites: Either (or both?) an Intermediate Writing or Cultural Diversity course must be taken prior to enrolling in this course.