This course is designed to present the student with an introduction to fundamental yoga postures and breathing techniques. The course emphasizes personal instruction and provides the student with the foundation needed to develop a safe and beneficial practice. This will help improve strength, flexibility, balance, focus, concentration, relaxation, and self-awareness. Lastly, information will be presented on nutrition and body maintenance, so that students may make healthier lifestyle choices when it comes to food and exercise.

This class is designed to orient students to cardiovascular fitness, resistance weight training, and general health and nutrition practices. The curriculum will also include team and lifetime sports.

The goal of this course is to begin building a foundation for lifelong fitness, nutrition, health, and wellness habits that students will carry with them into adulthood. The course can satisfy one of the two P.E. requirements.

This course is designed to give students the opportunity to learn weight training concepts and techniques used for obtaining physical fitness and emotional wellbeing. Students will benefit from comprehensive weight training and cardiorespiratory endurance activity. This course will cover basic anatomy, nutrition, weightlifting techniques and exercises, program design, aerobic conditioning, and warm-ups. They will also have the opportunity to create and design their own weight training program. This course includes both lectures and activity sessions throughout the week. Students will be empowered to make wise choices, meet challenges, demonstrate safety, and develop positive attitudes towards fitness for the rest of their lives.

The elective program in English offers a wide variety of courses for student selection. These offerings range from thematically organized courses, to special seminars on specific authors, with each course covering relevant short and long works that fit the course’s focus. The typical composition students write at this level continues to build on student’s mastery of the five-paragraph essay. Students are expected to write three such essays each semester. They also study topics such as outlining, introductions and conclusions, transitions, and parallel structure designed to develop specific skills necessary for the writing of effective essays.

Journeys. We all undertake them. To the store, to a ballgame, to a new school. We also undertake more profound journeys through personal struggles and challenges. Throughout human history, stories about “the hero” also have abounded. In this course, we will study some of these stories and how, interestingly enough, how the journeys of these many heroes across time and cultures are very much alike and very much like our own. This course will examine how those journeys have played themselves out in various literary pieces as well as in nonfiction pieces and in film. The course work will include pieces as varied as Siddhartha, Home (Toni Morrison), The River Why (by the author of the Brothers K), Heart of Darkness, and Star Wars. Course work will involve small group assignments, oral presentations, personal reflection, and several expository essays as well as reading and writing assignments.

The elective program in English offers a wide variety of courses for student selection. These offerings range from thematically organized courses, to special seminars on specific authors, with each course covering relevant short and long works that fit the course’s focus. The typical composition students write at this level continues to build on student’s mastery of the five-paragraph essay. Students are expected to write three such essays each semester. They also study topics such as outlining, introductions and conclusions, transitions, and parallel structure designed to develop specific skills necessary for the writing of effective essays.

Gunslingers, outlaws, and cowboys: every American knows these figures. Our understanding of justice and heroism, as well as our culture's obsession with violence, come from our narratives about the Wild West. In this course, we will start by analyzing classic Western films to see the origin of America's foundational myth. Then, we will study more contemporary neo-Westerns to see how directors have complicated those foundational values. Finally, we will investigate Western novels, climaxing with Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, to see how contemporary authors have deconstructed the genre.

Ultimately, by studying the Wild West, this course will explore not only the development the America's core values but also the universal human need for grand narratives and myths to understand our place in the world. At its heart, this course raises the question of how we as individuals and as a society make meaning and how those forms of meaning translate to moral codes.

The junior year includes continuing work in composition (critical, creative and research), and literary analysis. Students are expected to complete 2 semesters of Junior-level elective English courses. Eligible courses are included below.

African Americans have made significant contributions to the cultural fabric of America. With Bellarmine's diverse population in mind, this course will challenge students to examine themselves through the study of African American Literature. Former California Poet Laureate Al Young states it another way: "You may think you are reading and thinking about African American literature, but, in reality, it is America herself you will be exploring and experiencing through literature." This course will examine the history and culture of African Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries, beginning with slave narratives. The course will progress through the genres of poetry, short story, drama and novels. Our study will also take us to African American cultural manifestations in speech, art, film, and music. Time will also be spent on August Wilson's dramatic vision and the blues as cultural artifact.

The elective program in English offers a wide variety of courses for student selection. These offerings range from thematically organized courses, to special seminars on specific authors, with each course covering relevant short and long works that fit the course’s focus. The typical composition students write at this level continues to build on student’s mastery of the five-paragraph essay. Students are expected to write three such essays each semester. They also study topics such as outlining, introductions and conclusions, transitions, and parallel structure designed to develop specific skills necessary for the writing of effective essays

Dive into the Matrix with William Gibson's character Case, the greatest criminal hacker in the world! Fight crime with Batman from the dark shadows of Gotham! Tag along with detective Rick Deckard in futuristic Los Angeles, as he eliminates Replicants, dangerous androids that are indistinguishable from humans! Find out where the internet really came from, as well as Red Bull, Raves and EDM! Tag along with Major Kusanagi, a futuristic cyborg who works for Japanese intelligence and is trying to bring down the most dangerous cyberterrorist in the world! Cyberpunk Literature is a genre of science fiction that began in the early 1980s, and is always set in the near future. It is based on the gritty hard-boiled detective stories of the 1930s, and is closely linked to a number of films and television programs that are still being made to this day. We will begin by learning about the origins of cyberpunk culture, the Rave scene, and cyberpunk literature and cinema, finding important links with the hippies of the 1960s and the Beat Generation of the 1950s. We will examine William Gibson's Neuromancer, the first cyberpunk novel ever written, which essentially predicts the existence of cyberspace and the internet. We will also explore the cinema of the period, taking a look at Blade Runner, the cult-favorite film directed by the legendary Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, fresh from his Han Solo fame. Because Japanese culture had a tremendous impact in the visionary future of the 1980s, we will trace the rise of Anime and Manga in America, including the landmark releases of Akira and Ghost in the Shell in the United States in the '90s. We will also study the graphic novel, including The Dark Knight Returns, which reboots the Batman story in a very unexpected way, and Watchmen, a superhero mystery set in an alternative future. In addition, we will take a foray into the extremely alternative Afrofuturist Movement which envisions a multicultural future in space, and includes such musical legends as Sun Ra, George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, and Grace Jones. Prepare for a bold journey into the future!

The elective program in English offers a wide variety of courses for student selection. These offerings range from thematically organized courses, to special seminars on specific authors, with each course covering relevant short and long works that fit the course’s focus. The typical composition students write at this level continues to build on student’s mastery of the five-paragraph essay. Students are expected to write three such essays each semester. They also study topics such as outlining, introductions and conclusions, transitions, and parallel structure designed to develop specific skills necessary for the writing of effective essays.

Shakespeare's plays are meant to be performed, seen, heard, and spoken aloud, not read passively at home. This class examines five of Shakespeare's later plays, and these five are considered by many to be his best works. The lectures aren't long; most time in class will be spent acting out or viewing film versions of the plays, followed by class discussions. Students will write two or three 5-paragraph essays. Plays we study: Hamlet, Henry V, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Tempest.

The elective program in English offers a wide variety of courses for student selection. These offerings range from thematically organized courses, to special seminars on specific authors, with each course covering relevant short and long works that fit the course’s focus. The typical composition students write at this level continues to build on student’s mastery of the five-paragraph essay. Students are expected to write three such essays each semester. They also study topics such as outlining, introductions and conclusions, transitions, and parallel structure designed to develop specific skills necessary for the writing of effective essays.

Shakespeare's plays are meant to be performed, seen, heard, and spoken aloud, not read passively at home. This class examines five early plays of Shakespeare, and these five are his bloodiest and bawdiest. The lectures aren't long; most time in class will be spent acting out or viewing film versions of the plays, followed by class discussions. Students will write two or three 5-paragraph essays. Plays we study: Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Merchant of Venice, and Richard III.

The elective program in English offers a wide variety of courses for student selection. These offerings range from thematically organized courses, to special seminars on specific authors, with each course covering relevant short and long works that fit the course’s focus. The typical composition students write at this level continues to build on student’s mastery of the five-paragraph essay. Students are expected to write three such essays each semester. They also study topics such as outlining, introductions and conclusions, transitions, and parallel structure designed to develop specific skills necessary for the writing of effective essays.

The process of writing a screenplay has the potential to unlock unexpected conflicts, drives, and desires within one's own heart. It is a genre quite unlike any other in which aspects of one's own inner untapped personality can vividly come to life. This course is for those who love story and film and who are prepared to make a serious commitment to their own inner creative life. Each student will write an original monologue to develop a character’s voice before learning the fundamentals of visual storytelling through writing a silent script, an original 7-10 page script, outlining a feature length film and writing the first act of that film.