Students read literary and informational texts which use rhetoric to advance a point of view or purpose. Students understand the differences between argument, persuasion, and propaganda based on how authors use rhetoric to advance their perspective or purpose and the impact of rhetoric on the reader/listener. Students then express their understanding by evaluating the effectiveness of the unit texts and writing their own speech using rhetorical devices.

Texts:

• “What is Rhetoric?” by Gideon O. Burton
• They Say, I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein
• Silent Spring (Chapter One: “A Fable for Tomorrow”) by Rachel Carson
• WWII Propaganda Posters from the WWII Museum
• Common Sense (Excerpt) by Thomas Paine
• “Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation” by Franklin D. Roosevelt
• “Address to Congress on Women’s Suffrage” by Carrie Chapman Catt
• The Jungle (Chapter 14) by Upton Sinclair
• Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (Video Excerpt) by American Experience from PBS Learning Media
• “Ethos, Pathos, Logos” (Video) by Krista Price

Through the study of various fictional works and literary criticism, students read literary and informational texts to understand the style and characteristics of “magical realism” and the interconnections of texts over time and space. Students express their understanding by examining how authors transform source material and how literature can reveal “real human truth” and be used as a vehicle for social commentary.

Texts:

• The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
• Leaf Storm and Other Stories (“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Complete Poems 1927-1979 (“Sestina”) by Elizabeth Bishop
• “Nothing but Death” by Pablo Neruda
• “Ode to Sadness” by Pablo Neruda
• “Lecture on the Metamorphosis” (Introduction) by Vladimir Nabakov
• Roots by Frida Kahlo
• Metamorphoses (“The Transformation of Arachne into a Spider”) by Ovid
• Old Greek Stories: “The Horse and the Olive” (“Choosing a Name”) by James Baldwin
• “Magical Realism is Still Realism” (Video) by Salmon Rushdie

Students read literary and informational texts about ambition and failure. Students understand that conflicts serve as the basis of a text’s meaning and that identifying the internal and external conflicts of a story reveals the motivations of complex characters. They express their understanding of how characters advance a plot and develop a theme and how literature reflects real-life situations in which conflicting motivations propel humans to act in different ways.

Texts:

• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• Great Performances: Macbeth (Video) by Rupert Goold
• The Folger Shakespeare Library edition of Macbeth (“Reading Shakespeare’s Language”) by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine
• “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by Wiliam Carlos Williams
• “Murderer, King, and Scot, All Rolled Into One Madman: Alan Cumming in ‘Macbeth’ at Lincoln Center Festival” by Charles Isherwood
• “Musee des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden
• Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers (Painting) by Jonathan Fuseli
• Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (Painting) by Pieter Bruegel
• Metamorphoses “The Story of Daedalus and Icarus” by Ovid
• Excerpts from Oedipus Rex (Lines 1032 - 1078 and 1423 - 1462) by Sophocles
• “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Poetics (Section 2, Part XIII) by Aristotle

TEDTalk: Are We Really in Control of Our Own Decisions? (Video) by Dan Ariely