Apr 19, 2024  
2008-2009 Undergraduate Academic Catalog 
    
2008-2009 Undergraduate Academic Catalog [Archived Catalog]

Humanities


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Department of Humanities, Christine Shearer-Cremean (Chair) Associate Professor of English, MH 320, (605) 642-6248, ChristineCremean@BHSU.edu
Eric Baxter, Instructor of French and Spanish
Peggy Buckwalter, Associate Professor of Spanish
David Cremean, Associate Professor of English
Amy Fuqua, Associate Professor of English
Mary Husemann, Assistant Professor of English
Vincent King, Associate Professor of English
Kent Meyers, Associate Professor of English
Sonya Pagel, Associate Professor of Speech Communication
Marcie Pratt, Instructor of Spanish
Andrey Reznikov, Associate Professor of English
Christine Shearer-Cremean, Associate Professor of English
Timothy Steckline, Associate Professor of Speech Communication
Deaver Traywick, Instructor of English
Nicholas Wallerstein, Associate Professor of English
Pamela Wegner, Professor of Theatre and Speech Communication

English Major

The mission of the Humanities Department at Black Hills State University encompasses:

  The support of various professional courses. The English Department offers English majors and Composite majors. Both types of majors include a teaching as well as a nonteaching option. Composite majors are designed for the student who will find a situation where skills related to English literature and language such as Speech, Theatre and Mass Communication are desirable.
  - The deliverance of a share of the University’s General Educational requirements. The English Department also helps to deliver various courses in written expression and literature within the University’s General Educational requirements. The English Department, for example, delivers two semesters of written communication to all students. We perceive our mission in these two required writing courses to be the experience of writing as a tool for discovering ideas and feelings and communicating them in focused, meaningfully structured, and logically developed essays with distinct voice and following the conventions of standard English.

Furthermore, we wish to accomplish four objectives in our professional courses:

  -   To develop the inherent powers of thought and expression-both oral and written-unique to each individual.
  - To provide prospective majors a background in World English, American, and non-western literature that spans the human experience from ancient to contemporary times.
  - To provide prospective English majors with a liberal background in literature and criticism by which we mean imparting to our students knowledge about literary forms, creative aspects of producing literary work, and familiarity with historical as well as critical schools of thought.
  - To provide prospective English teachers background in components of the secondary English curriculum including grammar, literature as it relates to young adult readers, the teaching of writing, and methodologies for teaching English and the language arts.

Speech Communication

The goal of the speech communication faculty is to offer students the means to realize their highest human potentials. A person achieves this, we believe, by developing the full range of communication competencies, yet only as those competencies are defined by the principles of theory, practice, and criticism. The extent of development will dictate the individual’s capacity for ethical happiness, practical success, and social-political effectiveness in a variety of contexts.

Pursuant to this view, the Department of Speech Communication shall explore and engage in communication in all its domains, including interpersonal, group, public, organizational, and mass communication. Within each such arena we situate our studies in a matrix of practical, rhetorical, dialectical, political, and ethical considerations. In terms of program, then, the department offers: 1) A three-credit General Education requirement, 2) a composite major, a major, and three minors & 3) Speech and Debate Activities. All three areas of responsibility in their focus on speech communication support the mission of the College of Arts and Sciences which seeks to cultivate learned well-rounded individuals who are aware of the content and value of the great intellectual and creative works of the human imagination.

The Black Hills State University Theatre provides an academic and artistic environment in which students may develop both intellectual and artistic skills. A range of courses in the history and theory of theatre is complemented by courses in theatre production techniques; a theatre production program, in which faculty and students cooperate to apply those individual skills mastered in classes to create a unified work of art, supports class work.

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