American Literature and Composition 1 2015-2016
This required literature and composition course explores the literature of the United States, focusing on American themes and values, as well as literary movements and theories. Students will study and work on composition, comprehension, oral communication, and reference skills. Grammar and knowledge of literary terms will be emphasized as part of the composition exercises.
Materials, Products, and Expectations
Notebook (three-ring binder or divided notebook, brought to class daily):
- literary terms
- grammar rules
- literary themes, theories, and movements
Class Reading and Writing: discussions and writing exercises
- follow handouts and read during class
- participate in discussions and writing forums
Independent Reading and Writing:
- Literary Response
- Creative Writing
- Photographic Essay
- Digital Story
- Research Paper
Expectations: This class reads literature from a variety of genres focusing on social, artistic, and literary movements. This literature provides the basis for our discussions in class and models for writing. Students cannot eat in class, can only bring water, and should be in class on time, ready to work. All assignments will be posted on the class website. If you miss a class, you are responsible for making up missed material. In-class essay questions and quizzes on required reading should be made up before the next class period after returning to school. If you miss a class presentation by a group you are a member of, upon returning to class you must make an appointment with the instructor to decide on a makeup assignment. Late work will be penalized 10% of the possible grade – if the work is turned in after the end of the first quarter each semester, only 50% of the credit will be available. Plagiarism found in any assignment will result in a grade of 0% for the assignment, parental contact, and a conference tab entry. Any exceptions to these rules require the instructor’s permission in advance. Process and product tasks are weighted 35 and 55% respectively, and account for 90% of the semester grade. The semester final counts for 10%. In order to receive Honors credit for this class, you will be asked to (1) read at least one extra book per semester; (2) write an essay focusing on this extra book; and (3) complete the assignments for the class, including a research paper. If you receive a D or F, or don’t complete the major assignments as part of the Honors section, you will be placed in the Regular section for the first and/or second semester.
American Literature and Composition
Fall Semester, 2015 – 2016 Tentative Schedule for Course
| CLASS WEEK | LITERATURE “Themes” | COMPOSITION Literary Movements |
| Week 1: August 25-28, 2015 | Overview of class structure: syllabus and final; expertise Visual icons of America Literary movements and dialectical themes: “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” and e.e. cummings | Interdisciplinary context for American literature: Photo and Story Projects Literary Elements: Modern Overview Literary Terms Assignment Berlin’s “God Bless America” and Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” |
| Weeks 2-4: August 31-September 18 | “The Road” – America after WWII: Ellison’s Invisible Man | Modernism – identity crisis Literary Elements: Style, Tone Photo Essay |
| Weeks 5-6: September 21- October 2 | Miller’s Death of a Salesman: Stream of Consciousness for the stage; Albee’s The Sandbox | Glengarry Glen Ross and Tree of Life Postmodernism Introduction Honors Assignment on Autobiography of Malcolm X |
| Week 7: October 5-9 | “Puritanism” and “Revolution” – Community and Individualism: “City Upon a Hill”, Paine, de Crèvecœur, and Burgess | American values and themes First Paired Novel Assignment |
| Week 8: October 12-16 | “Civil Rights” –1954 to 1973: court cases, and speeches – Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan, Clinton | Rhetorical Strategies and Devices Building an Argument Majority and Dissenting Opinions |
| Weeks 9-11: October 21- November 6 | “Genus Loci” or place-making – Cannery Row | Community Seeds by Kenny Be Finding community in chaos through Voice: Cannery Row Notebook |
| Weeks 12-13: November 9-20 | Modernist poets to the Beats: Stevens, Kerouac, Ginsberg’s Howl | Write-like Ginsberg: Free Verse and flipping Figures of Speech Literary Terms test |
| Weeks 14-15: November 30-December 11 | Excerpts from Twain’s Huckleberry Finn Sinclair’s Oil! as example of Naturalism | Realism Sociological literary theory Vernacular Dialogue; Social Satire There Will Be Blood District Finals |
| Week 16: December 14-18 | Masters’ Spoon River Anthology Twain’s “Gilded Age”, James’ Pragmatism, Carnegie’s philanthropy | Buckner’s The Hill American Philosophy Solo presentations on Paired Novels Class Final |
The scope and sequence of some of the included topics may be expanded, reduced, or shifted to accommodate class needs.
American Literature and Composition 1 Cannery Row Notebook October 15, 2015
Students from the American Literature classes offered their ideas on projects for the unit on Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. Proposals for connecting community and place in this project can be divided into four categories: (1) writing that connects a student’s communities to the communities featured in the book; (2) art that symbolizes the student’s groups; (3) pictures or a musical playlist that capture the essential traits of these communities; and (4) stories — anecdotes or interviews — that focus on the members of these communities. So, the Cannery Row Notebook will feature one aspect of each of these.
Writing. Each student must write at least one page that mimics Steinbeck’s “prologue” to Cannery Row, that begins, “Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.” (This prologue is posted on the class website.) Use the same kind of language and sentence structures, similar concrete details, to set the scene that connects your communities and the places where they can be found. This is a creative nonfiction essay about your communities.
Art. The art that becomes part of the notebook can be a map of the sacred places that distinguish the student’s communities – an article on mapping is posted on the class website. It can be a fashion statement that captures a student’s associations. It can be a painting or a sculpture that symbolizes the communities that the student has chosen to explore. This is a figurative piece.
Pictures or Musical Playlist. These can be photos, a collage, illustrations, sketches that realistically depict the communities, their members, their locales, the food in restaurants, the physical places that the communities inhabit; or a playlist of the music that echoes from these places or defines them. Combine the two to make a music video. Think businesses, restaurants, cultural centers that define the community. Street flyers could also define this community. This is a literal component of the notebook.
Stories. These can be creative, descriptive stories about the community and its members, or anecdotes, or one-act scenes that show the language of the members, or interviews with the members of the various communities. This is the narrative piece.
- The “write-like” or essay should be one page.
- The art can be a one-page map; or a sketch of a fashion ensemble with call-offs detailing the community connections; or write a song; or create any art object that represents the communities.
- Three pictures (illustrations, photos, or a digital presentation) of places in the community – a scrapbook; or three songs shared in a playlist in Spotify, with lyrics printed and a short paragraph connecting these songs to the community placed in the notebook; or a music video submitted on a flash drive.
- A short story, or two anecdotes, or three interviews begin to tell the story of the communities; a series of street poems also works.
All of these parts of the notebook could actually be contained within a notebook or scrapbook; three-dimensional art may go beyond the parameters of a notebook; a digital presentation of the pictures or video must be contained on a flash drive, rather than sent to the instructor, although could be shared on Google Drive. This is due in class on Thursday, October 29, or Friday, October 30.American Literature and Composition 1
de Crèvecœur and Burgess Assignment
- From “Letter III. What Is An American,” by de Crèvecœur, list five major values that the author points out as distinctly American. Attach the words the author uses to describe these values or traits of the American character?
- In the Burgess essay “Is America Falling Apart?” list five major problems he sees plaguing America at the start of the 1970s. List some of the words he uses to translate his disappointment in America?
- In an essay of one to two hand-written pages, compare and contrast the values and problems discussed by the authors. Use the notes and words listed above in this essay. Include your opinion of their conclusions as they pertain to this day and age, from your experience and knowledge?
To answer the first two questions, make some notes and write some phrases to describe your meaning. For the final question, write an essay, using full sentences, paragraphs, and tone words that incorporate your notes and their words in the comparison, along with your feelings.
Attach these notes to your essay.
American Literature and Composition Honors 1
Twain and Hurston Honors Assignment
All American Literature students will read eleven chapters of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — chapters 6-8, 17-20, 32-35 — and the first five chapters of Their Eyes Were Watching God. The Honors students are encouraged to read the rest of Huckleberry Finn; they must read the entire Hurston book. They then must write a comparison paper, focusing on the themes and styles of the two books.
Although written some fifty years apart, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God feature similar themes and stylistic devices. Both books follow the adventures of people engaged in a journey of self-discovery. Nature plays a prominent part in both novels. Major themes like racism and feminism take center stage in the social commentaries presented by the authors. The regional distinctions examined through language, religion, and family give these novels a realistic aspect unparalleled before their publications.
For your literary analysis, compare the evolving self-awareness of Huck Finn and Janie Crawford. What do the protagonists learn about themselves and their places in the social network? Consider how Huck deals with racism exhibited towards Jim, how Janie deals with the dominating position of men in her life. Both lead characters are sworn to telling the truth. Let them speak for themselves, and prove your points through quotes. Discuss how language and other social conventions like religion and family testify to the ethical positions of the protagonists.
This is an expository paper, in which you reveal your thinking on these topics by developing a thesis that covers the main questions, supporting your thoughts by quotes and specific references to the texts of the novels. This paper should be two typed pages, 12-point font, one-inch margins, submitted via email — or a hard copy if necessary.
American Literature and Composition 1
November 5, 2015
Howling about your Photo Essay
He recounts the tortures of the “saints” who have struggled to assert their soul’s presence in a world which easily destroys them either through the oppression of systems or through the consequences of their own indiscretions. Ginsberg believes that the body is somehow the gateway to the soul and that the free release of it can counteract the oppression of the world and the mind.
-this is what a friend of mine said about the mythologized friends that Ginsberg portrayed in Howl
The writing in this poem is frenetic, like the bebop jazz popular among the hipsters of the times, in 1940s and ‘50s’ America. Jack Kerouac wrote prose in the same vein — the words spilled out seemingly without pause, in long speed raps and jazz-like blowing. Think bebop or scat singing or the landscape as it passes outside the side window of a car built for speed. Ginsberg touches on friends living as outsiders; sexual practices people feared to mention; people disengaged from systems they could not trust; insanity; the vital open road. He was not afraid to write poetry that spoke from his groin, his center of gravity, even if that was forever flinching.
You take it from here!
Write a scat poem, juxtaposing different figures of speech, bombing frenetic stylings, worshipping and cursing (while keeping it civil for your age) the items, the stuff you posed in your photo essay, and how those concrete things connect you to the people you call your posse. Let those things trip you to find the travelogue of your own life on the road — figuratively, philosophically, empirically.
This is not a free-write. This is you in a peripatetic poem!
One page of “negative capability.” Push the language, the rhythm, the breathing.
Poetry is like the chaos theory — finding patterns in unpredictability.
Due on November 13American Literature and Composition Honors 1
August 26, 2015
INVISIBLE MAN Assignment
Due September 20, 2015
Tone is more than an author’s attitude toward his/her audience and characters; it is the stylistic means by which an author conveys his/her attitude(s) in a work of literature. Tone is an integral part of a work’s meaning because it controls the reader’s response which is essential to fully experiencing literature. A writer carefully chooses words to communicate his or her attitude.
In this expository essay, explore one of the following topics.
- Invisible Man examines the difficulties of finding a self-identity. Choose at least three and no more than five specific episodes where the narrator finds that his ideas about who he is change when he confronts new people or places. Use the words in these scenes to show how the narrator feels about self-esteem and identity.
- Most of Invisible Man takes place in the narrator’s memory. Even though the Brotherhood urges the Invisible Man to ignore his past, he finds that the past is an important aspect of his character. Look at the language that the narrator uses when discussing his past to determine whether he is exaggerating the truth of the stories that he is presenting, for the sake of embracing those experiences.
- After Tod Clifton dies, the narrator asks why Clifton chose “to plunge into nothingness … lying outside history?” What words in the subsequent scenes show the narrator’s feelings regarding this thought?
- There are five major sections that are italicized in Invisible Man – part of the Prologue; the graduation; when Miss Mary finds the narrator on the street; the encounter with Tod Clifton and the dancing doll; and near the end of the last chapter. Examine the language in these sections — only the italicized parts — and discuss why the author would use this device. What feelings not otherwise conveyed by the prose are contained in these sections?
- There are two major locales mentioned in this novel — the state college in the South, and New York City, specifically Harlem and downtown. Look at the language the author uses to discuss these places to discover how the narrator feels about these locales.
This essay should be 2-3 typewritten pages, double-spaced, 12-point font, with 1-inch margins. Do your own thinking regarding the language used in Invisible Man to communicate Ralph Ellison’s attitude toward your topic of choice. You must include plenty of references — quoted words, phrases, and sentences — to support your thinking. Be sure to include references to the end of the book as well as the beginning.American Literature and Composition 1 Honors
September 21, 2015
Fall Semester Honors Assignment
In “Barack Obama, The Invisible Man,” an article written by David Samuels for The New Republic during the Democratic convention of 2008, the journalist states,
Still, it is hard to argue with the fact that Dreams [from My Father] is a terrific book — an insightful, well-written, cunningly organized black male bildungsroman that also serves as a kind of autobiographical rejoinder to one of my favorite American novels, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Obama cites Invisible Manas a major influence on his personal evolution along with The Autobiography of Malcolm X, two classic first-person narratives in the African American literary canon that can properly be thought of as novels with strong autobiographical components.
As you read The Autobiography of Malcolm X,you will find many episodes that reflect incidents that Ellison describes. David Samuels suggests that both books are novels based on the authors’ lives; we typically categorize Invisible Man as fiction, and The Autobiography as nonfiction. But what if they are both perceived as real and legitimate by their authors? Does that change how you interpret Invisible Man?
Write an essay in which you discuss at least five major episodes, relationships, turning points in The Autobiography of Malcolm X that have close parallels in Invisible Man. Look at the value of each incident as it establishes identity in the context of mid-twentieth century America. Determine how the style of each book lends credence to the episode as demonstrative of the author’s experience. After examining these five events or relationships in the context of each book, suggest which book is more successful in illustrating cultural identity in the mid-1900s. Make sure that you cite supporting references in each book.
This paper should be two to three pages long, double-spaced; submit this assignment by October 14, 2015.American Literature and Composition 1
Literary Terms
Name ______________________________
November 18, 2015
Write the letter of the matching definition in the box of the literary term.
| METER | ANY FORM OF LITERATURE THAT BLENDS IRONIC HUMOR AND WIT WITH CRITICISM DIRECTED AT A PARTICULAR FOLLY, VICE, OR STUPIDITY |
| PLAGIARISM | THE BIG IDEA IN LITERATURE |
| ALLEGORY | THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT IS ANTICIPATED HAPPENS |
| THEME | UNRHYMED IAMBIC PENTAMETER |
| CANON | SOMETHING THAT IS SIMULTANEOUSLY ITSELF AND A SIGN OF SOMETHING ELSE |
| BLANK VERSE | REPETITION OF CONSONANT SOUNDS AT THE BEGINNING OF WORDS THAT ARE CLOSE TO ONE ANOTHER |
| ROMANTICISM | THE SENSE A WRITTEN WORK CONVEYS TO A READER OF THE WRITER’S ATTITUDE, PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER |
| IRONY | TYPE OF POETRY THAT FOCUSES ON SELF-REFLECTION |
| ALLITERATION | LITERARY MOVEMENT THAT FOCUSES ON INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, REBELLION, AND CONNECTIONS TO NATURE |
| SYMBOL | A TYPE OF LITERATURE |
| SYNTAX | A TECHNIQUE THAT ALLOWS THE READER TO SEE THE CONTINUOUS, CHAOTIC FLOW OF HALF-FORMED AND DISCONTINUOUS THOUGHTS OF A CHARACTER |
| GENRE | REPETITION OF A REGULAR RHYTHMIC UNIT IN A LINE OF POETRY |
| OXYMORON | LIST OF STANDARD WORKS IN FIELD OF ART |
| LYRIC | STORY OR POEM IN WHICH CHARACTERS, SETTINGS, AND EVENTS STAND FOR OTHER PEOPLE OR EVENTS OR ABSTRACT IDEAS OR QUALITIES |
| ALLUSION | A FIGURE OF SPEECH THAT COMBINES OPPOSITE OR CONTRADICTORY TERMS IN A BRIEF PHRASE |
| POINT OF VIEW | REFERENCE TO SOMEONE OR SOMETHING THAT IS KNOWN FROM HISTORY, LITERATURE, RELIGION, POLITICS, SPORTS, SCIENCE, OR ANOTHER BRANCH OF CULTURE |
| STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS | STEALING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OR FAILURE TO CITE SOURCES |
| TONE | ANY OF SEVERAL POSSIBLE VANTAGE POINTS FROM WHICH A STORY IS TOLD |
| SATIRE | REPETITION OF VOWEL SOUNDS BETWEEN DIFFERENT CONSONANTS |
| ASSONANCE | THE STRUCTURE OF A SENTENCE; THE ARRANGEMENT OF WORDS IN A SENTENCE |