English and World Literature

List of 3 items.

• English 9: Fate and Folly

  English 9 uses fruitful pairings of literary texts to explore driving questions about the human experience: the need for a suitable home; the desire to create; the desire for power; the experience of oppression; and, throughout, the redemptive power of love. Our units of study include poetry and the conventions of literary analysis; our texts include When the Emperor Was Divine, Genesis, Frankenstein, Macbeth, Things Fall Apart, and Purple Hibiscus. Through frequent and varied writing assignments, students develop their skills as critical thinkers, persuasive speakers, and powerful writers. Throughout the year, the work in English 9 builds on two, interrelated pursuits: the importance of careful, logical analysis of rich texts and the artful, controlled expression of precise insights.

• English 10: Agency and Constraint in American Literature

  In English 10, the literature helps students to understand the America we have inherited from previous generations. These works also inspire students to dream, articulate, and enact the America that they seek to create through their active, informed, and empowered citizenship. Central texts include: "Self-Reliance," The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, and Beloved. Through personal and analytical writing, students explore pressing questions about American citizenship and identity. Students sharpen their ability to read deeply and to write with great precision as well as to develop their individual voices.

• Grades 11-12: Elective Offerings

  Shakespeare

  The name “Shakespeare” encompasses a family name, powerful dramatic language, fascinating implications, a trove of scholarship, a set of values, and a long and varied history of performance. Still, about Shakespeare there is more to be said and more to be considered. In our course, we will explore two of Shakespeare’s plays (a comedy and a tragedy) and a selection of his sonnets, taking care to read deeply and to write cogently in response to our studies. One scholar, Harold Bloom, has claimed that in Shakespeare’s works, he “invented the human.” Our investigations will engage this claim: in this class we will work from the idea that works of entertainment convey essential and enduring insights into our shared experience of life’s most meaningful events: love and loss. Students will write frequently in response to their reading of Shakespeare and will perform scene presentations in class.

  
  

  Literature of the Jewish Experience: Rebels and Fighters

  This course explores historical events that shed light on the troubling nature of anti-semitism and those that openly rebelled and fought against that prejudice. In Bernard Malamud’s novel The Fixer, students encounter the fictional retelling of the story of Mendel Bellis, a Russian Jew falsely accused of murdering a Christian boy in 1911. Students then confront the Holocaust, the cataclysmic result of anti-semitism through the study of Art Spiegelman's graphic memoir, Maus, that tells the story of how his parents survived the Holocaust. Throughout the course during classroom discussion students will explore the nature of Jewish identity and how it intersects or comes in conflict with religious and political beliefs. The play "The God of Vengeance" by Sholem Asch, essays by Adrienne Rich and Natalia Ginzburg, and the diary by Hungarian/Israeli author Hannah Sennesh round out the reading for this course. Students will have an opportunity to explore these texts in analytical and personal essays, as well as in a performance project and the writing of their own graphic memoir modeled on Maus. Fulfills World Literature Requirement.

  
  

  Literature of Indigenous Peoples

  In this course, students read the literature of peoples indigenous to the North American continent. The course begins with stories whose roots lie in the pre-contact oral tradition of these peoples. The focus then shifts to works from the last fifty years, including literature from a range of genres - novels, tales, oratory, essays, poems, songs, and films. To avoid generalizations about Indigenous peoples, course materials are based on tribal identities as well as specific geographic and cultural regions. Nevertheless, common themes of traditional ecological knowledge, sovereignty, resistance to colonization, revision of stereotypes, and recovery of identity are explored. Texts may include works by N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), Velma Wallis (Gwich’in), Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), and Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota). Through the literature, students will understand the power and function of oral traditions as well as the historical and contemporary diversity of Indigenous identities. Students will write analytical, personal, and creative responses to the literature they read. Fulfills World Literature Requirement.

  
  

  Freedom Writers

  This course will begin with an examination of the slave narratives of 19th century writers Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. Their determination to live free or die changed the history of the nation. From there, we will explore the writing of three towering 20th century Black intellectuals: W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Audre Lorde. Students will discuss the ways in which each writer speaks with power and acuity to their turbulent times and to our own. Finally, students will read the works of a number of contemporary Black writers whose prose responds to the past and imagines the future of Black lives in America. Their courageous visions, subtle arguments, and rich formulations are models for the power of language to effect meaningful change. Students will understand how language can be used as a tool for liberation, a weapon in the fight against injustice, and a map towards a better future. Writing in this course will be primarily expository prose; the course's culminating assignment is a significant essay whose purpose is to change the world.

  
  

  Studies in Poetry

  In Studies in Poetry students learn to see, think, and feel in poetry. Students work on expanding their negative capability. Some types of poems studied, practiced, and written about include: identity, ekphrastic, shape, erasure, political, tritina, sestina, villanelle, pantoum, ars poetica, kasen renga, zuihitsu, and linguistic world. Students will find many of the poems that we look at in the course. Students will revise and edit, and will get feedback on paper and via personal consultation. The class will take a field trip to Poets House or to the Dodge Poetry Festival and will host the US Poetry Reading. Students will end the course with a personal series of linked poetry that they can be proud of, and they will send some of their poems out into the world.

  
  

  Studies in Drama

  Studies in Drama will include a range of plays from all over the world. A tragedy from ancient Greece will teach students the abiding structures of the theater; more contemporary texts, by a geographically and culturally varied range of playwrights, will teach students the inventive uses of those structures. Students will also analyze filmed and, when possible, live productions of what we have read. Students will write in a variety of forms: analytical essays, director's notes to actors, and an imitative one act or scene of their own. In-class acting and short in-class writing will inform our daily discussions of the literature. Fulfills World Literature Requirement.

  
  

  Literature of the Mind and Body

  The literature in this course will follow the cycle of life--from birth to death. How do people care for one another when they are unwell and vulnerable? How do individuals fare when they are tested by the difficulties of motherhood, war, parental and societal conflict, sickness, and the threat of death? Our reading and classroom discussion will explore birth and motherhood in Doris Lessing’s novella, "The Fifth Child," young adulthood and parental conflict in in the play What the Constitution Means to Me, illness, injury and parental shame in Kafka’s "The Metamorphosis," the shock of war in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, and questions about death and mortality in Marquez’s "Chronicle of a Death Foretold." Students will also have an opportunity to respond to these texts in analytical and personal essays. Fulfills World Literature Requirement.

  
  

  Epic Storytelling: Homer to Morrison

  Once upon a time, the word “epic” was a noun, and had yet to become an adjective synonymous with awesome. The epic was recognized to be an extended story about world-historical figures such as kings and queens, heroes and gods. Early epics were poems, because poetry’s rhythmic and musical qualities helped poets to retain the lengthy narratives that were passed on through the oral tradition. The Odyssey, attributed to Homer, is an epic poem that was first written down in the 8th century BCE, translated to English during the 16th century, and recently published in an updated translation by Emily Wilson. After this classic story of homecoming, students will read Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel Song of Solomon, a 20th-century story that draws inspiration from Black American oral tradition along with Homer's epic. By putting these two legendary texts into conversation with each other, students will consider the meaning and legacy of the epic; what it means to be a hero; the connections across genre, time, and culture that we perceive between the ancient and modern worlds; and how language and literature evolve, from individual words like “epic” to the cultural stories to which we return.

  
  

  Genders and Genres

  In 1949, French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir wrote, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” In this statement, de Beauvoir joined a critical discussion that had been – and that remains – ongoing across centuries, disciplines, and continents. Varying definitions of how one “becomes a woman” continue to occupy critical and popular attention, and in this elective students will encounter a range of women authors and artists who consider how those meanings matter. Students will read nonfiction essays, novels, short stories, and poetry: authors include Toril Moi, Luce Irigaray, Naomi Alderman, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Carter, Katherine Mansfield, and many others. Students will complete written, oral, multimedia and personal narrative assignments, structured as both independent and group projects. Working together, students will consider how and where the significance of gender becomes a shared understanding, and how it interacts with the other components of personal and artistic identity.  

  
  

  Grade 11 and 12 Elective Courses (Spring):

  
  

  African Literature

  Perhaps no other continent has produced such a rich body of literature, one that reflects its long, complex history as well as its ongoing struggles and conflict. We will examine chiefly writers and work from Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, and the region known as "the Horn of Africa," studying a range of texts in various genres, including fiction, poetry, music, prose, and film. Attending to the complexities of gender and identity formation, we will explore such topics as the conflict between tradition and modernity, post-independence disillusionment, and the negotiation of African identities in a global setting. Students will write analytical essays in response to the reading. At the end of the course, students will craft and deliver an oral presentation. Frequent, in-class writing exercises will shape our daily discussions of the literature. Fulfills World Literature Requirement.

  
  

  Caribbean Literature

  The Caribbean is the site of complex, overlapping diasporas: African, Asian, and European. Its multiplicity of races, languages, and cultures has shaped the region's literature. This course will ask questions such as: How does the Caribbean acknowledge its past and present selves? How are race, gender, and community constructed in this multicultural and multilingual setting? What traditions, values, and norms have Caribbean writers inherited from their predecessors? What new forms, languages, and ways of being emerged and continue to emerge in this transnational space? The course will include literature in several genres (poetry, short fiction, essays, and novels), and students will be exposed to many styles of music, film, and dance created by Caribbean artists. Authors studied may include Jamaica Kincaid, Michelle Cliff, Alanna Lloyd Banwo, Olive Senior, Grace Nichols, and others. Students will understand the complexity of identity and experience that exists underneath the banner of Caribbean regional identity. Students will write analytical and creative responses to the literature they read as well as make a series of presentations on self-selected aspects of Caribbean experience. Fulfills World Literature Requirement.

  
  

  Latin American Literature

  “Latin America” denotes a large, diverse set of territories and communities throughout (but not limited to) the former colonies of Spain in the Western Hemisphere. Latin American nations, people, and ethnicities are multidimensional; one characteristic they share, however, is a heritage of imperialism that coexists with the presence of indigenous culture. In this class students examine what it means to identify as Latin American during different eras and across distinct locations; how the legacy of imperialism and its aftermath are present in art and literature; and how authors depict artistic and political decolonization. Students encounter these ideas throughout a range of different literary styles and voices, including work by Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Laura Restrepo, Erika Sánchez, Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, Gloria Anzaldúa, María Lugones and others. Fulfills World Literature Requirement.

  
  

  East Asian and Asian American Literature

  World literature as we know it is an Asian export. In addition to the invention of paper (China) and the moveable metal printing press (a Korean inventor beat Johannes Gutenberg by over 200 years), Asia is home to the world’s first novel – The Tale of Genji – written in 11th century Japan by a noblewoman named Murasaki Shikibu. Given centuries of literary production in every imaginable genre, the category of “East Asian and Asian American Literature” includes more than a lifetime’s worth of reading. Students examine a selection of texts throughout the semester, including one of the best known ancient spiritual texts, the Tao Te Ching. Additional reading assignments include Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone, Mirinae Lee’s Eight Lives of a Century-Old Trickster, and short stories by Haruki Murakami. During class and within analytical writing assessments, students consider how ancient philosophy is relevant within a modern context, and the strategies through which East Asian and Asian American authors depict identity as a complex interaction across a range of specific, localized communities within a global context. Fulfills World Literature Requirement.

  
  

  Eco Literature

  Reading powerful works of literature for their commentaries on environmental thought and practice, students will consider how place, time, and the human brain can work together to produce effective new ideas and courses of action, so that the shared future and their generation’s legacy will be hopeful. Students will consider the imperatives of the environmental justice and rights movements as well as the tools of persuasion and education that are emerging from not only traditional modes of discourse but also from drama, comedy, satire, and speculative fiction. Students will work as a community of learners, attending carefully to each other's perspectives and knowledge. Students will conduct independent research, offer written essays about our literary texts, and deliver an oral presentation.  Fulfills World Literature Requirement.

  
  

  Virginia Woolf

  In this course, students will immerse themselves in the writing of 20th-century celebrated novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf. Known for her radical innovations in the expression of subjectivity, Woolf reinvented the novel by heightening its ability to capture the contingent and fleeting experiences that make up life. Her writing reveals how the personal, the poetic, and the political are inevitably intertwined, and in this course students will become comfortable with the way that her prose paints human experience as a confounding, multifaceted thing. While learning about the intellectual, artistic, and political concerns and innovations that took place between the two World Wars in Europe, students will read two of Woolf's novels and a handful of her essays and letters.

  
  

  Studies in the Novel

  Storytelling, of course, is as old as the first human civilizations. For all of its popularity today, however, the novel is a fairly new literary invention. What is it about the novel that seduces its readers and keeps them in its grip? In this course we will explore the ways in which the novel has been defined and redefined over time by authors around the world. Students will learn about formal elements of the novel, such as narrative irony, free indirect discourse and focalization. By reading Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, along with other novels that may also include Their Eyes Were Watching God and Aura by Carlos Fuentes, we will learn how the novel makes its arguments and changes our perspectives.

  
  

  Creative Writing

  What does it feel like to make things up that exist only because we imagine them? How does the act of writing alter how we understand ourselves and the world? How do we establish subtleties of character, choose expressive narrative framings, build worlds, play with pacing, enjoy and employ unexpected figurative language, use and break conventions of storytelling? Students will read, discuss and emulate the craft of other writers as they try their own hands at creative fiction, creative nonfiction, and more. Flow prompts and shorter writing practices earlier in the course help students to warm up for the more substantial final project. Students will attend a public reading and will send some of their work out into the world.

  
  

  Crossing Borders: Strangers in a Strange Land

  This course considers the nature of citizenship and justice. What happens when a citizen of a country does not share the ideals of those with whom that citizen lives? What happens when a poor person lives amongst the rich and sees how democracy fails those at the bottom? What happens if an undocumented immigrant works hard to care for a family but is unwelcome by those in charge? Students will spend time in Algeria, England, Pakistan, India and the United States. Classroom conversation will focus on the following texts: Albert Camus’s sharp critique of colonialism, The Stranger; Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, a gripping account of a Muslim man exploited by ISIS jihadists; Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger, a bracing satire of corrupt democracy in India; an excerpt from Karla Conejo Villavicencio's The Undocumented Americans, a moving portrait of immigrants in The United States, and Mosin Hamid’s Exit West, a novel that imagines a world of open borders. Students will also have an opportunity to explore these texts in analytical essays and their own creative fiction. Fulfills World Literature Requirement.

  
  

  Film Studies

  Students study how narrative films combine images, words, sounds, music, and cinematography to tell rich and powerful stories. We also read short stories that are the basis for successful films and learn how a work of literature can be used as a foundation for a screenplay. Students not only write about films, but they also have the opportunity to write screenplays and use these screenplays as a basis for their own short movies. Films studied include: a moving coming of age tale, "The 400 Blows" by Francois Truffaut; Del Toro's haunting critique of tyranny, "Pan's Labyrinth;" Deniz Gamze Erguven's "Mustang", a compelling story of sisterhood threatened by male power; and "Do the Right Thing," Spike Lee's gripping examination of race conflict in the United States. Stories studied include fiction written by Raymond Carver, Andre Dubus, Mary Gaitskill, Jon Raymond and Daphne du Maurier.