By now you have experience reading, interpreting and analyzing an array of
literature from different genres. You have given heed to the process of
writing for analytical, informative, and creative purposes. This year we are
further developing these skills in understanding literature but from a
particularly concentrated focus. We will explore American literature from
colonial times until the present (hence the name American Writers). An
underlying premise driving the course is that the political, cultural and
intellectual trends and forces of a time period impact the literature we are
examining. To that end, our writing will focus on these themes and lenses,
while at the same time mimicking the New York State Regents Examination when
appropriate. Writing is an integral part of the course and students are
expected to further develop their writing skills. Thus, there will be plenty
of opportunity for revision and collaboration with the instructor to reach
this end.
Authors and Texts (may include but are not limited to the following)
Major Texts
--Arthur Miller’s The Crucible
--F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
--Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
--Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men
--Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Poets
--Anne Bradstreet
--Emily Dickinson
--Walt Whitman
--Edna St. Vincent Millay
--Sylvia Plath
--Carl Sandburg
--William Carlos Williams
--Allen Ginsburg
--Langston Hughes
Non Fiction Works
--Mayflower Compact
--Jonathan Edward’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
--Declaration of Independence
--Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
--Henry David Thoreau’s On Civil Disobedience
--Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance (excerpt)
--Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail
Short Story Works
--Ambrose Bierce’s Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
--Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown
--Washington Irving’s The Devil and Tom Walker
-- Mark Twain’s A Presidential Candidate
-- Edgar Allen Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death
--Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants
--Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find
--John Updike’s A&P
--James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues
