AP Literature

Riverside High School

Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition Syllabus

Spring 2023


Teacher: April Harmon Classroom: J-108 Phone: 355-7867

Email: aaharmon@greenville.k12.sc.us Planning: 4th block Class period: 3rd block


*Major Works Covered in AP Literature:

  • How to Read Novels Like a Professor (Thomas Foster): Thomas C. Foster—the sage and scholar who ingeniously led readers through the fascinating symbolic codes of great literature in his first book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor—now examines the grammar of the popular novel. Exploring how authors' choices about structure—point of view, narrative voice, first page, chapter construction, character emblems, and narrative (dis)continuity—create meaning and a special literary language, How to Read Novels Like a Professor shares the keys to this language with readers who want to get more insight, more understanding, and more pleasure from their reading.

  • Othello (William Shakespeare): In Othello, Shakespeare creates a powerful drama of a marriage that begins with fascination (between the exotic Moor Othello and the Venetian lady Desdemona), with elopement, and with intense mutual devotion and that ends precipitately with jealous rage and violent deaths. He sets this story in the romantic world of the Mediterranean, moving the action from Venice to the island of Cyprus and giving it an even more exotic coloring with stories of Othello's African past.

  • Long Day’s Journey into Night (Eugene O’Neill) Long Day's Journey Into Night is the story of one devastating day in the Tyrone family. The play is autobiographical, and O'Neill draws his drug-addicted mother, his close-fisted father, his drunken and degenerate elder brother, and his tormented self, with terrifying veracity.

  • The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway): The quintessential novel of the Lost Generation, The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta) is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

  • Fences (August Wilson): The protagonist of Fences (part of Wilson's ten-part Pittsburgh Cycle plays), Troy Maxson, is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be to survive. Troy Maxson has gone through life in an America where to be proud and black is to face pressures that could crush a man, body and soul. But the 1950s are yielding to the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s, a spirit that is changing the world Troy Maxson has learned to deal with the only way he can, a spirit that is making him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and less.

  • Everything I Never Told You (Celeste Ng): So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos.

  • A Gathering of Old Men (Ernest Gaines) “Set on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s, A Gathering of Old Men is a powerful depiction of racial tensions arising over the death of a Cajun farmer at the hands of a black man. Building to a climax that is as stunning as it is inevitable, [the novel] powerfully describes the racial tensions in 1970s Louisiana.”

  • Counting Descent (Clint Smith): "Clint Smith's debut poetry collection, Counting Descent, is a coming-of-age story that seeks to complicate our conception of lineage and tradition. Smith explores the cognitive dissonance that results from belonging to a community that unapologetically celebrates black humanity while living in a world that often renders blackness a caricature of fear. His poems move fluidly across personal and political histories, all the while reflecting on the social construction of our lived experiences. Smith brings the reader on a powerful journey forcing us to reflect on all that we learn growing up, and all that we seek to unlearn moving forward."

  • Dystopian unit (student choice)

*Summaries are taken from goodreads.com

Course Description:

This course will prepare you for not only the AP exam but also for the rigors of collegiate reading and writing assignments. While the emphasis for the course will be on close reading and articulate writing, we will also consider various critical approaches, literary theories, and look for universal themes, characters, and narrative structures. Our study of novels and plays determines in large part the structure of the course.

Grading

Student progress is assessed over each nine week period. Student progress is reported as a grade based on the Greenville County grading scale:

100-90% = A 89-80% = B 79-70% = C 69-60% = D 59-0% = F

Major Assignments Minor Assignments

Essays/Tests..............................40% Quizzes and other assignments……..30%

Booknotes..................................20% Socratic Seminar………….…….…….10%

(LA quizzes will count ½ of a quiz)


While I certainly want you to perform well on the AP exam, my greater concern is that you grow as a reader, writer, and thinker. To that end, I will ask you to perform independent research, discuss in Socratic Seminar, and write a critical essay for each novel assigned. I will be available to address any questions that may arise from your reading, and I will help you to organize and synthesize your thoughts before essay assignments, but I am placing the responsibility of reading, responding, and researching independently upon you. I look forward to working with you this year, and I hope it will be a successful one.

Late Work

You are expected to turn all assignments in on time. Late work will be deducted 20 points per day.