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English 11

American Literature                              Downloadable/Google Drive Syllabus

Mrs. Alcala

Room 111

Phone: 928-634-7531 Ext. 1111

Email: jalcala@muhs.com

American Literature

In this course, students will explore the different facets and genres contained in American Literature, as well as focus and hone skills in Rhetorical Analysis. Some of the literary genres included in this class are as follows:

-         Beginnings/Colonialism/Puritans

-         Enlightenment

-         Romanticism

-         Realism

-         Moderns

-         Contemporary 

With each time period alongside the growth of American Literature, we will explore a mix of fiction, nonfiction, informational texts, historic documents, and poetry.  Throughout the course of these units, students will read, write, create, present, and most of all learn and grow.

Here are just some of the texts that we will be reading this year:

- Native American Creation Stories

- Various works by Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson

- The Cask of the Amontillado and Mask of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe 

- Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

- The Crucible by Arthur Miller

- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

- A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

- 1984 by George Orwell

Essential Questions for this Course:

-         What is an American?

-         How does literature create conceptions of the American experience and American identity?

-         What are the distinctive voices and styles in American literature? 

-         How do social and political issues influence the American canon?

-         What characteristics of a literary work have made it influential over time?

-         What can we learn today from American literature classics?

-         How will we shape the future of American literature?