JUNIOR ENGLISH
Established Goals:
The course is designed to develop skills that will enable the students to explore chronologically the
evolution of American literature from pre-Columbian times through the age of immigration and to the
present day of fifth or sixth generation Americans. Thematically, junior English focuses on the
American Dream — perceived, pursued, achieved, deferred, and denied — throughout history. Toward
that end, the students will read works of lasting human value and write analytical and persuasive papers
addressing the literature and particular theme they have studied.
Understandings:
Students will understand that
1) because literature grows out of culture, any study of literature must be contextualized by
concurrent history;
2) American literature is a reflection of the nation’s values and multi-ethnic and multi-cultural
complexity;
3) American literature is a mode of expressing dissent — stylistically, socially, and politically;
4) the American Dream is a multi-faceted concept which embraces the dream perceived,
pursued, achieved, deferred, and denied;
5) a diverse population is a strength and defines the United States;
6) the individual is responsible to maintain and assert personal integrity — even at great
personal risk;
7) to work toward a just society (or more perfect union), the individual must confront the moral
issues of contemporary times;
8) strong written and oral expression allows the individual to be an effective participant in
democracy.
Essential Questions:
1) What is American culture?
2) How does culture influence identity and the choices we make?
3) What is the American Dream?
4) Is the American Dream a myth or reality? Is it achievable for everyone in the same way?
5) What tensions attended the integration of Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants,
women, and other historically marginalized groups into the cultural fabric of American life?
6) How are slavery and the legacy of race relations the “original sin” of American society?
7) How has the integration of Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants, women, and
other historically marginalized groups strengthened the nation?
8) What is the role of the individual in society in responding to the issues of the time?
Core Literature Units:
1) Setting the Context
2) Pre-Columbian Native American Indians (pre-1400)
3) The Puritan “City on a Hill” (1700)
4) The American Renaissance: Go West! (1850)
5) Slavery, War, and Freedom
6) Recovering Lost Voices (1890 – 1910)
7) The Jazz Age (the 1920s)
8) The Dream Deferred (1930 – 1940)
9) Society and the Individual: The Beat Generation (1950 – 1970)
10) One Nation: Many Voices (1980 – present)
Core Literature:
Summer Reading:
Ragtime (E.L. Doctorow)
Flight (Sherman Alexie)
Core Textbook:
Literature of the United States: Chronicling the Quest for the American Dream
(SI English Department)
Core Novels / Drama:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Native Son (Richard Wright)
The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne) or
The Crucible (Arthur Miller)
The Awakening (Kate Chopin) or
A Pair of Silk Stockings and Other Stories (Kate Chopin)
In Our Time (Ernest Hemingway)
Bank Novels / Drama:
1000 Pieces of Gold (RuthAnne Lum McCunn)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tennessee Williams)
Core Short Stories & Fictional Pieces:
“Navajo Origin Legend” (Navajo Tribe)
“The Walum Olum” (Delaware Tribe)
“The Yellow Wallpaper” (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)
Core Non-Fiction Pieces:
“Crazy for This Democracy” (Zora Neale Hurston)
“Expelling Huck Finn” (Nat Henthoff)
“Fish Cheeks” (Amy Tan)
“Hellfire” (Michael Small)
“I Dreaded December 7” (Ken Mochizuki)
“The Iroquois Constitution”
“My Bondage and My Freedom” (Fredrick Douglass)
“Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass” (Fredrick Douglass)
“On Civil Disobedience” (Henry David Thoreau)
“Self-Reliance” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
“To Be Remembered in the Immigration Debates: They Are Us” (Pete Hamill)
Core Poems:
“America” (Claude McKay)
“Ballad of the Landlord” (Langston Hughes)
“Christ Climbed Down” (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)
“Howl” (Allen Ginsberg)
“I Hear America Singing” (Walt Whitman)
“I, Too” (Langston Hughes)
“If We Must Die” (Claude McKay)
“Mother to Son” (Langston Hughes)
“Prospective Immigrants Please Note” (Adrienne Rich)
“A Supermarket in California” (Allen Ginsberg)
“Sympathy” (Paul Laurence Dunbar)
“To Walt Whitman” (Angela de Hoyos)
“Verses Upon the Burning of Our House” (Anne Bradstreet)
“White House” (Claude McKay)
Additional Pieces for Honors Level (English 303H):
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (T.S. Eliot)
“On the Rainy River” (Tim O’Brien)
“That Evening Sun” (William Faulkner)
“The Third and Final Continent” (Jhumpa Lahiri)
Core Writing:
Reflecting upon and discussing literature and writing about it are intricately bound together, and the
writing experience will include opportunities for presenting logical arguments in a variety of modes.
Core Writing Modes:
Analytical Essay
Argumentation Essay
Comparison-Contrast Essay
5 Paragraph Essay
On-Demand/ Timed-Writing Pieces
Recognizing and using rhetorical devices
Synthesis Essay
Avoiding 5 Key Errors
2. Pre-Columbian Native American Indians (pre-1400)
3. The Puritan “City on a Hill” (1700) (Pierre)
Essential Questions
1. What compels an individual OR when is an individual obligated to stand up
against society?
2. What are the effects of fear and hysteria upon a society?
3. What arises when politics and religion intersect?
4. What drives individuals and a community to conformity?
5. How do Puritan ideals continue to shape America? How does the past inform
the present and vice versa?
6. Can a work of art foster social awareness and change?
7. How is the “Scarlet Letter” alive today? What is the “Scarlet Letter” of our
time? Who are the targets of modern day “witch hunts”?
Essential Understandings
1. The social milieu can strongly influence an individual’s decisions and it is the
individual’s responsibility to challenge the status quo
2. Literature reveals timeless truths that transcend the historical period in
which it was created
3. Puritanism and the notion of a “city on a hill” are tied to America’s identity
Texts: The Crucible, Arthur Miller
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Anne Hutchison
Anne Bradstreet
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Jonathan Edwarsds
“
4. The American Renaissance: Go West! (1850)
(Nora)
Enduring Understandings
1. Romanticism is a movement that values the freedom of the individual, nature,
trust in imagination, and faith in child-like innocence. It is a direct reaction to the
Age of Reason.
2. Transcendentalism is an American perspective and philosophy that
demonstrates that matters of God transcend the human experience.
Transcendentalism values belief in the perfectibility and goodness of the
individual, anti-materialism, and the oversoul (power of goodness from which all
things come and all things are part of)
3. Anti-transcendentalism demonstrates spiritual forces aren’t always positive,
that humans are at heart insane, evil, or corrupt.
4. Protest movements such as call for suffrage for women and freedom for slaves
are rooted in the American Romantic movement and religious tradition.
5. Paradoxically, the call for American Manifest Destiny, while it helps Americans
pursue individual freedoms, displaces and wrongs Native Americans.
Enduring Questions:
1. What is the call of the individual in society?
2. Where can one find God in our world, particularly in nature?
3. What is the responsibility of the American citizen to protest unjust laws and
immorality in society?
4. What unites Americans if we are all speaking different languages, hail from
different countries, live in vastly different regions, urban vs. rural, north vs.
south, east vs. west?
Knowlege/Skills
Essays, poetry, novel, Speeches, etc
5. Slavery, War and Freedom
(Paul)
Essential Questions:
1. How have attitudes towards racism evolved, changed or remained the same over
the years?
2. Should books be banned or censored due to language or content? If not, why? If
so, can they still effectively convey in their messages?
3. Is satire an effective tool to bring about social awareness?
4. How is a “journey” essential to discovering one’s true self?
5. Does society/culture affect and change a person’s natural tendency for good?
6. What can we learn from a realistic view of slavery? What are the effects of
slavery on the enslaved?
Enduring Understandings:
1. Race, class, gender, and education can determine a person’s access to
opportunities.
2. Understanding the time, setting, and context of a literary work is essential to
understanding the philosophy and themes explored and to broadening our own
viewpoints and world-view.
3. It is important not only to recognize historic social injustice (including racism),
but also to recognize it in our own time, name it “bad,” and act to address the
modern injustices and the moral challenges we confront.
4. Authors have many literary tools to effectively convey their messages and incite
their readers to action.
6. Recovering Lost Voices (1890-1910)
7 The Jazz Age (1920s)
Enduring Understandings:
1. Literature grows out of culture
2. WWI spawned the Lost Generation which differed radically from the previous
generation.
3. American ideals of hope, faith and optimism turn to despair and disillusionment
4. American literature changes in form and function to address modernity
5. Despite the positive connotations of the Roaring ‘20s, not everyone enjoyed high
standards of living or equal opportunity.
Essential Questions:
1. How does the literature of the Jazz Age address the theme of the American Dream?
2. How did modernism contribute to the feeling of isolation and disillusionment in
early twentieth century America?
3. What is literary Modernism?
4. What major social shifts characterize the Jazz Age?
5. What tensions emerge between the quest for social change and the tug of old
fashioned values and order?
8. The Dream Deferred (1930-1940) (Elizabeth)
Enduring Understandings
1. Literature grows out of culture
2. Literature responds to the social and political issues of the time
3. Minorities systematically have been excluded from the traditional American
literature canon and from the US history books, resulting in an incomplete picture of
the United States
4. Any discussion of American literature or history must include traditionally
excluded
populations
5. Injustice must be met by reasoned dissent
6. The growth of the nation by its definition will include “growing pains”
7. Ignatian education demands that those with power and knowledge take a
leadership role to right societal wrongs
Essential Questions
1. When is it appropriate/essential to challenge authority?
2. What are the parameters of citizenship?
3. How can oppressed people achieve freedom and equality?
4. Why and how does the northern migration and rise of slums and ghettos
exacerbate income and social inequality and what is the result for individuals and
for the nation?
5. What connections can be made between racism and nationalism of the 1930s -1940s
in the United States and the same issues in the 21st century?
6. What is the responsibility of the “haves” to address the inequities of society that
adversely
impact the “have nots”?
9. Society vs. the Individual (1950-1970)
- The Beat Generation
1. Literature grows out of culture.
2. Literature (the Beat Generation) challenges society’s views of normalcy and
creativity.
3. The Beat Generation knew the traditional literary “rules” and broke them on
purpose in order to be authentic and unique in their exp ression.
4. The Beat Generation recognized and brought attention to society’s outsiders and
nontraditional schools of thought.
1. What is subculture and how does it challenge societal norms?
2. How does a person convey one’s “authentic self”?
3. How do we respond to the harsh realities of the world around us?
4. How do we recognize those who are marginalized in
5. How did the Beat Generation both acknowledge and defy literary traditions?
6. Who/What determines the cultural significance of literary works?
7. How did prior artistic and philosophical movements, such as Transcendentalism,
Realism, and Modernism, influence the Beat Generation?
10. One Nation: Many Voices (1980-present)