exam page

Exam review is attached below ("Am Lit review 2018"). Please read and bring questions. Keep in mind that for all essays on the exam, you must write about the novels, poems, speeches, etc. as a whole (rather than excerpting a piece of them and disregarding "inconvenient" facts). For example, if you are writing about The Great Gatsby you have to keep in mind that Gatsby dies, that he does not end up with Daisy, etc.

Here are the supplemental pieces you can choose from for the exam:

Lesson Before Dying : read/listen to/watch at least one of the following before book groups on Friday): Bryan Stevenson's TED Talk (1/2 hour), Michelle Alexander on Jim Crow and prisons (35 minutes). C-Span: "The History of Capital Punishment." Caught is a podcast series about the juvenile justice system now, Choose any of the first three episodes to listen to (scroll down on the page to find the first three - each is about 1/2 hour long), Here's the poem "When I Think About Tamir Rice While Driving" (scroll down on that page) to hear a reading and brief discussion of the poem). This is a terrific conversation about reform with a conservative and a liberal listening to each other, disagreeing respectfully and finding common ground (both men have served time in prison). "I,Too" + "A Small, Needful Fact" (attached).

My Antonia: Here's Thoreau's chapter "Sounds" from Walden - in many ways, it makes me think about the sense of beauty and place in My Antonia and his discussion of the railroad makes me think differently about the fact that Jim ends up at the railroad. Here's a piece about immigration in Nebraska in the 1900s, "Shirt" by Robert Pinsky (attached below) and the Poetry in America exploration of the poem (here ), "Thank You" by Ross Gay (attached below).

The Scarlet Letter: Dickinson's "I cannot dance upon my toes," and a clip of people discussing the poem), Monica Lewinsky's TED talk, "What Kind of Times Are These" (attached below)+ Emerson's Nature. Tim Rollins and K.O.S. The Scarlett Letter VI (you MUST read about the group's work as background for the art here and here).

The Hate U Give - here's Alexandra Bell's work with newspaper layout and headlines, "The One For Whom Food Is Not Enough" (attached below), here's Ta-Nehisi Coates talking about police shootings, about the destruction of black bodies, James Baldwin debates William F Buckley about whether the American Dream is at the expense of black Americans (there's a transcript with this video. Baldwin begins at 13:47), etc.