Volume 5
2025-2026
Embedded Files
Advanced Topics in Literary Studies
This year, we interviewed Dr. Dickerson, who is one of the Advanced Topics teachers, asking her about what the class is about and what the purpose of these papers is. Advanced Topics is a very unique course in which students who love the humanities spend the semester learning how to conduct in-depth research papers focusing on varying topics such as literature, film, media, and literary theory. Dr Dickerson described an emphasis on authenticity within the course and the research papers, pushing students to choose something they are truly passionate about or curious about and forcing them to think for themselves. Dr Dickerson asserts, “We are trying to allow students to really research something they are passionate about, it could even be about something that there is no research on.” Advanced Topics research papers emphasize authenticity in passion and curiosity that results in a deeply extensive research paper, highlighting the student-driven narrative that makes the AT course unique.
Gold Rush
A dynamic, interdisciplinary course, Gold Rush explores the uniquely American evolution of “place” through rural, urban, and digitally-set narratives told in a variety of modalities. With the "get-rich-quick" mentality of the historic 19th-century gold rush as their philosophical foundation, students in this course consider the many American "frontiers" in which perceived lawlessness and ethical shortcomings forge a mythology of economic possibility that growing cities and recent technologies amplify. From the American west to the cosmopolitan and the digital, Gold Rush analyzes the enduring allure of schemes that emerge within the market and the moral contexts of each era.
American Literature
American Lit is not simply a survey but rather a mosaic of American letters, from the antebellum period to the Jazz Age. Students in this course adeptly apply critical lenses and engage in deep scholarly inquiry as they make connections across space and time. Historical and biographical elements feature prominently into the analytical work of this course. As a result, student writing leans into contextualization and lived experience as the foundation for how literature both shapes and reflects the American experience.
African American Literature
A dynamic, chronological course, African American Literature explores the vital evolution of writing as a central instrument in the long fight for freedom, equality, and self-definition. Anchored in the foundational works of figures like Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, this course examines the shifting modalities of Black expression across changing eras and social circumstances. From the dawn of the republic to the twenty-first century, African American Literature interrogates how the written word navigates the complex intersection of artistic innovation and democratic struggle.
Humanities Independent Research Teams and Independent Study
World History
Students in World History 9 and 10 have opportunities to hone their research skills through both independent and class-based projects. The World History 10 research paper is the hallmark of sophomore year work in the department. Months-worth of scaffolded instruction includes information literacy, topic construction, source selection and analysis, and argument construction. That work is foregrounded in freshman year with exposure to primary and secondary sources and instruction in analytical approaches. Especially ambitious Form III students undertake independent analytical work by composing original pieces specifically for Parker Road.
English 9 and 10
Students in English 9 and 10 develop the ability to read closely and use language in original and persuasive ways. By their sophomore year, students in Form IV learn to analyze text by applying critical lenses to works of literature, discovering how each lens, from formalism to feminism, opens the text to new ways of seeing.
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