Open to Sixth and Fifth Formers and taught above the AP level.  This course explores the concept of “passing” – when one hides his or her identity in respect to, for example, race, religious affiliation, gender identity, sexuality, and socio-economic status. The course will ask such questions as- What does it mean when one lives a life of passing? What are the underlying factors that prevent an individual from showing up as himself or herself? Is passing about coping or about escaping? How do these narratives help us better understand ourselves? What does it take for individuals to be their true selves? Students will explore how identity is shaped, concealed, and revealed.

Open to Sixth and Fifth Formers. A New York Times article in 1998 posited that “Queer Theory,” a growing academic discourse championed by Judith Butler and Eve Sedgwick (among others), was beginning to enter mainstream US literary culture. Since then, queer theory has expanded further into universities, the public domain, and politics, shedding its 19th-century connotation as a derogatory term along the way. Centrally, queer theory prompts us to question the ways in which societies have created and regulated categories of “normal” and “abnormal” in terms of sexuality, identity, and more.  This course will examine both its critical foundations—drawing on some of the writings of Butler, Sedgwick, Michel Foucault, Jack Halberstam, and others—and its transformative role in reading literature and other texts with which we interact regularly. Course readings might include works by Alison Bechdel, Oscar Wilde, Alice Walker, Andrew Sean Greer, Patricia Highsmith, Jeanette Winterson, Audre Lorde, and more, and students can expect 2-3 papers, reading responses, and a presentation.

Open to Sixth Formers. Expository Writing is a required course that focuses on the personal essay. Students read  a range of published essays and serve as readers and editors of their classmates’ work. Students typically produce four essays, which they revise extensively with the help of their teacher and peers. The course emphasizes the role of revision in the writing process and the deep relationship between good thinking and good writing.

Open to Sixth and Fifth Formers. The plan is to read three of her great novels (most likely Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Persuasion) and watch an effective film version of one of these texts. Class discussions, presentations, and writing assignments will ask students to examine why these novels continue to fascinate readers, why a film adaptation can (or cannot) do justice to the text, and why these narratives continue to speak to issues that matter to us today. We won’t, I’m afraid, be able to pull off a field trip to her birthplace in England, but we will do all that we can to immerse ourselves in Austen’s extraordinary world of brilliant writing, incisive social commentary, and timeless matters of the heart and mind.

Open to Sixth and Fifth Formers. Despite Isabel Allende’s prediction in 2009 that magical realism was no longer vigente [prevalent], the commercial success of Coco (2017)—with a sequel set for 2022 after the first installment earned close to a billion dollars worldwide—and the popularity of TV shows like Jane the Virgin, Mozart in the Jungle, and others suggest that contemporary audiences are still drawn to the mode’s narrative potential. This course will explore some of the literary and cultural roots of magical realism, in which the quotidian is combined with the fantastical, a narrative alchemy that prompts readers to question reality, identity, and more. We will study novels, poems, art, and movies from Central and South America in an effort to better understand the significance of its “magical” elements, examining the degree to which it reveals a deeper structure that is at once political, revolutionary, and philosophical. Course readings will include Allende’s The House of the Spirits and different stories and excerpts from a range of authors (Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Gabriela Mistral, Mario Vargas Llosa, and diverse others). Students can expect at least 2-3 papers, regular reading responses, and a presentation.

Open to Sixth and Fifth Formers. This course will examine the Gothic genre and its various tropes (e.g. removed castles, mental illness, ghosts, abduction, murder, the sublime, the uncanny, and more). We will start with some excerpts of Gothic literature from the 18th and 19th century, then trace its tendrils as it continues to reappear again and again in literature, art, and pop culture. The villains and settings depicted in these various texts can tell us about the fears of the cultures/people we will explore—from being buried alive to fear of the Other—which will open our discussions to topics of race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability/disability. This class will draw on novels, short stories, and poetry from a range of authors, including Horace Walpole, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Richard Wright, David Hoon Kim, H.P. Lovecraft, Florence Marryat, and Tracey Baptiste. We will also look to short comics like Junji Ito’s “The Enigma of Amigara Fault” and television/film clips from series like True Blood, Penny Dreadful, and American Horror Story. In writing assignments that will likely include two to three papers, students will consider how Gothic themes and conventions in literature reflect the people creating and reading it.

Open to Sixth and Fifth Formers. What is Native American literature? How do we distinguish "authentic" representation from stereotypes? In this course, you will read a number of works by Native American authors, including novels, short fiction, poetry, myths, and non-fiction. You'll read There There by Tommy Orange (Cheyenne/Arapaho) and poetry by Simon Ortiz (Acoma Pueblo), Luci Tapahonso (Navajo), Joy Harjo (Muskogee), and Ofelia Zepeda (Tohono O'odham), among others. You'll also read short fiction and non-fiction by authors such as Zitkala-Sa (Yankton Sioux), Vine Deloria (Standing Rock Sioux), and N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa). You'll be introduced to traditional trickster and origin stories, and you'll watch at least one film, Reel Injuns, a documentary that explores the portrayal of Native Americans in movies. The writing for this course will consist of a reader's response journal on a novel, a personal narrative related to one or more of your ancestors, and poems focused on place and identity.

Open to Sixth and Fifth Formers. As an introduction to the art of writing for the stage, this course will encourage students to create their own one act plays while developing an understanding of structure, character and motivation. Students will produce a series of written assignments, each of which will emphasize a particular aspect of the playwright's art, such as developing conflict, believable dialogue, and thematic ideas. The class participates in the Massachusetts Young Playwright's Festival. Particularly successful plays may be produced in the One Act Play Festival. Students may take the course more than once.

Open to Sixth and Fifth Formers. In this course, we will turn our critical lens to the moving image and “read” and write on a variety of seminal films. We will study the cultural and social impact of film on 20th century thought, learn the specific language of film, read film theory, and examine the filmmaker’s use of literary devices such as symbolism, narrative viewpoint, foreshadowing as they move from the page to the screen. In our study, we will explore the work of influential national and international, as well as classic and contemporary, directors or“auteurs,” such as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Vittorio di Sica, Francois Truffaut, Francis Ford Coppola, Jane Campion, Kathryn Bigelow, Jordan Peele, Alfonso Cuaron, and Bong Joon-Ho amongst others. Assessments will be in the form of papers (shot by shot analysis, critical readings of films); the final assessment will be "Anatomy of a Scene'' from a film of your choice.

Open to Sixth and Fifth Formers. Writers from the American South after the Civil War seem to possess a unique sense of the past that colors their creative genius; consequently, their literature is populated by characters that make indelible impressions in our hearts. In this course we will read the fiction of writers such as Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner and consider the burdens and beauties of this rich literary tradition.

Open to Sixth and Fifth Formers. T.S. Eliot’s modernist masterpiece, The Waste Land, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the twentieth century. Woven through the poem are allusions to texts that span across time, such as Dante’s The Divine Comedy, the legend of the Holy Grail, Shakespeare’s plays, art, popular song lyrics, Eastern and Western philosophy, the Bible, and the Upanishads. By studying excerpts from these texts, students will explore the way in which Eliot’s intertextuality transformed the way poetry was written. Students will spend the last weeks of the course on a writing project where they will write their own poem, in imitation of Eliot, using material from their own lives (books, songs, film, art, etc.) as sources of inspiration.

Third Form English strengthens students’ ability to read and write with confidence and precision, as well as to listen carefully and participate respectfully during class discussions. Additionally, students work to craft their own interpretations of the readings. Writing assignments help deepen students’ understanding of the texts and strengthen their analytical skills. Class work consistently stresses clarity of expression and effective organization of ideas. Continuing from their work in the Second Form, students study grammar and mechanics to provide a common vocabulary with which to talk about writing with teachers and peers. By the end of Third Form, students should understand the basic structure of an essay and be increasingly adept at providing evidence to support their thinking. All Third Form students read Oedipus the King, a Shakespearean comedy, and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Open to Sixth and Fifth Formers. In this course students will have the chance to study the lives and works of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. While their styles and sensibilities differ greatly, these poets each bring to life aspects of New England life, scenery, and attitudes in the poetic worlds they create. This course will not be offered in 2014-15.

Open to Sixth and Fifth Formers. In “Lines Written in Early Spring” (1798), William Wordsworth reflects on the connection between nature and humans: “To her fair works did Nature link / The human soul that through me ran; / And much it grieved my heart to think / What man has made of man.” Wordsworth ponders why, with so much power to shape the earth, humans fail to protect nature (and each other). In this course, we will explore authors who probe the complicated relationship between humans and the earth, sometimes imagining a world where humans so drastically alter the lived environment that it becomes an uninhabitable dystopian space. We will peruse texts from authors like Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Atwood, Shel Silverstein, William Wordsworth, J.R.R. Tolkien, Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Kolbert, Linda Hogan, Octavia Butler, Jeff VanderMeer, Allen Ginsberg, Ursula Le Guin, and Cormac McCarthy. We will consider different ways to contextualize the readings historically, culturally, and theoretically by examining texts like FDR’s policies to create national parks, Greta Thunberg’s speech to the UN, contemporary films like Avengers: Endgame, and excerpts about ecocriticism and animal studies. Students will contemplate the immediacy of these texts in light of new scientific projections of the planet’s viability through writing assignments.