The department’s major goals include developing students’ abilities to express themselves with clarity and power in a variety of genres, read literature with sensitivity and understanding, and think critically.
Students write frequently. Short papers include personal responses, essays, dialogues, journal entries, short stories, and poems. Longer writing may include literary analysis, critical studies, extended fiction, or personal narrative. Among the many ways of responding to literature, Putney focuses on two: 1) writing analyses that show the evidence of thought that is clear, bold, cogent, and original, and 2) writing “in kind”-that is, writing poems, plays, stories, and essays.
Readings range from the canonic to the contemporary and roam over a wide landscape of cultures and voices both in English and in translation. Most genres are represented, including novels, short stories, essays, poetry, plays, graphic novels, and film.
At the same time, another aim of the department is to help students perceive the pleasures and meet the challenges of a literary text on many levels, paying close attention to language, imagery, argument, and idea. Classes are taught seminar-style. Lecture is rare. Class participation is essential as students try out their ideas aloud.
English Courses
Introduction to Literary Forms • English 9 (full credit)
Intended as an introduction to critical and creative writing and to literary genres at the high school level, Introduction to Literary Forms explores deliberately eclectic reading (ranging from Sophocles and Shakespeare to Alice Walker and Sherman Alexie) to stimulate discussion and model writing. Personal and creative responses, as well as writing in kind, are emphasized, though the elements of analytic writing are introduced and practiced. Development of seminar skills and study habits is a focus all year.
Composition: Forms of the Essay & Foundations of Literary Analysis • English 10 (full credit)
The first trimester is specifically devoted to writing many varieties of nonfiction, from short summaries, descriptions, and comparisons to longer analyses, arguments, profiles, and narratives. Reading is primarily a model and inspiration for student writing. This course approaches writing as a multi-step process that includes prewriting, drafting and revision. Articulating a sharply focused thesis, developing a coherent argument, incorporating detail effectively, and using figurative language consciously, students learn to be deliberate and creative in all written work.
The second trimester allows students to continue developing their voices as writers, moving from the personal to the analytical. Readings include plays, novels, short stories, and poetry by such authors as Shakespeare, Ibsen, Tim O’Brien, Gabriel García Marquéz, Chinua Achebe, Margaret Atwood, Mary Shelley, Voltaire, Marjane Satrapi, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde. Students are introduced to skills of literary analysis and develop their analytical voices through writing essays in response to the reading.
American Studies Requirement
These courses combine the previous courses United States History and American Literature to provide richer exploration of American society, politics, and culture.
American Studies Grade 11 (1.5 credits)
This course is a three-trimester (year long) interdisciplinary course that takes on the fundamental question: “What does it mean to be an American?” The course is arranged around a series of thematic explorations including: nature and the wilderness; democracy and American political thought; class identity and formation; race, ethnicity and identity; consumerism and American economic growth. Courses are taught by teachers in both the English and History departments and readings from both disciplines provide the essential backdrop for dynamic class discussion and exploration. Finally, students are expected to design their own thematic unit of study as a final assignment in the class. Fundamental skills of independent thought, reading for meaning, oral expression, and creative as well as analytical writing are central to the class.
Writing and Research: Humanities Thesis (half credit)
This course will meet for one trimester and is taught by members of the English and History departments. The primary goal of this course is to introduce students to research methods and to help with the writing of a significant research paper of the student’s choosing. We will focus on thesis development, interpretation, analysis, rhetoric and rhetorical devices, synthesis and acquiring some breadth of cultural perspective. This course is designed for juniors but is a required course for all students, including new seniors or students who have taken US History elsewhere and may not have completed a research/writing component in previous History courses
English 12 Electives
Electives in English offer in-depth examination of a theme, genre, or area. Seniors are challenged to take leadership in class discussion, to write original essays that are both logical and imaginative, and to pursue independent projects. Students are expected to develop a clear sense of voice in their written work and to revise their work thoughtfully and creatively. Some time is set aside in each course for writing personal narrative, in part to complement the college application process.
Modernism and Modernity
We will focus on the literature and culture of the mid-19th century-1930s in America and Europe. We’ll consider changes in technology, cultural organization, literature, architecture and film and investigate the ways in which these changes influenced the position of women, the organization of time and labor, and the human relationship with the natural world. Authors and films may include Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Virgina Woolf, Jean Toomer, Sunrise (Murnau 1927), Modern Times (Chaplin 1936), plus selections from modernist magazines.
Space, Place, and Trauma: Post-Katrina Media
We will look at the depiction and interpretation of New Orleans and grapple with how artists and journalists have processed the profound physical, psychic, and cultural trauma enacted by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Possible texts include: David Eggers’ Zeitoun, Spike Lee’s documentary, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006), David Simon’s HBO series Treme (2010-2011), Trouble the Water (Deal and Lessen 2008), and other poems, essays and music composed in Katrina’s aftermath.
Existentialism (half credit)
While difficult to define, “Existentialism” generally refers to a mode or way of relating to life, science, art, and philosophy. More specifically, it refers to a group of nineteenth and twentieth century thinkers, mostly European, who emphasized human being’s individual freedom, and the moral and creative responsibility that accompanies that freedom. This course will explore the literature, philosophy, and film of this genre. Questions that will guide our study: What does it mean to be human? How do we define ourselves, individually, as well as over and against others? What is consciousness? How should one live? What gives meaning to our lives? How do we express that meaning? Works will include literature by Camus, Kafka, Dostoevsky, O’Conner, and Wright; plays by Beckett and Sartre; the poetry of Rilke, Eliot, and Dickinson, the philosophy of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and De Beauvoir, and the films of Bergman and Teshigahara.
Contemporary World Poetry (half credit)
This class focuses on how to read and understand poetry, particularly within its cultural context. We will read poems from a wide range of cultures and time periods, with emphasis on contemporary poets. We will also write poems and provide an intelligent audience for one another’s work. Readings will include works by such poets as Czeslaw Milocz, Derek Walcott, Yehuda Amichai, Tomas Trastromer, Breyten Breytenbach, Wislawa Szymborska, and Shu Ting.
Modern Drama (half credit)
An exploration of modern and contemporary plays, with an emphasis on writers who have made important innovations. Students will use acting as a tool for interpretation and will also write both analytic essays and scenes. Playwrights may include Anton Chekhov, Samuel Beckett, Bertoldt Brecht, Eugene O’Neill, Harold Pinter,David Mamet, Tom Stoppard, Wendy Wasserstein, Eugene Ionesco, Tony Kushner, Ntzoke Shange and others.
Creative Writing: Poetry, Prose and Creative Non-Fiction (half credit)
Students write daily in this course, experimenting in genres that may include poetry, short story, microfiction, plays, and creative non-fiction. Study includes readings in each genre as models with emphasis on learning craft. Students produce multiple drafts of pieces in most genres, focusing on the process of revising their creative work and culminating in a portfolio.
Philosophical Themes in Literature (half credit)
This course examines literature that raises fundamental philosophical questions about meaning, metaphysics, the nature of knowledge, and ethics. Emphasis will be on close contextual exegesis and critical thinking. Authors may include Thucydides, Plato, Sophocles, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Dickinson, Tolstoy, Hesse, Kafka, Camus, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Salinger, Simone de Beauvoir, Richard Wright, Flannery O’ Connor, Wallace Stevens, and Cormac McCarthy.
Feminist Perspectives in Literature (half credit)
This course will combine a study of influential and iconic women’s writing, feminist theory, and historical context to help students understand the call and response for the woman’s voice in our literary world. We will read classic, subversive, and enduring women’s literature and trace the emerging and evolving subjects, themes, and formal innovations to explore the goals and strategies of women writers in the 19th and 20th century. Authors and theorists may include: Gertrude Stein, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Flannery O’Connor, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, and Helen Cixous.
Indigenous Voices (half credit)
Winston Churchill claimed that “history is written by the victors” which can only mean that it’s partial and incomplete. The objective of this course is to explore the writings of various indigenous people from North, Central and South America so as to learn, firsthand, the thoughts and emotions of those who have been historically disenfranchised. We will read novels and testimonies written by people of different indigenous heritages and glean what we can from their unique experiences and insights. The goal is to make a sincere effort at getting a full and genuine picture of the American (hemispheric) experience. We will read works by Jorge Icaza, Rigoberta Menchú, and N. Scott Momoday.
