Tuesdays, 1 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. EST
Beginning September 3, 2024

• 1-½ hour classes, live and online for 2 semesters

• For college prep students, grades 10-12

• 1 English credit

• Primary Text — American Literature, Third Edition, 2016 (BJU Press)

Cost

• Audit Only — $399
  (answer keys and evaluation sheets provided to parent/educator)

• Teacher Graded — $599
  (limited number of seats available)

About This Course
This traditional chronological survey course is designed to help prepare high school upperclassmen for advanced literary study and analytical writing. Our chief goal will be to understand the literary movements that helped shape some of the most famous American texts and the ideologies they promote. We will consider historical/political events along with the religious and philosophical beliefs that influenced each author. We’ll analyze a variety of literary genres for theme, technique, style, and structure. An underlying, guiding focus will be to analyze the worldview expressed in the literature alongside a traditional Christian worldview.

In addition to active reading and critical evaluation of literature, students will work to hone their analytical writing skills through weekly guided paragraph development practice and several fully developed essays: a personal narrative, an essay test response, a thematic analysis, and a problem/solution research paper. Additionally, they will complete a creative project on symbolism and prepare individual presentations on selected poems.

Learning Objectives

• Read American works in a variety of genres.

• Read or research the historical context of a text and the author’s intent and point of view to determine how the historical context affects the interpretation of a text.

• Explore the way the sociopolitical experiences of writers influence their writing and analyze the way writing originates from and responds to the world in which the author lives.

• Explore common American themes and hero types.

• Make personal connections to a variety of texts.

• Contribute meaningfully to group discussions and recognize the importance of critical listening to produce substantive communication.

• Analyze key features of dramatic works, poems, novels, short stories, speeches, articles, etc. as well as literary techniques a writer specifically employs.

• Write a variety of responses expressing a clear thesis or opinion with solid reasoning and textual proof.

Online Participation Expectations

Students are expected to join our online class each week prepared to discuss any assigned readings. Students are further expected to take the initiative to contribute their ideas and thoughts voluntarily and not wait to be called on. CAMERAS MUST BE ON and students must be present at all times. This form of participation will be tracked and graded.

Summary Course Plan

Primary Text
American Literature, Third Edition, 2016 (BJU Press)

Unit 1: Early American Literature (Puritan Period and Federal Period)

• Various readings including excerpts from Of Plymouth Plantation, Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, Franklin’s Autobiography, Patrick Henry’s speech, etc.

• Poems by Bradstreet and Wheatley
  
  

Unit 2: Romanticism and Gothic Romanticism

• Stories by Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Stories by Edgar Allan Poe

• Writings by the Transcendentalists: Bryant, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman

• Poems by Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell, Dickinson

• The Narrative of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
  

Unit 3: Realism, Naturalism, Regionalism (Local Color)

• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (students may use The New South Edition to avoid racial epithet.)

• Stories by London, Jewett, and Bierce (Crane, if time permits)

• Poems by Robert Frost
  

Unit 4: The Jazz Age

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• The Harlem Renaissance writers
  

Unit 5: Modernism

• Stories by Hemingway and Faulkner

• The Crucible by Arthur Miller

• Poems by Eliot, Sandburg, Cummings, etc.

• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  

Unit 6: Postmodernism

• Stories by Vonnegut and O’Connor

• Poems by Bishop, Plath, Collins, etc.

• Minority Voices/Pluralism—works by Walker, Brooks, Tan, Cisneros, and others

• African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and American Indian

About the Instructor, Cindy Peyton, M.A. English

Cindy is a seasoned educator with nine years of public middle and high school teaching experience and 15 years of co-op and homeschool teaching experience. She has a B.A. in English from Messiah University and an M.A. in English from the University of Maryland, College Park. She served on an English curriculum writing team with Harford County Public Schools and designed several English courses for Crossroads Educational Co-op (Middle School Comp & Lit 2, American Lit, and World Lit) along with a scope and sequence for the 6th-12th grade English courses. She loves brainstorming with teachers and has helped numerous homeschooling parents design or improve their courses and home instruction.