Class Description

The focus of this class is to give an overview of American Literature.  The class will view literature historically, seeing the impact of history on the literture at the time. As a class we will read a variety of literature genres as well as write a variety of formal papers.  Several books will also be read.

Class Expectations

Testing Information: Tests will be given over every Unit.  These will count for 40% of the class grade.

Daily Work:

Reading stories is a large part of the daily assignments.  Often questions will have to be answered over the stories read.  Daily work counts for 10% of a student's grade.

Major Projects:

Students will have to read one American novel on their own and write a book review on that.  A multigenerational/research paper will also be written by the students.  These projects will count for 30% of the grade.

Final Grade:

Final grades are determined by a combination of test and quiz scores, writing assignments and essays, and class participation.

Class Outline

 

Goals and Objectives

• The students will read a variety of literature: poems, speeches, journals, fiction, non-fiction, plays.
• The students will write 3 different papers, responding to the literature from their Christian view point.
• The students will see the effect of world view on literature and the way writers responded to historical movements.
• The students will read two books.  In the first quarter, the students will read a classic American novel individually.  In the second quarter, the students will read a contemporary American novel in reading circles.

First Quarter

I.  Notes on Beginnings to 1750

Find some Sioux/Dakota Indian writing (check with Jim Schaap)

Assign: A Journey Through Texas and Boulders

Assign book review, due by end of 1st semester.

Journal of the First Voyage to America

The General History of Virginia/ Of Plymouth Plantation

The Puritans

Read Edward Taylor/Anne Bradstreet

From Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

View the “City on a Hill” episode of Colonial House/

Writing: Persuasive Speech: pg 7

II. Notes on a Nation is Born

Read The Autobiography and Poor Richards Almanack: charades  #6, p. 8

Read The Declaration of Independence/

Speeches: Patrick Henry/Ben Franklin/

Test

III. Notes on a Growing Nation

The Devil and Tom Walker

Longfellow, Bryant, Holmes,Lowel

Lewis and Clark Day)

Poe

Moby Dick

Transcendetalism: Ermerson

Thoreau

Dickinson/Whitman,

Test

IV. Notes on 1850-1914

Crane (pg. 24, #5,7 Civil War Facts)

Spirituals/ pg. 25 + Marco Polo)

Lincoln/Lee/Bierce

Twain

Harte

Colte/Joseph

Jack London

Chopin(screen play-p 34 #4)

Wharton

Poets

Cather/( include life of the Great Plains/songbirds)

Writing- descriptive writing about the land

Test

                                                

Second Quarter

I. Notes on 1914-1946

T.S. Eliot

Pound/Williams

Fitzgerald

Reading Circles

Steinbeck/Cummings/Auden

Wallace/MacLeish/Moore

Hemingway

Welty

Sandburg/Porter

Faulkner

Frost

Thurber

Harlem Renaissance/Hurton, Hughes,McKay

Test

II. Notes 1946-end

O’Conner

Malamud

Updike

Lowell, Warren, Stafford

Tylre

Momaday, Nye, Harjo

Walker,

Kingson, Alvarez

Poets

Essays

Sandra Cisneros

Amy Tam

James Baldwin

Hersey and Jarrell

Poets

Arthur Miller

Reading The Crucible

A-C.Viewing the Crucible

Review for Exam