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Academics Curriculum 2008-09

English

The mastery of verbal skills is a lifetime task, so as students move from grade to grade at NMH, the aims of the English courses they take remain essentially the same. At every level, students study poetry, prose, fiction and nonfiction, and drama. They write many personal and expository papers and participate actively in group discussions. As students advance, the literature studied becomes more demanding, and writing gradually shifts from the personal toward the analytical. At each level, however, the same skills are developed: reading and listening with discrimination, sensibility, and appreciation; writing with precision and clarity; and speaking with honest conviction. Click here for graduation requirements in English.

Core Courses for Ninth Graders and Sophomores
ENG 111  Humanities I: Ninth-Grade English
One credit. Required of all ninth graders except those enrolled in the ESL program. Prerequisite: None.
This course, which covers the basic skills of effective reading, writing, thinking, and speaking, is an integral part of the required Humanities I: Environmental Perspectives program for ninth graders.

ENG 211  Sophomore English: World Literature
One credit. Required of all sophomores except those enrolled in the ESL program. Prerequisite: None.
This course seeks to develop skills for critical reading through discussion and writing about drama, fiction, and poetry. Writing assignments move from an exploration of the personal voice toward a more objective voice, with the goal of preparing students for the junior-level focus on literary analysis. Texts by writers from different nations, cultures, and historical periods are intended to cultivate each student’s appreciation for the richness and diversity of world literature.

Core Courses for Juniors
Upper-level students must take at least one full-credit English course each year. All returning and new juniors must take ENG 311 or ENG 311LM .

ENG 311  American Literature
One credit. Open to juniors. Prerequisites: Ninth-grade and sophomore English.
In American Literature, students continue to develop the reading and writing skills that are the center and focus of all NMH English courses. Students differentiate between personal reactions to a text and objective analysis, focusing on an author’s intention and point of view. Students read, discuss, and write about works by authors such as Cather, Fitzgerald, Hawthorne, Morrison, O’Connor, Twain, and Whitman. The course examines particularly American themes, traditions, and voices. Writing assignments emphasize the use of evidence in clear, coherent writing, which includes personal and analytical essays. Fulfills junior-year English requirement. Juniors may elect the linked alternative.

Core Courses for Seniors and Postgraduates
Upper-level students must take at least one full-credit English course each year. All seniors must take either ENG 401, ENG 441, ENG 442, ENG 443, ENG 444, ENG 445, ENG 511, ENG 512, or one of the International Studies electives that receives senior English credit. Postgraduates must take either ENG 413 or ENG 419 and ENG 420.

ENG 401  Intensive Introduction to Literature and Composition in English
One credit. Open to seniors who are moving from English as a Second Language to the English program for the first time. Prerequisite: Screening process.
This course is designed to reinforce the oral, writing, and reading skills of seniors who are new to the NMH English program. The course encompasses both language workshops and the study of college-level English literature.

Senior English (ENG 441, ENG 442, ENG 443, ENG 444, ENG 445)
Seniors may fulfill the English credit by selecting one of the following five electives, all of which involve ample reading and writing:

ENG 441  Senior English: Ancient Epic
One credit. Prerequisite: None.
In this course students read the three great epics of the classical world: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Vergil’s Aeneid in sequence. These three poems, which describe the Trojan War and its aftermath, stand at the core of Western literature and have provided inspiration to authors, artists, and readers throughout the ages. Students will explore how Vergil uses Greek Homer as the basis for his Roman view of the world and discuss the poets’ presentations of the great themes of war, fate, heroism, the gods, the afterlife, leadership, and the relation between men and women. Students will research and present topics of their own choosing that relate to the works of their themes.

ENG 442  Senior English: Creative Nonfiction
One credit. Prerequisite: None.
This course will involve both reading and writing of nonfiction, including personal essays, memoirs, autobiographies, and reviews. We will both examine and imitate the creative techniques used to craft good writing. Texts might include anthologies such as the Best American Essays series or Best Sports Writing series; masterpieces such as Capote’s In Cold Blood or Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own; contemporary works such as Gould’s Wonderful Life, King’s On Writing, Postman’s Technopoly, Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, or Fadiman’s Ex Libris; and perhaps a magazine subscription to the New Yorker or Harper’s.

ENG 443  Senior English: Images Of War
One credit. Prerequisite: None.
What kinds of observations and depictions of war organized and intentional violence, spurred whether through politics, ethnicity, religious beliefs, competing economic interests or mere contrariness have poetry, the epic, drama, prose narratives long and short, and various kinds of essays offered over the centuries? What have been the grim glories and bitter shams of such recurrent, large-scale violence? The study of war offers a plethora of likely titles: Homer’s Iliad, Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida and the Henry IV plays, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Whitman’s Specimen Days, Ford’s Goodbye to All That and The Good Soldier, a smattering of WW I poets and Housman’s “The Shropshire Lad,” Helprin’s A Soldier of the Great War, Silone’s Bread and Wine, Shaw’s Heartbreak House, Caputo’s A Rumor of War, O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, Lessing’s The Good Terrorist, Updike’s Terrorist, just to name a few.

ENG 444  Senior English: Modern Comparative Literature
One credit. Prerequisite: None.
Does life imitate art or does art imitate life? This course examines the ways that writers both anticipate and react to the increasingly chaotic twentieth century, explores the idea of the modern psyche in conflict with itself, and examines the relationship between form and content in art. Students will begin with nineteenth century fiction by Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoevsky, then move on to modern writers such as Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and J.M. Coetzee. Later in the semester, students will read and study drama, exploring a similar set of ideas expressed in a different art form. They will start with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, then move through Anton Chekhov and Luigi Pirandello to more contemporary playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, David Mamet, Suzan Lori Parks, Margaret Edson, and Tony Kushner. Written work consists of regular critical essays, some of a comparative nature, with occasional creative pieces and personal essays as well.

ENG 445  Senior English: Survey of Western Drama
One credit. Prerequisite: None.
A course devoted exclusively to a methodical study of European and North American drama with a consideration of the influence culture (mythology, politics, aesthetic theory, economics, history, religion, and technology) has had on both the writing of drama and the production of theater. This course lends itself to a chronological format with stops along the way such as these: Ancient Greek tragedy and comedy, Roman closet drama, Medieval Mystery and Morality Plays, Elizabethan drama excluding Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Restoration Drama (English), French Comedy of the Renaissance, Romanticism (Polish, German, American), Ibsen and Realism (Russian, English), American Realism, Theater of the Absurd (French, German, English), Broadway Drama (1940s-1970s), Political Action Drama (street theater, African-American, “issues drama”). Writing will emphasize analysis, periodical reviews, and some attempt at script adaptation. Also, there will be major emphasis on terminology (theater, art history, technical, and literary genre).

ENG 413  Postgraduate English
One credit. Prerequisite: None.
This course offers postgraduates extensive practice in writing, reading, and speaking. The teachers of this course recognize the varied backgrounds of postgraduate students and adjust assignments, discussions, and study techniques to fit the students’ needs as they move toward a standard of reading and writing commensurate with college-level work. This course also provides postgraduates with a unifying experience; it is the one class they all have in common, and it is designed particularly for them. Studied in recent years are works by Baldwin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky.

ENG 419  Postgraduate English I
(This course must be taken in conjunction with ENG 420)
One credit. Prerequisite: None.
Postgraduates who need or want an additional semester of English are encouraged to take this course combined with ENG 420. Students enrolled in the two-semester sequence will receive more graduated development and extended practice of skills in writing, reading, speaking, and thinking. Whereas students in both courses will be expected to read good literature, write essays, and participate in class discussion, students in the two-semester course will write increasingly analytical papers, read more complex literature (fiction and nonfiction), and have opportunities for independent projects, such as studying a second work by an author read in the first semester.

ENG 420  Postgraduate English II
(Two semesters with ENG 419)
One credit. Prerequisite: ENG 419.
During the second semester of this two-semester course for postgraduates, students gain more practice in a variety of essay formats, including analysis, exposition, persuasion, and extended narratives. The reading assignments are more challenging, and the essays more complex. Students assume more responsibility for the seminar discussions and have opportunities to pursue their own interests in independent projects. Studied in recent years are works by Joyce, Faulkner, and Atwood.

ENG 511  Advanced Placement Literature and Composition
One credit. Prerequisite: Placement is based on screening process.
This demanding course, both qualitatively and quantitatively, is designed for students who wish to demonstrate their aptitude for reading and writing at the college level. The following are some of the works that have been studied in recent years: Shakespeare’s Hamlet and King Lear; Austen’s Emma; Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse; Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Crime and Punishment; Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss; Lawrence’s The Rainbow; Gordimer’s July’s People; Barth’s The Floating Opera; Updike’s The Centaur; Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces; and a wide variety of poetry.

ENG 512  Advanced Placement English Language
One credit. Prerequisite: Placement is based on screening process.
A course in advanced writing and reading, AP English Language aims to strengthen the essay skills of strong writers. Attention is devoted to finding and developing thesis sentences, to supporting the thesis, to arranging the parts of the whole, and to constructing effective sentences. Students will write exposition, analysis, argument, and satire. They will study the history and development of English prose since the Middle Ages, learning carefully to describe and to imitate earlier styles. Longer works recently read are The Merchant of Venice, Gulliver’s Travels, Heart of Darkness, A Passage to India, To the Lighthouse, and All the Pretty Horses. As well, students will read a number of essays, including Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” and Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.”

Elective Courses
These courses may not be used to fulfill the graduation requirement in English. Availability of courses is dependent upon interest.

Elective Course for Ninth Graders Only
ENG 112  Ninth-Grade Writing
Half credit. Prerequisite: None.
This course is designed to prepare ninth graders for the rigors of high school academic writing. It will cover prewriting techniques including freewriting, outlining, mapping, and reporters’ questions, and it will stress the fundamentals of essay writing. Emphasis will fall on personal as opposed to analytical essays, but the goal of the course is to teach ninth graders what essays can and should accomplish. Teachers will take care to attend to the grammatical and mechanical needs of individual students. The use of word processing is a secondary benefit of this course.

Elective Courses for Students in All Grades
ENG 212  Creative Writing
Half credit. Prerequisite: None. Course may be repeated by permission.
This course is designed to provide students with the opportunity to explore and experiment with different forms of creative writing, including fiction, poetry, and personal essays. By midterm, students focus on a single area, producing by the end of semester a collection, manuscript, or portfolio for assessment.

ENG 213  Speech and Oral Interpretation
Half credit. Prerequisite: None.
This practical experience in various speaking roles includes some drill work in diction, enunciation, pitch, tone, and phrasing, as well as participation in a variety of formal and informal situations, such as a teaching presentation, public speaking, reading aloud, and discussion, with variously sized audiences. Training in listening techniques, speech evaluation, and critique writing is provided. Students make a formal individual presentation to a larger audience at the end of the semester.

ENG 214  Newswriting
Half credit. Prerequisite: None.
An introduction to writing for newspapers. Students will learn the principles, skills, ethics, and law of news reporting and writing. They will practice news gathering, interviewing, writing, editing, and proofreading. The writing they will do covers the broad spectrum of traditional news writing: straight news stories, features, editorials, sports writing, and commentary. The course is recommended for those interested in writing for The Bridge or for those interested in developing a clear and effective writing style. Students are required to produce writing for school publications. Work for the course includes reading and studying the daily New York Times or Boston Globe. Some attention will be given to writing for magazines and for the Internet.

Elective Courses for Juniors, Seniors, and Postgraduates
ENG 313  The Harlem Renaissance
Half credit. Prerequisite: None.
Students in this course study works by the African American writers and poets of the Harlem Renaissance, including Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and James Baldwin. In addition, they explore the music, art, and theater of this movement, and they prepare presentations.

ENG 322  Shakespeare
Half credit. Prerequisite: None.
This course, modeled on a seminar, includes the close study of usually three of Shakespeare’s works: history (e.g., Richard III), tragedy (e.g., King Lear), and a romance (e.g., Cymbeline). Students also read selected sonnets, rounding out an awareness of the range and depth of this great playwright and poet. Students receive instruction on theater production and history, Elizabethan ways, medieval philosophy, and literary genre theory. In the last weeks, each student prepares a paper and presentation on some aspect of Shakespeare’s life, work, theater, or world.

ENG 333  Dante’s Inferno (Not offered in 2008-09)
Half credit. Prerequisite: None.
Students read Dante’s Inferno closely to learn the moral system he uses to structure his Hell, see the poem’s relation to other (especially Homer’s and Vergil’s) trips to the underworld, and experience Dante’s wonderful poetry. Such a reading would show how a poet from one culture (Italian Catholicism) adapts a common pagan classical motif of the trip to the afterworld to express his own distinct and powerful vision.

ENG 336  Writing Nonfiction
Half credit. Prerequisite: None.
This course is designed to provide students of all abilities with essay-writing instruction in nonfiction. Students will focus on developing skills of invention, arrangement, style, and usage. Assignments consist primarily of essays and may include description, narration, exposition, argument, persuasion, comparison and contrast, literary analysis, and reflection. The texts used will include memoirs, essays, biographies, commentaries, and opinion pieces.

ENG 400  Satire and Film
One credit. Seniors only. Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor. Does not fulfill the senior English requirement.
The course focuses on the study of film, especially satire, and the process of making a film, from concept through script, storyboard, the editing-room floor, and onto the silver screen. The class will make a film as the final project. Films studied include Day for Night; Brazil; Wag the Dog; Run, Lola, Run; plus documentaries on films, filmmakers, and the making of film. Books used include The Moviegoer, The Encyclopedia of Film, and The Oxbow Incident (and attendant short film).

ENG/HIS 4  Humans on the Edge: Natural Disasters and the Human Response (Not offered in 2008-09)
Three credits: One credit each in English and history, half credit in International Communications (INT 100), and half credit in a related discipline. Application process.
An integrated class taught collaboratively by English, history, and religious studies teachers. The course seeks to more deeply understand the human condition by studying it in the context of natural disasters. Key questions of the class include:
• What is a natural disaster?
• How do stories communicate meaning?
• How should we inhabit the places we live?
• What role does environment play in the human experience?
Participants will comparatively study the history and literature of local, national, and international natural disasters to better understand the complex roles that economics, politics, race, and landscape play in determining the forms of individual natural disasters.   

Senior Seminar Courses
See page 17.