Honors American Literature

—Level: High School, 11th Grade

—Course Description: In this Honors level course, which also serves as a preparatory course for the AP Examination in Language & Composition, students are expected to be discoverers. What does it mean to seek a "Territory ahead of the rest," to borrow from Realist Mark Twain and his novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)? How does each writer present locations of the mind and world at large, whether a "valley of ashes" or "fresh, green breast of the new world," as Modernist F. Scott Fitzgerald showcases in The Great Gatsby (1925)? The writers and works of this course are examined chronological through six separate Units, from Colonial to Contemporary America. The primary works, too, catalyze a final project of an original 8-10-page literary research paper. Students are well-trained in MLA citations, annotation, and academic database research using library resources. Ultimately, the American Literature class excavates literary works as much as possible, studying a wide array of subjects, themes, symbols, characters, styles, and motifs. 

Whenever possible, additional scholarly resources enable cross-disciplinary connections with the U.S. History, Ethics, Broadcast, Theatre, and other courses.

See the American Literature course description for Sample Units and Authors (which stay relatively uniform for both courses, although texts by those authors may differ).

American Literature

—Level: High School, 11th Grade

—Course Description: This course is similar to the Honors American Literature course in that it still requires chronological exploration of American literary works and context from the Colonial through Contemporary eras. Students still are trained in proper MLA style citation, annotation, and academic research. The final course project is a 5-7-page original literary research paper. Yet, we focus on the concept of “Short Stories, Big Lives.” American Literature offers a wide variety of shorter works, from poems to essays, novellas to novels, plays to pop cultural pieces, and focuses on writing workshop models to help students develop strong grammar, form, style, and rhetorical effect.

A Selection of Sample Authors: Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Mary Rowlandson, Phillis Wheatley, Jonathan Edwards, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Ann Jacobs, Herman Melville, Kate Chopin, Mark Twain, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zora Neale Hurston, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Lorraine Hansberry, Tim O’Brien, James McBride, Natasha Trethewey, David Sedaris, Dave Barry, and others

 Sample Units:

SEMESTER 1

Unit 00: Summer Reading and Introduction to American Literature

Unit 1: The Colonial / Federalist Era (1600s-1830)

Unit 2: The American Renaissance/Romantic Era / Transcendentalism (1830-1865)

Unit 3: Naturalism/Realism (1866-1910s)

SEMESTER 2

Unit 4: Modernism & The Harlem Renaissance (1914-1945)

Unit 5: Post-Modernism (1945-1989)

Unit 6: Post-Post-Modernism/Contemporary Literature (1990-Present)

AP English Literature & Composition / Honors Advanced Topics in Literature

—Level: High School, 12th Grade

—Course Description: The AP English Literature and Composition / Honors Advanced Topics in Literature course builds upon, and extends, prior readings, analytical writing, and literary studies in the 9th grade Foundations of Literature and 10th, 11th, and 12th grade Honors track course in World, British, and American Literature. This course focuses upon critical thinking, close reading, analysis, literary terminology, scholarly research, narrative elements, and rhetorical strategies of representative texts of world literature in a range of genres (fiction, non-fiction, memoir, plays, short stories, flash fiction, essays, and poetry). Students study complex, nuanced, and ambiguous texts through careful observation. They analyze textual details, figurative language, structure, tone, and style. Furthermore, as this is a “text and context”-style course, students learn to interpret a text through considering the social, cultural, and historical issues during the period in which the text is written. Students practice reading, discussing, and writing about complex, profound literary texts at the deepest thematic and structural levels. They examine each text for an author’s narrative techniques, rhetorical elements, voice, vocabulary, tone, and style. Also, students practice writing about the literature from an argumentation viewpoint, through in-class timed writing and extended at-home essays. Writing assignments afford solid practice in the skills of thesis and argument, detailed textual support for claims, clarity, organization, focus, flow, nuanced and literary vocabulary, personal voice and style, and various composition constructions, Standard Written English, sentence variety, syntax, and diction. The sophistication of students’ writing is also honed, discussed, and evaluated.

Sample Text List for this course with the theme “Ghostly Traces: Literary Hauntings and Spectral Spaces” (2023-24 Academic Year):

—Hamlet (1599-1601/1603) by William Shakespeare

—The Turn of the Screw (1898) by Henry James

—To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf

—Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison

—The Remains of the Day (1989) by Kazuo Ishiguro

—Station Eleven (2014) by Emily St. John Mandel

 Also, shorter works by:

            PROSE: James Baldwin, Tim O’Brien, Edith Wharton, Zora Neale Hurston, Alexander Chee, James Joyce, Ray Bradbury, Oscar Wilde, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Maxine Hong Kingston, David Sedaris, David Foster Wallis, Denis Johnson, Cormac McCarthy, Marianne Robinson, Carson McCullers, Lorraine Hansberry

            POETRY: Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Pablo Neruda, Audre Lorde, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Claude McKay, Zitkala-Ša, Joy Harjo, Natalie Diaz, Ada Limón, Ocean Vuong, Stanley Kunitz, Joyce Carol Oates

English World Literature

—Level: High School, 10th Grade

—Course Description: English 10 examines selected texts of World Literature; broadens the imagination through Harkness-style discussions; and emphasizes written composition, especially analytical writing. Students explore a range of genres, including tragedy, satire, postcolonial literature, and romantic works through reading a variety of novels, short stories, essays, plays, and poetry. What is more, students confront fundamental questions about literature: what is it and what purpose does it hold for us? How does literature and art in general help us think analytically and critically? Finally, students will master the ability to read and think critically and continue to develop effective oral and written communication skills.

Course format: Each unit of study will include a range of activities and assessments: essays and papers, writing journal, class discussions, oral and artistic presentations, projects, and formal and informal assessments. Art history, film, music and other media—when appropriate--will be incorporated into classroom learning to enrich the study of literature and writing. We will also examine works, when and where possible, through an interdisciplinary lens: for instance, we will incorporate Theology, Science, History, and more within our discussions and work. Lastly, English 10 builds upon the basics of writing. Grammar instruction will be done mostly in the context of student writing, and vocabulary development will be emphasized through its context in the course literature.

Ultimately, English 10—World Literature is an exploration of self and society, via diverse literary works. Students leave English 10 as more sophisticated thinkers, writers, and examiners of literature and life itself.

Sample World Literature Sources: The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the World of Consciousness (2015) by Sy Montgomery (paired with the documentary My Octopus Teacher (2020) directed by James Reed & Pippa Ehrlich); The Samurai’s Garden (1994) by Gail Tsukiyama; Girl in Hyacinth Blue (1999) by Susan Vreeland'; Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) by Mary Shelley; Antigone (ca. 441 B.C.) by Sophocles; Macbeth (1611/1623) by William Shakespeare; Things Fall Apart (1958) by Chinua Achebe; assorted poems, short essays, stories, etc. as needed to complement the course material.

College Essay Writing Workshop

—Level: High School, Rising 12th Graders

—Course Description: From the brainstorming, drafting, writing, revising, peer-reviewing, and polishing stages, this course allows students to craft not just a compelling personal essay but, even more, to find and develop their creative “voice.” While rooted in the requirements of the 650-word college application essay, this Writing Workshop is a fine way for high school students to hone their creatively-critical writing skills, sharpen style, and continue to polish grammar and general rhetorical techniques.

Poetry & Citizenship

—Level: University Undergraduate

—Course Description: This is an advanced course, part of the core literature elective and the creative writing program. Poetry & Citizenship considers poets whose works respond to the complicated relationship between writing and belonging to a place or being a “citizen” in space and time. Readings include work by Walt Whitman, T. S. Eliot, Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth Bishop, Gloria Anzaldúa, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Adrienne Rich, and Amiri Baraka. Critical contexts include perceptions of nationality, gender, ethnicity, minority and racial experience, and social-identity construction. Students’ final projects include a literary analysis essay and an original poetry manuscript.