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Course Prospectus. English III is a survey course in American literature designed according to several related objectives and assumptions:
- First and
foremost, this course aims to elevate your capacities as critical readers,
writers, and thinkers. As such, the primary goal of the course is not
essentially dependent on its content (American literature), but is about
the acquisition of certain skills.
- This course aims
to improve your familiarity and critical competence with the major genres
of imaginative literature: drama, prose fiction, and lyric poetry. Other
genres, such as personal narrative, autobiography, and the expository
essay, will be considered, as well.
- While we will
not proceed in lock-step with the pace of your
U.S. history course, we will seek at certain moments to connect the
development of American literature with the progression of events and
ideas in American history.
- This course
seeks to acquaint you with some of the "major" authors of the
American tradition—and, concurrently, to investigate the notion of the
American canon, the collection of authors conventionally
"authorized" as central to the development of American
civilization and "culture" and traditionally taught in high-school and college English courses.
- This course
seeks to understand the connections between American literature and common
notions of American "culture" and American "identity."
To put it another way: We seek in this class to understand how American
literary texts tend to create, confirm, question, and subvert ideas of
"American-ness."
- We seek in this
course to understand certain ideas and movements of intellectual and
literary history—such as romanticism, realism, and modernism—as they
relate to American authors.
- We seek in this
course to explore a constellation of related themes: the invention of the
self; the relationship of the individual to the community; the question of
American "identity"; the fashioning of the "American
Dream"; the exploration of the American landscape; and various issues
surrounding race, gender, family, and sexuality in relation to American
"culture."
- We will use The Norton Anthology of American Literature
Anthology as our basic text, but we will provide supplementary
materials—both as handouts and electronic (web) documents—as the course
proceeds.
Suffield Academy English Department
Statement on Academic Integrity and Acceptable Practices for Student Work
The English Department places a very high value on academic honesty. Plagiarism, the act of using another person's words or ideas without giving credit to the source, is seen as contrary to the central purposes of student work in English classes and is treated as a major school rule violation. Individual teachers discuss with their classes the philosophy and policies of the English Department in relation to academic integrity at the outset of each school year. In addition, students are expected to understand the following guidelines:
At all times, students should follow their teacher’s specific directives regarding appropriate use of primary and secondary resources; in many instances, teachers will expect students to confine their reading to the primary source only. In addition, students must understand the importance of the acceptable use of technology—and that unacceptable use may carry academic as well as disciplinary consequences. Given Suffield's open access to information technology, students should remember that even cursory browsing of Internet sites related to an assigned text will influence their consideration and interpretation of the work.
Teachers may encourage group work and peer-editing on certain assignments; however, students should understand that unauthorized cooperation is also prohibited. Individual teachers will clearly establish appropriate boundaries for collaboration on specific assignments. When in doubt, students should assume that an assignment—whether a routine vocabulary exercise or a major, analytical essay—is intended as an independent task.
I have read thoroughly and understand the policies of the English Department regarding academic honesty and acceptable practices for student work.
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Signature Date
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Printed Name English Class / Teacher
Required Texts
Norton Anthology of American Literature
Vocabulary Workshop, Level G
Suffield Academy's The Writer's Handbook
An Approved College Dictionary
Planbook
Project Home (Part I, Part II, Part III, & Part IV)
During March, students should utilize break to go home and collect images, film clips, and sounds that define their home and capture their personal definitions of the idea of home. When they come back they will arrange these media files into an i-Movie that visually captures their understanding and has an audio component that enhances and emphasizes their ideas. Click here for details on assignment.
Home iMovie Assignment # 1
As we are
coming to the end of the second trimester, we are going to begin Project Home,
and you will need to complete the first steps of it over Spring Break. Over the
vacation, your assignment is to start creating an iMovie that shows what you
consider to be your home. This iMovie should also highlight the characteristics
that make this place a home.
As you
consider your definition and what you are going to present, you should think
about the idea of home as possibly going beyond place and setting. While you
may consider your home to be your house, it could also be more specifically
defined to a particular place in or around your house, people, objects, etc…
Over break, you should collect images, either photos or video, that you
will include in your iMovie, and you should find the music you will include in
the project as well. In order to complete these tasks, you will need the
technology to do so. You will need your computer, iTunes/CD’s, and a digital
camera of some sort. Make sure you have what you need before you leave so you can
succeed.
When we come
back, you will arrange your media files and submit your Home iMovie, which will
be the first step in this project. I’m really excited about this work, and I
hope you are as well. Let’s take some time now to answer questions about the
assignment, so you feel comfortable and confident completing this task over
vacation.
After they submit their i-Movies, the students will go back to the texts we’ve read in the last two terms to find important quotations that show the author’s definition of the concept of home. Once a week, students will hand in a response paper/explication of the quotation they chose from the work/author of the week. This should combine literary analysis and personal reflection.
After receiving these response papers with feedback on them, students will write a major term paper that asks them to write a definition essay on the idea of home as it evolves through American Literary History. They should have a text from each of the major literary eras, and they should discuss their threads of similarities in the author’s definition to his/her predecessors, and they should discuss the ways in which the definition evolves and/or changes as time goes on. They should identify the new issues that arise in these authors’ works. This paper should also include a portion where the students write about their own beliefs and understandings, putting their ideas into words now instead of just using images and sounds.
Students will go back to the i-Movie they made after break and add another audio layer to it where they read quotations from literature that parallel parts of their i-Movies appropriately. This will add a level of literary value to the i-Movie and bring together the personal and academic in a creative way. This i-Movie will provide juniors with future fodder to create personal essays in preparation for the college essay in the fall of senior year.