HUMANITIES II 2015-2016 SUMMER READING ASSIGNMENT
GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR HUMANITIES II SUMMER READING:
ALL students must complete the Honors English 11 assignment below. ALL students must also
complete EITHER the Honors USVA history assignment OR the APUS History assignment below,
depending upon which class they are taking in September.
Questions? Contact Denise Castaldo (DCastaldo@fcps.edu) or Rebecca Schgallis
(RJSchgallis@fcps.edu)
HONORS ENGLISH 11 SUMMER READING ASSIGNMENT:
ALL students are required to read the following text:
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
Narrated by sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield, JD Salinger’s 1951 coming-of-age masterpiece,
The Catcher in the Rye, is a triumph of voice and characterization. It serves as an excellent
introduction to some themes in canonical American literature, but, more importantly, this
provocative book should get you thinking about your own values and goals, including your
approach to school, reading, writing, and education in a larger sense—Salinger’s text is all the
more immediate to the rising juniors for whom the drums of destiny and college-admission
offices beat more loudly each day.
Please be ready to discuss your reading of this text on the first day of class in September.
We’re curious to see what you noticed in terms of patterns and changes, what questions the
text raised for you, and your reactions to the text.
As you read this summer, consider taking notes and / or using post-it notes to mark specific
passages.
Please contact Denise Castaldo if you or your parents have any questions about the selection of
this text.
AP US HISTORY SUMMER READING ASSIGNMENT:
Welcome to AP US History!
To gain a better understanding of the foundations of the United States you will read
Mayflower: A Story of Community, Courage, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick and complete
the following assignment. [You may check this book out of any public library, purchase it at any
bookstore, and is also available at Amazon.com or any other reputable book selling website.]
The following assignment will begin to introduce you to the redesigned AP US history course.
The new course is based upon key concepts, specific learning objectives, and historical thinking
skills – these ideas will be emphasized throughout the course.
Mayflower covers key concept:
2.2.II - Clashes between European and American Indian social and economic values caused
changes in both cultures.
A. Continuing contact with Europeans increased the flow of trade goods and diseases
into and out of native communities, stimulating cultural and demographic changes.
Learning objectives:
Analyze the effects that migration, disease, and warfare had on the American Indian
population after contact with Europeans.
Analyze the factors behind competition, cooperation, and conflict among different
societies and social groups in North America during the colonial period.
Compare the cultural values and attitudes of different European, African American, and
native peoples in the colonial period and explain how contact affected intergroup
relationships and conflicts.
Assignment:
As you read Mayflower, annotate and take notes for the following questions. Pull specific
examples and details for each question.
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Your notes should be typed and include MLA in-text citations so that you can
easily reference information during class. For more information on MLA
citations visit https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/.
Each question should have at least a page of annotations with examples.
You will use these notes for in-class discussions/seminars and writing activities
when you return to school in September.
Question #1:
1) Analyze major changes and continuities in the social and political relationship between
the English colonists and the Native American in the period 1620 to 1700.
Question #2:
2) The arrival of Europeans, especially the English, in the Western Hemisphere during the
17th century triggered extensive demographic and social changes in what became
labeled as “New England.” Analyze the effects that ‘contact’ between the two groups
had on the American Indian be sure to include information on how conceptions of group
identity and autonomy emerged out of these cultural interactions.
Question #3:
The failure to explore the Indians’ new world helps explain, why, despite many excellent studies
of the native American past, colonial history often remains “a history of those men and
women—English, European, and African—who transformed America from a geographical
expression into a new nation.” One reason Indians generally are left out may be the apparent
inability to fit them into the new world theme, a theme that exerts a powerful hold on our
historical imagination and runs throughout our efforts to interpret American development….
[S]cholars have analyzed encounters between peoples from the Old World and conditions in
the New, studying the complex interplay between European or African cultural patterns and the
American environment. Indians crossed no ocean, peopled no faraway land. It might seem
logical to exclude them. (James H. Merrell, “The Indians’ New World,” Major Problems in
American History, Volume I: to 1877.)
3) To what extent does Mayflower’s interpretation of early New England history contribute
to the portrayal of colonial history as “a history of those men and women—English,
European, and African—who transformed America from a geographical expression into
a new nation”?
Question #4:
“In his recounting of the war, “History isn’t brain surgery. Even when it’s done poorly, it’s not
fatal. Still, it can knock you down. Philbrick rests his argument, or, rather, the arc of his plot, on
his reading of Benjamin Church. “The great mystery of this story,” Philbrick writes, “is how
America emerged from that terrible darkness of King Philip’s War to become the United
States.” The answer? Church.”
Philbrick relies extensively on a memoir written forty years after the war by Benjamin Church’s
son, Thomas. Lepore argues, “This as-told-to, after-the-fact memoir is the single most
unreliable account of one of the most well-documented wars of the Colonial period….Philbrick
uses it without reservation or caution. Like footnotes, these facts apparently got in the way of
Philbrick’s plot….In 1716, Benjamin Church, or at least his son Thomas, looked back at King
Philip’s War and decided that it was possible to be both victorious and virtuous in the kind of
war the colonists had fought against the Indians---a people at a vast technological
disadvantage, fighting a holy war, with almost nothing left to lose. But it wasn’t possible. At
least nothing in the evidence from 1675 to 1676 suggests that it was. And pretending that
Benjamin Church found “Conscience” in the woods of Plymouth in that winter of war, rather
than understanding why, forty years later, he came to wish he had, doesn’t make it any more
possible today. The ways of the Puritans are not our ways, their faith is not our faith. And their
wars are not our wars.”
(Jill Lepore, “Plymouth Rocked.” The New Yorker, April 26, 2006.)
4) Identify Lepore’s chief criticism of Mayflower. Defend, modify, or refute this critique
HONORS US/VA HISTORY SUMMER ASSIGNMENT
ALL students who are REGISTERED FOR Honors US/VA HISTORY are required to complete the
following assignment:
Summer Assignment for US/VA (Honors)
The American Dream is one of the ideals behind the development and growth of the United
States. As part of the summer assignment for the honors option for juniors (US/VA) you are
going to explore this idea.
Step one: Journal for 5-10 minutes. What comes to mind when you think of the American
Dream? What does it mean to you, if anything? This does not have to be in complete
sentences, but has to be intelligible to an outsider. Attach this to your assignment.
Step two: Obtain a copy of Jim Cullen’s The American Dream. It is widely available—checkout
the library, book store, Amazon.com and the like for copies.
Pick two out of the six chapters to read.
Step three: Read the chapters.
Step four: For each chapter:
 Explain, in a paragraph, why you picked this chapter.
 Pick two quotes from each chapter (quote Cullen; these do not just need to be passages
Cullen quotes). Copy each quote and include a page number. Beneath each quote:
A) Explain why you choose each quote. How does it “speak” to you?
B) Discuss what you think Cullen (the author) or anybody that he quotes is saying in
that passage.
C) What does the quote, if anything, say about the American Dream?
Due the first day of class (typed).