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Upper School English
High school English study involves five areas: literature, composition, speech, vocabulary, and grammar. In literature, the basic objective is to develop the student's pleasure and ability in reading both intensively and extensively. There is special emphasis placed upon the skills necessary for interpretive reading and intelligent discussion, familiarity with the various literary genres, and recognition of the important roles of action, characterization, theme, and style. In composition, students are urged to develop their creative and analytical powers and their knowledge of clear organization and expression by frequent experience in narrative, descriptive, and expository writing. In grades 9 through 12, papers become increasingly longer and more analytical. In speech, the aim is for students to communicate effectively in formal and informal speaking situations. In vocabulary, the goals are understanding of the word-making processes in our language, sensitivity to connotations of words, proficiency in spelling, and the ability to use contextual clues to determine word meaning. To this end, in all classes vocabulary is studied in the context of the literature. In grammar, the systematic aspects of our language are studied in order to help students write themes that are grammatically correct and interesting in sentence structure, to speak correctly, and to use their understanding of grammar fundamentals in the study of a foreign language.
Starting in grade 9, grammar study emphasizes matters of usage and stresses the application of grammatical concepts to composition. Formal grammar study is also available as an elective.
The English department encourages highly motivated and able juniors and seniors to take the Advanced Placement examination in English literature and composition. The MVS curriculum has offered a strong program in the general background of literature, in critical reading, and in critical writing. MVS students have studied important and demanding literature throughout the high school program, examining both content and technique. The majority of the students have taken additional courses in English beyond those required. For these reasons many student have the preparation to successfully complete the AP examination.
English 9 Full year
(Grade 9 required)
Ninth grade English is designed to acquaint the student with the various literary forms and the ways in which a writer and/or literary critique might respond to these forms. The course, “Art of the Essay” will ask the students to brush up on their grammar, expand their vocabulary, and become writers capable of writing complex and informed essays. “Art of the Essay” will emphasize close reading, as well as the creation and revision of several types of essay forms that will include the analytical essay, the argument essay, the expository essay, and the personal essay. The Writers’ Presence, an anthology of essays from well-known writers, will introduce students to the various types of essays and will compel them to write their own essays that boast a similar maturity. Students will be introduced to various teacher expectations—what will their future MVS instructors and college professors require?—and they will be asked to study at least three major literary works that explore the theme of coming of age: Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and Golding’s Lord of the Flies. In addition to literature study, students will be expected to grow in both the areas of vocabulary and grammar, and will consult appropriate texts to facilitate this development. Students will also have the opportunity to express themselves in the form of poems, short stories, and one-act plays. The concept of peer revision and the writing process is introduced at this level and heavily emphasized with the goal of familiarizing students with this method so they might recap its rewards throughout their high school writing career.
World Literature - Two trimesters (fall & winter)
(Grade 10 required)
By investigating the concepts of community and individuality and how they influence a person's definition of identity English 10 advances the theme of personal introspection explored in ninth grade "Coming of Age" literature. The tenth grade English course could aptly be named “The Quest,” as it focuses on the necessary journeys one must take in order to fully define self in terms of one’s individual setting and his/her greater community. The course seeks to grant the student a means and methodology to analyze and comprehend the ways communities affect his/her life, the perspective from which he/she views others, and his/her tolerance of peoples holding views dissimilar to the student's own. Reading works authored by writers of diverse cultures, especially those which address the concerns of conflicting cultures, conformity with or isolation from communities, and rebellion within communities, the sophomore gains the opportunity to comprehend the powerful influence his/her own communities exert upon him/her and his/her notions of the people and world outside these communities. Some of the works to be read include: Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, and Mishima’s The Sound of Waves. The course will loosely move from genre to genre, starting with the short story, moving through novels, into plays, through poetry, and returning to the novel. Composition assignments will stress analytical thinking. Several assignments focus closely on explication of text, so that a difficult passage can be explored thoroughly. Grammar is addressed in an "on demand fashion," responding to class weaknesses and misunderstandings as they become evident in the course of the writing process and literary discussion. Vocabulary is actively and consistently addressed drawing words both from the texts and from SAT prep lists.
Speech I: Introduction to Public Speaking - Trimester
(Grade 10 required)
This course is designed to enhance the student's ability to communicate effectively. Through frequent practice the student will develop poise and confidence in formal and informal speaking situations. Demonstration speeches, speeches to inform, and speeches to entertain will provide opportunities to master fundamentals of pubic speaking, to develop and organize ideas, and to make clear and lively presentations of these ideas. Other activities will include impromptu speaking, interpretative reading, miming, role-playing, story telling, and learning to evaluate critically speeches of others. A carefully planned and executed final project will be required.
American Authors - Two Trimesters (fall & winter)
(Grade 11 required)
This two-term course focuses on those major writers from 1640 to the present who have had an impact on the American literary and cultural tradition. It examines the forces of Puritanism, Transcendentalism, and the development of the American frontier in light of this influence. Readings represent a range of genres, including poetry, drama, essay, short story, and novel, and include works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, and others; poetry from Anne Bradstreet through Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman; representative 20th century drama. The literature will provide opportunities for written expression, including critical analysis as well as occasional creative writing assignments or reflective journal pieces.
Classical English Literature - Two Trimesters (fall &
winter)
(Grade 12 required)
Classical English Literature, a two-term course for seniors, introduces students to the literature of England from its earliest recorded writings to the Neoclassical period. Students will study the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, poetic forms including early ballads, lyrical poetry, and sonnets, and selected works of Chaucer, Marlowe, Shakespeare, John Donne, and the Metaphysical poets, before examining selected 17th and early 18th century writings of Sidney, Spenser, Milton and Swift. A variety of analytical and creative writing exercises will support students' reading and written expression, and background historical material will help them place the literature in appropriate context. An emphasis on the development of language through its written history and an opportunity to examine a variety of genres and tonal distinctions such as that of satire will give students an appreciation of the richness of written and oral English expression.
*Grades 10-12 must take one elective spring term
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT ELECTIVES (trimester)
Not all electives are available in the same school year. Each year the
department identifies those to be offered.
The Rhythm and Color of Language
Instructor: Richard Braithwaite
The course is recommended for rising juniors and seniors as an English elective. Weaving our way through Yeats, Neruda, Joyce, Shakespeare, Whitman, Eliot, Cormac McCarthy, Faulkner, Hemingway, Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, William Carlos Williams, Lorca, and other novelists, poets, playwrights, and short story writers, we will attempt to explore the relationship between the rhythms and the colors of language. How does language transcend Newtonian rules of finite definition, pushing the envelopes of artistic expression and meaning? Are we to champion the beauty of Faulknerian ramble? The economy of Hemingway? The color of Lorca? Raw Whitman, soft, precise W.C. Williams, thundering Shakespeare? Though there will not be an extremely heavy reading load in terms of pages, the reading will be dense and students should be prepared to be challenged. Will be offered first trimester.
Contact Improvisation
Instructor: Richard Braithwaite
This course is recommended for rising juniors and seniors as a fine arts elective. Sophomores are welcome, but a level of maturity and self awareness, both physically and mentally, is requisite. This dance form starts from a simple focus, the giving and receiving of weight. Contact Improvisation is improvisational, modern dance focused on contact with another human, the floor, the wall, or even one's self. Through meditation, body work, and simple dances we will begin to define the floor space as sacred, as well as our relationship to the dance floor and our classmates. That space and everything it embodies will be taken very seriously. Students who have taken the course have reacted in various ways to what we do, but the ubiquitous response is this: During the daily grind of tests, classes, sports, work, etc., we often begin to feel tense and "not good." When you enter the contact improvisation classroom for the day, stressed, carefree, whatever, you will walk away feeling "good." You will be smiling when you leave, and the aim of the course is that your smile will indicate, to be overly romantic, a transcendence of body, mind, spirit. A past student wrote: "Lying there, taken out of context of time and the familiar, I am at once alone and completely connected. The intimacy is overwhelming so much that it frees me, and in this space we fleet seamlessly between being and nothingness. I feel myself stronger and more clearly than I have in months." Students who have previously taken the course are welcome to act as teaching assistants, helping me through the course, and any student interested in really waking up, every day, is encouraged to take the course. Will be offered second trimester.
Grammar and Writing Workshop
Language Development seeks to review basic grammar and composition rules
while offering students the opportunity to explore new grammar and composition
rules. A great deal of emphasis will be placed on punctuation, capitalization,
and correct usage. Latin and Greek roots, prefixes, and suffixes will
be reviewed and utilized in vocabulary practice. Students will be allowed
to pursue levels of writing equal to or slightly above their individual
level.
Mass Communication: Media
Our daily lives are greatly influenced by the media. This course will
explore and inquiring/discovery program the print and electronic media.
Television programs, newspaper, magazines, videos, and movies will be
analyzed, criticized, and evaluated in light of their real and perceived
power over the public. This course in an effort to help students.
Journalism
Instructor: Dr. Barb Cleary
This course offers basic instruction in interviewing and researching stories
as well as writing news, features, editorials, and headlines. Its emphasis
is on developing skills of written expression within the context of journalism.
For example, students will have occasional in-class extemporaneous writing
exercises to develop quick responses to news information, and they will
be encouraged to revise their stories repeatedly. The course will offer
opportunities to apply basic rules of design to page layouts and to pursue
specialized areas such as in-depth news analysis, sports writing, or graphic
design technologies to respond to a variety of student needs and interests.
The course can be adapted to fit the needs of beginning, intermediate,
or advanced students of journalism.
Modern Drama
We will read one to two plays a week. Beginning with Chekhov, we will
look at early modern theater, move through several Irish playwrights,
including O'Casey and Synge, and finish with a study of theater in the
70's to the present with Shaffer, Williams, Shepard, Stoppard, Albee,
Frayn, Friel, Reza, and McDonagh. We will watch several film adaptations
of these plays and will attend productions in Dayton.
Gender and the American Literary Tradition
In her poem "Prologue," American poet Anne Bradstreet concedes
that despite the fact that she has written a volume of poetry, "Men
can do best, and women know it well." In his bardic poem "Song
of Myself," Walt Whitman proclaims: "I am the poet of the woman
same as the man, and I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man."
This course examines the complexity of American literary themes and their
relation to gender identity. Also, through our examination of literature,
we will explore the impact of gender roles as indicated in the texts.
Spring Electives: A student in grades, 10, 11, 12 MUST choose one of
the following to complete full year of required English.
Romantic and Victorian Poetry
Students will discuss the poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Tennyson,
etc. in a seminar setting. Each student will write a journal of original
poetry, imitating the styles of various poets from these two literary
periods. A critical essay with some research, focusing on a poet selected
by the student will also be required from each student.
Major British Works
Students will read The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Picture of Dorian Gray,
1984, and Look Back in Anger, Dickens' unfinished mystery offers the students
the opportunity to be creative. Each will write the final two chapters
of the story. A critical essay will complete the study of Wilde. Students
will work in pairs to create an exam with the "perfect" answers
for Orwell. John Osborne's play offers the students the opportunity to
display their oral interpretation skills during dramatic in-class readings/performances.
Creative Writing
Students will have the opportunity to write an original play or movie
script. This elective course will utilize a workshop concept. Each student
will actively participate in every aspect of the preparation of the project.
Students will create a detailed character history, develop a multilevel
plot, draw costumes for the characters, incorporate all stage directions,
draw the stage with all its props scaled to our stage, and add appropriate
music where necessary. This course offers students a great opportunity
to utilize a variety of their talents in one major project
Gender Studies
A team-taught course in gender studies will provide a grounding in the
mythology of gender, through a study of images that represent a variety
of cultures and by means of an examination of folk tales articulating
various myths of gender. In this trimester, students will explore relationships
through the lens of gender mythologies, including those of parent and
child (King Lear, A Thousand Acres). Images of men and women in advertising
and other mass media will be examined in the context of mythical representations
of men and women. Beverly Coyle will be a visiting lecturer during the
reading of her novel, The Kneeling Bus.
Shakespearean Tragedy
Love, death, gore, battles, mysterious omens, and terrible weather - Shakespearean
tragedy has it all. We will explore the structure and context of Elizabethan
Drama, major Shakespearean theme, and the social developments that informed
Shakespeare's art. Readings will include Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, and
Titus Andronicus.
Man in a Natural World
Where and how does the natural world intersect with the human condition?
A variety of literary works from different genres, authors, and historical
periods will be used to consider this question. In contemporary American
culture, we must often put forth effort to experience nature, while during
earlier times in our history people experienced a closer coexistence with
the natural world. And while many feel separated from the natural world,
we find in literature, both contemporary and historical, profound accounts
and metaphors rooted in nature and its workings. We will examine this
intersection through works of poetry, short stories, a novel, and memoirs.
After examining the individual experiences reflected in such works, we
will finish up with essays and excerpts from writers who will bring voice
to environmental concerns and a larger-scale perspective. Students will
reflect on their own experiences in regular journal writing, and a final
memoir project of their own.
Literature of the South
Mark Twain once said, "The person who does not read good books has
no advantage over the man who cannot read them."
Arguably, some of our most celebrated American authors, both bygone and
contemporary, hail from or wrote about the American South. In the fine
tradition of great storytellers and equally remarkable stories and characters,
this course will explore the origins and traditions, eccentricities and
distinctiveness of Southern Literature.
The course will be a blend of intensive reading, thorough discussions,
and focused inquiry through analytical and expository writing. The class
will be conducted as a seminar, relying heavily on interactive class discussion.
Assignments will include routine daily quizzes, nightly reading journal
entries, a series of 2-3 page exploratory/analytical essays, and a comprehensive
creative project in lieu of a final exam.
Great Books
Too many books, too little time. Which books or authors have you always
wanted to read yet never found the time or opportunity? This is your chance
to address this very problem! Participants' input and interest will determine
course texts. In the tradition of the Great Books Seminar approach, much
of class time will be devoted to thorough discussions, in which each class
member will be expected to actively participate in contributing to and
enriching ongoing thematic discourses. Nightly reading journals, weekly
writing assignments, and a comprehensive final project will also be essential
parts of the course. Although this class was designed for seniors,
it is open to willing juniors and sophomores with instructor's approval
Literature of Protest and Rebellion
This elective will examine the tradition of protest writing and will explore
the works of representative writers who may include Thomas Paine, Thomas
Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Evgeny Turgenev, Henrik Ibsen, John Steinbeck,
and Joseph Heller. Students will explore the techniques of persuasive
writing as well as creative expression of reactions to currents of political,
social, and economic change.
Losers
Whether it’s the memory of the spelling bee in Neil Steinberg’s essay, the fall of Vukovar in French correspondent Jean Hatzfeld’s memoir, or the failed relationships described in contemporary fiction, the characters who appear to be “losers” in love, war, or family relationships hold a special fascination. This class will introduce contemporary works that examine the role of failure, in essays, short stories, and poetry.
Adventure Literature - A Study of Leadership
This exploration of non-fiction novels focuses on how literature can convey the lessons of leadership through harrowing accounts of survival. Set in all corners of the globe, the readings will detail a classic battle of machine and man vs. nature. Class time will include an analysis of what leadership qualities engendered failure or success. Students in this class will learn about fiction-based writing, will broaden their knowledge of history, will learn about leadership, and will be captivated by these stories of struggle, determination, loss, and survival. The stories are real and only for the strong at heart!
Novel Into Film
This course will be a study of the process of adapting novels into films with the aim of understanding the narrative conventions that govern each medium, and how words on the page translate into images on the screen. After spending the term comparing novels with their film adaptations, students will be ask to select a book and film to study independent of the class selections. A presentation of their selection will serve as their final project.
Creative Writing: The Play
Students will have the opportunity to write an original play. This elective course will utilize a workshop concept. Each student will actively participate in every aspect of the preparation of the project. Students will create a detailed character history, develop a multi-level plot, draw costumes for the characters, incorporate all stage directions, draw the stage with all its props scaled to our stage, and add appropriate music where necessary. This course offers students a great opportunity to utilize a variety of their talents in one major project.
The Birth of Bazarov: Nihilism, The Absurd, and their Joint Ramifications on 21st Century Daily Breathing
Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons sires Bazarov, a passionate nihilist, whom you will either hate for the windows he opens to your own dull soul, or love, even as he expires. Camus paints a paradoxical world of human desire for meaning and human alienation in the face of a meaningless world, thus spawning “the absurd.” This course will examine nihilism and the absurd in the novel (McCarthy, Turgenev, Balzac, Conrad), in philosophy (Camus), in theater (Shaffer), in film (“American Beauty” or “Apocalypse Now”) and in poetry (Neruda, Shakespeare). Through our explorations, we will return to the question: How do we live? This course will have a fair amount of reading and writing, both analytical and self-reflective. Turgenev is amazing. The course is worth it just to get to know Bazarov… and through him yourself. This course has been brewing for years, and comes together after recent work at graduate school.
Abbey/Thoreau, Kerouac, and Ishmael Walk (Jump), Dr(J)ive, and Whale:
Hit the Road! or Antidotes to Boredom and Despair
Ever wanted to just go, to leave, to drop it all, to flee, without looking back? Have you ever truly considered the possibility of such a trip, even if it only lasts a week? Many literary characters have taken a suspended (or permanent) hiatus from the “sivilized” universe. Traveling for the sake of traveling, purely as an end in and of itself, pervades literature whenever writers live in times where people feel alienated (which is all time in all history) from their surroundings. You get woken up from your daily warm crisp shell, and want to go. Abbey (Desert Solitaire, Down the River)/Thoreau (Walden) saunter and float, Kerouac (On the Road) drives, and Ishmael (Moby Dick) whales. Why? As an antidote to all-too-well known existence. How and why does adventure crop up in our lives? Out of necessity? From intention? We will watch the recently released film of Krakauer’s Into the Wild, read several travel writers, and plan a weekend adventure. The course will be reading and writing intensive, both analytical and self-reflective.
Yes! An Exploration of Compassion through Joyce and Shakespeare
Instructor: Richard Braithwaite
Offered: Fall 2008
After taking a quick look at Joyce’s Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, we will do an overview of Homer’s The Odyssey and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. We will also look at selected Joseph Campbell. The focus of the course will be Joyce’s Ulysses. The novel is widely regarded as the single greatest work of literature of all time, and is considered unparalleled in breadth of focus and depth. The backbone of the story is relatively simple. Leopold Bloom, our Ulysses character, the novel’s wandering hero, tries not to go home. Stephen Dedalus, our Telemachus figure, seeks a father. The thousand-page novel winds through 18 chapters and 18 points-of-view, roughly based on Homer’s structure, expounds upon multiple facets of the human condition, contemplates loneliness, disconnection, joy, but is ultimately comic in nature. Through consistent journal entries and several oral essays, we will wind our way through the novel finishing with a final, large, essay.
African American Jazz-Age Poetry, Music, and Prose
Instructor: Richard Braithwaite
This course principally studies eight African American poets: Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, Rita Dove, and Yusef Komunyakaa. We will examine the uses and risks of simulating folk speech in written art, a written art based on vernacular forms and performance models such as blues forms and sermonic performances, how they aligned themselves with artistic, cultural, and social movements and, so doing, ventured definitions of the African American practices of modernism. Our discussions will engage poems by other modernist poets and converse with music and visual art by other American and African American modernists. To give a few examples: We will discuss T.S. Eliot and Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden and Philip Levine, Robert Lowell’s “For the Union Dead” and a variety of African American Civil War/Civil Rights poems, while taking a serious look at the music of masters from Sousa to Lady Day to Coltrane.
Texts: We will work principally with an anthology, The Vintage Book of African American Poetry, ed. Michael Harper and Anthony Walton (Vintage). Also required: Gwendolyn Brooks, Blacks (Third World); Rita Dove, Thomas and Beulah (Carnegie-Mellon); Robert Hayden, Collected Poems (Liveright); James Weldon Johnson, God’s Trombones (Penguin); Yusef Komunyakaa, Neon Vernacular (Wesleyan/New England). Zora Neal Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God. There will be additional materials in photocopy form.
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