Open to Sixth and Fifth Formers. In Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror, he writes that, “America is a nation peopled by the world, and we are all Americans.” However, the history of America is fraught with violence and subjugation, specifically toward marginalized groups of people. In this course, we will read a diverse group of authors whose fiction examines the interaction with and integration into American society. We will discuss the formation and erasure of identity, intergenerational conflict, and why these recurring themes of violence and subjugation continue to pervade our society today. Course readings might include works by Philip Roth, Julie Otsuka, Dinaw Mengestu, Leslie Marmon Silko, Ronald Takaki, and Arturo Islas.

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 asks 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 their own experiences with passing as the class examines how identity is shaped, concealed, and revealed. Texts may include: Passing by Nella Larson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson, We Wear the Mask 15 True Stories of Passing in America, edited by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page, and a selection of short stories.

Open to Sixth and Fifth Formers. Most of us know that Groton School was founded in 1884, but how much do we know about what the United States was actually like at that time? This spring term English elective will immerse students in some of the seminal American literature published that year (reading texts by writers such as Mark Twain, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Albery Allson Whitman), as well as in important examples of visual art (examining works by artists such as John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, and Henry O. Tanner). How did the literature and artwork produce in 1884 address the important issues and ideas that mattered to the people alive at that time? Whose voices struggled to be heard in 1884? How did writers and artists of different backgrounds and genders attempt to express some of the difficult truths of that year? This course will wrestle with these questions and provide students with the opportunity to develop—through careful, curious interdisciplinary study—a fuller, more nuanced understanding of 1884 as human beings experienced it in the United States. A visit to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts will also be scheduled later in the term.

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. In Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street, Gordon Gekko proclaims that, “Greed - for lack of a better word - is good.” Surely, the authors we love would bristle at Gekko’s dogged pursuit of financial gain. It seems that the world of literature and the world of finance are quite content to avoid acknowledging each other; authors focus on art, financiers focus on money, and there is a sense that any interaction with the other side might dilute their respective work. However, there are moments when the two worlds collide, and these texts will be the focus of our study. We will look closely at the interplay between imaginative expression and business. What is the relationship between literature and the economic world? Can literature help us to understand the impacts of capitalism and globalization? Course readings might include works by Edith Wharton, W.E.B. Du Bois, Joseph Conrad, Mohsin Hahmid, Michael Lewis, and Jane Austen.

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. In this class, we will start with some excerpts of Gothic literature from the 18th and 19th century, then trace the genre's tendrils as they continue to reappear again and again in literature, art, and pop culture. The villains and putative heroes depicted in these texts can tell us about the fears of the cultures/people we will explore, which will open our discussions to topics of race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability/disability. This class will draw on a range of authors that may include Tracey Baptiste, Ambrose Bierce, Octavia Butler, David Hoon Kim, Florence Marryat, Edgar Allan Poe, and Mary Shelley. In writing assignments that will likely include three papers, students will not only consider how the monsters in these texts reflect the fears of the people creating and reading the stories, but they will also confront the monstrosity within their own histories and narratives.

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. 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 have a vision of American life that is complex and problematic. How does this literature speak to conflicts we recognize within our country today? The harsh realities of slavery and of prejudice, of long-lasting discrimination, are part of life in the South. The writers we will read take on this topic and what it means to have the past haunt the present, from the era of the Civil War through the modern day. The authors we will study may include Mark Twain, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, and Natasha Trethewey. We will consider the burdens and beauties of this rich literary tradition. We will do a variety of writing assignments in response to the literature we read.

Open to Sixth and Fifth Formers. 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 unthinkable dystopian space. We will peruse works from authors like Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Allen Ginsberg, N.K Jemisin, Barbara Kingsolver, Ursula Le Guin, Nnedi Okorafor, and Henry David Thoreau. We will contextualize the readings historically and culturally by examining texts like FDR's policies to create national parks, Greta Thunberg's speech to the UN, and articles about ecocriticism, animal studies, and environmental racism. Students will contemplate the immediacy of these texts in light of new scientific projections of the planet's viability through writing assignments that will likely include three papers.

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. Students learn to listen carefully, participate thoughtfully, and close read texts in order to craft their own interpretations of the readings in class discussions. Teachers extend this discourse by designing writing assignments that prompt students to deepen their understanding of the texts and strengthen their analytical skills. Students work to express their written analysis more clearly by studying organization, grammar, and mechanics. By the end of Third Form, teachers will expect students to understand the basic structure of an essay and to 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.