Upper School Academic Program
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provides the subject matter for tests patterned after those of the AP Language exam. Students must complete assigned summer reading before their return to school in August. Prerequisite: American Literature and Composition (A- or higher is required), (If coming from the Honors (level highly recommended), B+ or higher is required), or Western Literature and Composition, and department approval. Senior English Selections One Semester (Fall or Spring); ½ Credit The following are the senior English selections from which seniors will need to choose two to satisfy the 12th grade English requirement. They are as follows: Senior Selection: Science Fiction, Fact, and Fantasy (Fall) If you like Slaughterhouse Five, Katniss, Gryffindor, Middle Earth, The Road, the Tardis, Dune, Inferno, I am Legend, this one is for you. In a semester we will study some of the giants of science fiction and fantasy: Bradbury, Herbert, Heinlein, Asimov, Rowling, Tolkien, and others. Through literature, television, and film, we will look at science fiction and fantasy: where it comes from, where it is now, and where it takes us. Be students on fire. Potential works: (print and film) Stranger in a Strange Land, Dune, Hunger Games, Lord of the Rings, 2001: a Space Odyssey, The Road, Harry Potter, Doctor Who,Brave New World, the Left Hand Of Darkness, Brazil, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Twelve Monkeys, and more. Senior Selection: The Arts of War (Spring) “War, said he, was the best subject of all. It offered maximum material combined with maximum action. Everything was speeded up and the writer who had participated in a war gained such a mass of experience as he would normally have to wait a lifetime to get.” –Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Poets, writers, playwrights, filmmakers and painters all seem drawn to war. In this course, we will look at poems, novels, short stories, films, and essays: all about or inspired by the subject of war. From this we will learn about war, our world, each other, and ourselves. Potential works: (print and film): The Iliad, Troy, Henry V, Full Metal Jacket, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Das Boot, All Quiet on the Western Front, A Farewell to Arms, Regeneration,The Sun Also Rises,, Platoon, Saving Private Ryan, Johnny Got his Gun, The Red Badge of Courage, Ran, Breaker Morant, Midway, The Caine Mutiny, and more. Senior Selection: Literature of the City (Spring) What is it that fascinates writers, artists, and thinkers about the city? What started as physical centers for business, production, and residency quickly evolve into settings of imagination, myth, aspirations, and horror. Much more than concrete and brick towers, cavernous streets, and urban planning, cities rapidly become thriving symbols of what unites and defines a people, while simultaneously adding to the fragmentation of the definition of the “human experience.” This course will explore a single city, in literature, film, and art, thereby allowing students to reflect upon the forces that help create and perpetuate the role it plays in the global conscious. Interested students may then participate in a site-visit/travel-study to the studied city during Spring Break. Senior Selection: From Page to Stage (Fall and Spring) Have you ever written a play? Ever attempted it? This course will give aspiring writers the opportunity to create a play, have it read and then revised over several drafts, work with actors and a director and finally stage it before a live audience. This will be a process-oriented course which will introduce young playwrights to the traditional elements of Aristotelian drama and current theories and plays by authors as diverse as Samuel Beckett and David Mamet. By studying plays from early Greek Drama to the latest contemporary works, students will have a firmer understanding of how to structure their own work and get it ready for Opening Night! Senior Selection: Humor, Satire and Memoir (Fall)