2023-2024 Course Catalog – Humanities: English
Humanities: English
CL College Level
CP College Prep
DC Dual Credit
XC Exploratory Course
Required Courses
Every junior must take American Literature the fall semester and World Literature the spring semester or take English-Human Struggles their first three semesters. Through the integrated Human Struggles courses students earn both their required English and social studies credits.
ENG03101
American Literature (CL)
Prerequisite: None
Credit: 1 credit
Offered: Fall
The American Literature course begins with literature of the New World and ends with contemporary period literature. There is an emphasis on critical thinking, close reading, and the development of writing skills. The course is organized by theme, by genre, or by literary and historical period, depending on the approach of the teacher. Students will have a wide variety of writing assignments, opportunities for oral participation, and other activities connecting literature, history, and culture.
ENG04221
World Literature (CL)
Prerequisite: ENG3101
Credit: 1 credit
Offered: Spring
This course focuses on the study of poetry, drama, and prose produced by authors of various nationalities of the Western and Eastern worlds from the ancient period to the present. Students explore literary movements and intellectual trends with a continuing emphasis on critical thinking, close reading, and the development of writing skills. They also develop essays and projects that call upon the processes of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation and have opportunities for oral participation. The course is organized by theme, by genre, or by literary and historical period depending on the approach of the teacher.
Electives: Dramatic Literature
ENG05140
Global Cinema (CL)
Prerequisite: None
Credit: 1 credit
Offered: Fall or Spring
Global Cinema provides students with the opportunity to explore the art of film in a global context. Students will analyze the preoccupations and methodologies of filmmakers and their films from nations like France, Germany, Taiwan, Sweden, India, the Czech Republic, and Mexico. Studying the moving image is akin to studying poetry, and students will be asked to challenge and expand their visual literacy and critical thinking skills. We will study materials in film and art theory, philosophy, and cultural studies, and write thesis-based analytical papers in which we apply theory to film analysis and confront the fictions and non-fictions of worlds beyond our own. In doing so, we will have the chance to see and to understand ourselves better. The course may have guest lecturers from other departments, like language and history, and, when possible, we will screen films in a BSU screening room.
Electives: Themes in Literature:
ENG05101
Women’s Literature (CL)
Prerequisite: None
Credit: 1 cr.
Offered: Fall
Students in this course study literature by and about women beginning with ancient works (Vedic Hymns, Sumerian fertility supplications and songs) and culminating with contemporary novels that explore adolescent and adult women’s struggles for voice and identity within family, community, and history. Through the theme of women’s identity, the course examines different writers and genres using written composition, oral participation, and critical thinking to engage in an ongoing investigation and inquiry into the myths and mysteries associated with the experience of being a woman.
ENG05103
Literature of the Holocaust (CL)
Prerequisite: None
Credit: 1 credit
Offered: Spring
This course offers students the opportunity to investigate a selection of Holocaust literature, including the genres of non-fiction, fiction, poetry, theory and philosophy, and film. Over the course of the semester, we will discuss the question of why the Holocaust should still have relevance to those growing up in the new Millennium, despite the fact that those who witnessed and experienced it have nearly all died. Through an investigation that begins with Hitler’s rise to power, we will analyze the structures of power and subjugation that allowed over six million people to be murdered. We will discuss at length the questions of memory, forgetting, and forgiveness. We will seek to negotiate the very troubling issue of the appropriation of someone else’s experience and motivations for doing so. Group viewings and discussions of films will generate further conversation and ideally lead us to a better understanding of the Holocaust and our individual responsibilities in remembering, forgetting, and passing on the stories of its victims.
ENG05107S2
Historical/Literature Themes (CL)
Prerequisite: None
Credit: 1 credit
Offered: Spring
Description forthcoming.
ENG05109
Lost Generation Literature (CL)
Prerequisite: None
Credit: 1 credit
Offered: Fall
Gertrude Stein told Ernest Hemingway, “You are all a lost generation,” labeling the expatriate writers who came to Paris after World War I. Lost Generation Literature focuses on the theme of disenchantment brought about by the meaningless end of the world’s first total war; the resulting materialistic boom and its following national extravagances, corruptions, and decadence; the hypocrisies of prohibition; and the spiritual bankruptcy of the “Jazz Age” or the “Roaring Twenties.” Students examine novels, short stories, and poetry using written composition, oral participation, and critical thinking to engage in ongoing investigation and inquiry of such twentieth-century literary giants as Stein, Anderson, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Pound, Joyce, Eliot, Williams, and e.e. cummings. Women writers of the Left Bank whose works were shadowed by the more popular male writers during the twenties are now anthologized and add a new dimension to this course. As their final exam, students simulate Parisian salons and become the famous writers, artists, musicians, dancers, fashion designers, and publishers who frequented them.
ENG05116
French Literature (CL)
Prerequisite: None
Credit: 1 credit
Offered: Fall or Spring
This course focuses on the study of poetry, drama, and prose produced by French and Francophone authors from the 19th Century to the present. Course texts will be in the English translations of their French originals, and no knowledge of the French language is required. Students explore literary movements and intellectual trends with a continuing emphasis on critical thinking, close reading, and the development of writing skills. They also develop response papers and projects that call upon the processes of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation and have opportunities for oral participation. Creative projects inspired by the readings will be included. Students will write analytical and creative response papers for each of the texts. Examples of works that may be studied in this course include Ball of Suet, The Horla, Cyrano de Bergerac, No Exit, The Second Sex, and So Long a Letter. In addition, students will read poetry by nineteenth and twentieth century writers such as Hugo and Baudelaire. The course may also include French and Francophone films. Examples of films that may be studied include La Jetée, Molière, la Belle et la Bête, and Persepolis.
ENG05117
Critical Approaches to Literature, Freudian and Jungian (CL)
Prerequisite: None
Credit: 1 credit
Offered: Spring
This literary criticism course uses Freudian and Jungian psychology to analyze literature that focuses on the theme of the dual personality. Students delve into what is often labeled as true self vs. the false self, the concept of the “double,” ego vs. alter ego or mirroring personalities, and id, ego, and super-ego. Through psychological and archetypal analysis, the course examines different writers and genres using written composition, oral participation, and critical thinking to engage in ongoing investigation and inquiry. The theories of Freud and Jung are employed to analyze such literary works as Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, Winesburg, Ohio, A Doll’s House, The Metamorphosis, Lord of the Flies, Heart of Darkness, Faust, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Demian, and Beloved. Students investigate psychological motives, unconscious desires and anxieties, myths and dreams as symbolic projections of people’s hopes, fears, and aspirations as they analyze the underlying human behavior of classical literary characters.
Electives: Other
ENG05113S1/05113S2
Creative Writing (CL)
Prerequisite: None
Please note: Students may enroll in Writing Fiction or Creative Writing at the Academy, but not both.
Credit: 1 credit
Offered: Fall or Spring
Students in this one semester class write poetry, short stories, plays, and creative non-fiction with opportunities for oral participation. The concept of manipulation of language to convey ideas, feelings, moods, and visual images is the basis of the course. The students become familiar with the standard literary elements through the reading and study of published prose and poetry and are taught to use those elements in their own writing. They learn strategies for evaluating their own writing and the writing of others. Students who are interested in an audience for their creative work and suggestions for improvement and development of their literary styles are encouraged to sign up for this course.
ENG05123/05124
AP English Language and Composition (CL)
Prerequisite: Permission of English Department. In keeping with College Board policy, this course is open to students who are academically prepared for it. Students prepared to benefit from this rigorous course have already shown an excellent work ethic and strong analytic and academic writing ability.
Credit: 1 credit
Offered: Fall/Spring Sequence
This year-long course, which prepares students to take the AP English Language and Composition exam, requires students to compose timed, evidence-based analytic and argumentative essays, written in response to College Board prompts, as well as to complete many informal writing exercises. Students will also conduct research, work on grammar and style, and learn to analyze the rhetorical strategies in visual texts and in non-fiction writing from many disciplines and historical periods.
ENG05141S1
Speculative Fiction (CL)
Prerequisite: None
Credit: 1 credit
Offered: Spring
Speculative Fiction will engage with prevailing questions of society, identity, history and technology through the lens of science fiction, fantasy, horror and other genres. It will explore how literature uses provocative premises to engage in thought experiments and social critique. It will focus on key topics which will be addressed through a sequence of works, emphasizing comparative analysis and a variety of perspectives. Throughout the class we will engage in discussion and debate about the daily readings and their subject matter, produce analytical work about the material, and develop our own speculative topics which reflect the experiences and concerns which are most relevant to us.
Electives: English Quarter Courses
ENG05118
The Short Story (CL)
Prerequisite: None
Credit: .5 credit
Offered: Quarter 3
The short story is sometimes an under-appreciated art form. Within the space of a few pages, an author must weave a story that is compelling, create characters readers care about and drive the story to its ultimate conclusion. This short story quarter course will include many of the best short story writers of all time, authors who have mastered the art of the short story, turning condensed pieces into memorable works of literature. Students will read, analyze, and discuss short stories written in English or famous works that have been translated into English including major authors such as Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Cather, Ellison, Hughes, Hemingway, Faulkner, Anderson, O’Conner, Salinger, Vonnegut, Munro, Mansfield, Erdrich, Alexie, Conrad, Joyce, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Borges, Garcia, Kafka, and many more.
ENG05143
Game Studies & Design (CL)
Prerequisite: None
Credit: .5 credit
Offered: Quarter 4
As old as history and as new as the latest release, games have played an outsized role in human culture. The advent of digital games has led to an explosion of artistic experimentation and a competitive industry. This course will introduce students to the academic field of game studies, providing an opportunity to think deeply about games and how they function in contemporary culture. It will also encourage students to become active participants in that culture. Students may pursue one of two tracks: a critical track and a design track, with critical students performing scholarly analysis, and design students working to develop a prototype game.
This course is counted as an Academy elective course.
HUM02999
Writing Lab (CP)
Prerequisite: Teacher Recommendation
Credit: .5 credit
Offered: Quarter 1 or 2
This course emphasizes essential structural and stylistic elements of composition, especially the formulation of a thesis statement, development of a theme and argument, and relevant use of logic, detail, textual illustration, and persuasive language. Issues of clarity, grammar, and form will be incorporated. This course does not count as an English credit but may be used for elective credit.