ENGLISH SAMPLE COURSE DESCRIPTION

GS-EAST

The definition of education as being that activity in which the student and the teacher are the same person is the guiding theme for English at Governor's School East. In the spirit of that definition these are the goals of the department

  • To acquaint our students with works in poetry and fiction that they will not be exposed to during their tenure at their high schools back home
  • To provide a learning atmosphere that encourages critical thinking, as the students encounter these new poems, short stories and novels
  • To present a diversity of authors and works, so as to afford the students a widened and deepened perspective on the themes which literature makes available
  • To offer, in each of the three sections, opportunities to not only read the works but to write originally and creatively in response to them
  • To promote an understanding of how the themes and situations in the poems and short stories and novels which they read have interdisciplinary connections
  • To allow them the intellectual autonomy to recognize that the themes of literature are, first, the themes of life
  • To emphasize the value of process over product

Historically, the English Department has offered three courses. In Contemporary American Short Fiction, students read and discuss a range of short stories by authors such as Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Cade Bambera, Tony Earley, Lee Smith, Raymond Carver, Donald Barthelme, John Barth, and others and applied various schools of literary criticism and interpretation (e.g., feminism, Freudian interpretation, deconstruction). In Documentary Fiction the students have read examples of documentary fiction (such as Into the Wild, Everything is Illuminated, and House of Leaves) and worked on projects such as written ethnographies, audio documentaries, and multimedia, collaborative projects. In Twentieth-Century Poetry, poems are mined by the class so that students may not only chip away to the meaning of the poem but, even more importantly, dig out how the poet accomplished the meaning. Some of the poets encountered are Gerard Manley Hopkins, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, Richard Wilbur, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Amiri Baraka, Louise Edrich, and our own poet-in-residence, Chuck Sullivan.

GS-WEST

A sampling of English courses recently taught at Governor's School West:


Postmodern Literary Expressions:

  • What is Postmodernism? What is its form and content?
  • How is Postmodernism represented in American Literature?
  • Why maintain a literary canon? Is it needed to establish a boundary between "good" and "bad" literature? Who has a viable voice in the establishment of a literary canon? Should cultural and historical trends determine placement within a canon?
  • Why is Postmodernism often ignored on the secondary level?
  • How is literature defined today? What is the common thematic thread embedded in our current literary expression? Is there a viable contemporary literary movement? If so, then what is it? How should it be defined and recognized?
  • What is Post-Post Modernism? Is this a valid literary movement?
  • Authors: Toni Morrison, John Barth, Tim O'Brien, Joyce Carol Oates, Bob Dylan, Michael Chabon, Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, John Updike, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Munro, Donald Barthelme, Kurt Vonnegut
  • Literary Selections Include: The Things They Carried. The American Short Stories 2005, Selections, from Zoetrope: All Story, Smoke, Selections from Postmodern American Poetry, Selections from Postmodern American Fiction Anthology, Runaway, "Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan)," "Smile (Brian Wilson)"


Best American Short Stories and Essays

In this course we'll read short stories and essays that have been anthologized in the popular Best American series. The first goal of this course is to expose students to the contemporary authors and their works that appear in these anthologies. But we'll also spend some time discussing how these anthologies work: Who chooses the stories and essays? On what criteria are these stories judged? Where are these stories and essays published prior to being anthologized? Perhaps more importantly, we'll use our analysis of these works as a "jumping off" point for students' own creative writing. Students are often able to identify basic elements of fiction -- setting, plot, conflict, etc. -- but we'll consider more fuzzy elements of which they may have never heard or discussed at length -- style, tone, voice, character development, and diction. And we'll consider how these same elements appear in essays. Likely authors will include: Richard Ford, Barbara Kingsolver, Rick Moody, Jhumpa Lahiri, Floyd Skloot, and Emily Bernard, among many others.


Film Adaptations of Literary Texts

This course, film adaptations of literary texts, explores the ways in which filmmakers adapt novels and short stories into the cinematic medium. We avoid discussing whether or not the course's films remain "true" to their fictional predecessors. Instead, we examine how they engage in the work of adaptation; how the formal constraints of film differ from the formal constraints of the short story and the novel; and, above all else, how filmmakers, like readers, interpret themes and characters when creating their films. Moreover, the course will include a creative project, which allows students to generate their own adaptations of other student work. Through academic and creative labor, students gain a critical awareness of the interpretive process.