Thomas Carr

Tom Carr, Professor (Ph.D. Wisconsin) teaches courses in 18th-century literature and Quebec literature and civilization. His research interests have focused on the history of rhetoric and Port-Royal. Besides articles on Voltaire, Malebranche, and Marivaux, he published Descartes and the Resilience of Rhetoric (Southern Illinois UP 1990) and an edition of Antoine Arnauld's Réflexions sur l'éloquence des prédicateurs (Droz 1992). Professor Carr has written a number of articles on the pedagogy of French civilization and participated in the AAFT's Acquiring Cross-Cultural Competence (NTC 1996). Recent articles have appreared in The French Review (Marivaux), Quebec Studies (Gabrielle Roy) and Rhetorica. His Voix des Abbesses du Grand Siècle: La predication au féminin à Port-Royal (Tubingen, Biblio 17) appeared in 2006.

Professor Carr was one of the organizers of a conference on Catholic religious orders held at The Newberry Research Library in Chicago, in March 2013. This interdisciplinary event, the Conference on Early Modern Religious: Comparative Contexts brought together leading historians, musicologists, literary scholars, and art historians who have studied life in religious orders during the three centuries running from the Renaissance to the Napoleonic wars. While in recent years the study of nuns has flourished, less attention has been paid to male orders, and comparisons between the two are rare. Thus sessions were designed to cross national boundaries and to compare the male and female experience in papers dealing with art and music, mission work, poetry, urban life, and spirituality. The conference included some of the pioneers in the area who shared their assessment of the last thirty years of research with scholars newer to the field. While many of the papers dealt with gender issues, it was apparent that the transnational context is emerging as one of the frontiers for research in coming years. More information can be obtained at the conference webpage.

Honors, Awards and Grants

• Phi Beta Kappa, 1966
• Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, 1966-1967
• Fulbright Fellowship, 1967-1968
• UNL Summer Research Fellowships, 1979, 1983, 1988
• UNL Faculty Development Leaves, Spring 1982, Spring l99l, Fall 1997, Spring 2004, Academic Year 2011
• Recognition Award for Contributions to Students from the UNL Parents Association, January l99l
• NEH Travel to Collections Grant, 1991
• Nebraska Arts Council $1000 (with Russ Ganim) for performance of Les Femmes savantes, 1993
• Grant of $42,000 from UN Foundation to organize an ACTFL Oral Proficiency training workshop, l994
• Quebec Ministère de relations internationales: grant to researchers: April 2006, $2,800
• Chevalier, Ordre des Palmes académiques, December 2007
• Research grant from the Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec to use their collections, July 2009

Monographs, critical edition, edited collections of essays

• Descartes and the Resilience of Rhetoric: Varieties of Cartesian Rhetorical Theory, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990; paper edition, 2009
• Antoine Arnauld's Réflexions sur l'éloquence, and Goibaut du Bois, Avertissement en tête de la traduction des Sermons de saint Augustin, ed. Thomas M. Carr, Jr. Geneva: Droz, 1992.
• Voix des abbesses du Grand Siècle. La Prédication au féminin à Port-Royal. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2006
• Guest Editor, EMF: Studies in Early Modern France. Vol. 11. The Cloister and the World: Early Modern Convent Voices. Charlottesville: Rookwood Press, 2007.
• Origines. Actes du 39e congrès annuel de la North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature. University of Nebraska-Lincoln May 10-12 2007, ed. Russell Ganim and Thomas M. Carr, Jr. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2009.



Literary Articles

• "Philosophy and Dramatic Structure in Brutus, Alzire and Mahomet," Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 143 (1975), 7-48.
• "Eloquence in the Defense of Deism: Voltaire's Histoire de Jenni," Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 25 (1978), 471-480.
• "Voltaire's Concept of Enlightened Eloquence," Nottingham French Studies, 19 (1980), 22-32.
• "François Lamy and the Rhetoric of Attention of Malebranche," Romance Notes, 22 (1981) 197-201.
• "The Role of Language in the Theory of Communication of Nicolas Malebranche," Papers of the Mid America Linguistics Conference (Lawrence, Kansas, 1981), 58-67.
• "The Rhetorical Theories of Malebranche: Persuasion through Imitation or Attention?" Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 93, (1983), 14-24.
• "Marivaux's Jeu de l'amour et de la ‘raison,’" Australian Journal of French Studies, 21 (1984), 15-25. reprinted in Drama Criticism, ed. Larry Trudeau, Detroit: Gale Press, 1997.
• "Voltaire's Fables of Discretion: The Conte philosophique in Le Taureau Blanc," Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 15 (1985), 47-65.
• "L'Art de penser à la mort: Attention to Death in the Logique de Port-Royal," Biblio 17 Actes de Lexington, (1995), 287-94.
• "Sharing Grief\Initiating Consolation: Voltaire's Letters of Condolence," Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, ed. Sindy Conger, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 25 (1996), 131-146.
• "Descartes," "Port-Royalists," in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, ed. Theresa Enos, New York: Garland Publishing, 1996 180, 544-47.
• "'Prêcher raisonnablement': rhétorique et prédication chez Nicole," Chroniques de Port-Royal, 45, (1996), 63-74.
• "Se condouloir ou consoler? Les condoléances dans les manuels épistolaires de l'Ancien Régime" Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 358 (1997), 225-244.
• "Consolation and the Work of Mourning in Angéline de Montbrun" The French Review, 71 (1998), 997-1006.
• "Grieving Family and Community Ties at Port-Royal: Les Miséricordes of Angélique de Saint-Jean" Actes de Victoria, Biblio 17 ed. Claire Carlin, Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag (1998), 171-79.
• "Jansenism" The Feminist Encyclopedia of French Literature, ed. Eva Sartori, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1999, 275-77.
• "La perte de l'autre et l'auto-consolation." Biblio 17 Actes de Miami, ed. Barbara Woshinsky, 117 (1999), 367-73.
• "L'Ethos dans les rhétoriques de consolation de l'Ancien Régime à la lumière des perspectives modernes sur le deuil," Ethos et pathos. Le statut du sujet rhétorique, ed. Richard Lockwood and François Cornilliat, Paris: Champion, (2000), 339-348.
• "Marivaux’s Comedy of Loss: La Double Inconstance." The French Review, 75 (April 2002), 903-912.
• "Antoine Arnauld," Dictionary of Literary Biography: Seventeenth-Century French Writers, ed. Françoise Jaouen, Gale Publishing, 2002, 3-11.
• "Separation, Mourning, and Consolation in La Route d’Altamont," Quebec Studies, 31 (Spring/Summer 2001), 97-112.
• "Les Abbesses et la Parole au dix-septième siècle: les discours monastiques à la lumière des interdictions. pauliniennes," Rhetorica. A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, 21 (2003), 1-23.
• "‘Avez-vous lu la Règle?’: Les Instructions sur la Règle de la Mère Angélique." Chroniques de Port-Royal, 52 (2003), 207-220.
• "Remi de Beauvais's La Magdeleine (1617) and the apostolorum apostola Tradition," Biblio 17. Actes de Charlottesville, 147 (2003), 139-149.
• "«L'Arbre» de Gabrielle Roy: Une hirondelle d'hiver dans un chêne vert de Floride." L’Ouest. Directions, dimensions et destinations. Actes du vingtième colloque du Centre des études franco-canadiennes de l’Ouest, octobre 2003. Winnipeg: Presses universitaires de Saint-Boniface, 2005: 501-518.
• "Introduction." EMF: Studies in Early Modern France. Vol. 11 The Cloister and the World: Early Modern Convent Voices. Charlottesville: Rookwood Press, 2007: 1-6.
• "From the Cloister to the World: Mainstreaming Early Modern French Convent Writing, an Etat present." EMF: Studies in Early Modern France. Vol. 11 The Cloister and the World: Early Modern Convent Voices. Charlottesville: Rookwood Press, 2007: 7-26.
• "A Checklist of Published Writings in French by Early Modern Nuns." EMF: Studies in Early Modern France. Vol. 11 The Cloister and the World: Early Modern Convent Voices. Charlottesville: Rookwood Press, 2007: 231-57.
• "Writing the Convent in New France: The Colonialist Rhetoric of Canadian Nuns." Quebec Studies, 47 (2009), 3-23.
• "Angélique Arnauld et la génération 1591 (Louise de Marillac, Françoise de Nérestang, Antoinette Micolon)." Chroniques de Port-Royal, 60 (2010) 49-64.
• "Les Épîtres spirituelles de Jeanne de Chantal et le commerce épistolaire conventuel: un secrétaire spirituel au féminin." Œuvres et critiques. 35 (2010) 9-20.
• "The Quebec Hospitalière and the Closeted Jansenist: The Duplessis-Hecquet Correspondence, with an Unpublished Letter by Hecquet" Lumen: Select Proceedings from the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 29 (2010): 91-106.



Pedagogical and Cultural Articles; Research Notes

• "Bringing the Legislative Elections into the Classroom," The AATF National Bulletin, 3 (September, 1977), 6-8.
• "Exploring the Cultural Content of French Feature Films," The French Review, 53 (1980), 359-368.
• "The Language Student in the World of Art," in A Global Approach to Foreign Language Education, ed. Maurice Conner (Skokie, Illinois, 1981), 59-66.
• "The Visual Arts in the Civilization Classroom," Foreign Language Annals, 16 (1983), 45-51.
• "Contemporary Culture: A Model for Teaching a Culture's Heritage," in Focus on Quality: Creative Foreign Language Education, ed. Patricia Westphal (Skokie, Illinois, National Textbook Company, 1985), 71-83. Reprinted in Pathways to Culture: Readings on Teaching Culture in the Foreign Language Class, ed. Paula Heusinkveld, Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 1997.
• "French History Textbooks as a Tool for Teaching Civilization," The French Review, 59 (1985), 30-41.
• "The VCR Revolution: Feature Films for Language and Cultural Proficiency," (with Jan Duncan) in Proficiency, Policy and Professionalism in Foreign Language Education, ed. Diane W. Birckbichler (Lincolnwood, IL, 1987), 92-105.
• "The Past Meets the Present: A Guide to Historical Feature Films in the French Culture Class," in Defining the Essentials for the Foreign Language Classroom, ed. Dave McAlpine (Lincolnwood, IL, l989), 82-92.
  • with Marie-Christine W. Koop, "Knowledge of French-Speaking Societies: France-Indicators of Competence," in Acquiring Cross-Cultural Competence: Four Stages for American Students of French, ed. Alan Singerman, Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company, 1996, 19-25.
• "Un Américain à Paris: Le point de vue d’un lecteur étranger," La Gazette de Port-Royal, 4 (July 2000), 1.
• "Quebec Internet Tourist Sites," AATF National Bulletin, 23 (January 2001): 19-20.
• "L'Identité québécoise en ligne," in Le Québec aujourd’hui: traditions et changements, ed. Marie-Christine Weidmann Koop Presses de l’Université Laval, 2003, 261-283.
• "Convent Writing in Eighteenth-Century France" Teaching Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century French Women Writers, ed. Faith Beasley. New York: MLA, 2011. 145-153.



Courses Taught

• Beginning and Intermediate French
• Intermediate Conversation and Composition
• Advanced Composition and Grammar
• Civilization before and after 1789
• Francophone Civilization of the Americas
• Introduction to French Literature
• The Novel from the Beginnings to the Eighteenth Century
• Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Novel
• Eighteenth-Century Novel and Theater
• The Enlightenment; French-Canadian Literature
• Ancien Régime Women’s Writing in Translation
• The French Revolution through Film
• Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Women and their Writings
• Graduate Seminars
  • Comedy
  • Voltaire
  • Ancien Régime Rhetoric
  • Literature of Grieving
  • Human Rights and the Eighteenth Century