English

American Literature 10

American Dreams, American Experiences: Tenth grade English explores literary representations of the American Dream and the American experience. The course pairs texts together from literature, art, and media to examine how lived experiences compare to dreams of America. Essential questions include: What is our definition of the American Dream and the American experience? What in our lives has informed those definitions? Who has access to the American Dream and why? What is “Americanness,” its qualities and attributes, if any? Do we all share those qualities? Given our ideas about the American Dream and the American experience, what is American literature? What concerns, themes, images, and approaches make this literature uniquely American? This course builds on the skills emphasized in English 9 – close reading, annotation, and analytical writing, among others. Throughout the course, students are expressing their views, ideas, and interpretations through a variety of channels. Writing assignments, including analytical and creative pieces, are a key mode of expression and a place for students to develop and strengthen their writing skills. One of the key goals for the year is to put the texts they read in conversation with each other for the purpose of seeing how pieces of literature, while seemingly different, actually speak to each other across themes, concerns, and questions. To explore these complex ideas, students regularly write in their Writer’s Journal, a place for them to question and examine the readings of the course and their own personal worldview.
Author Study: James Baldwin

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced,” James Baldwin wrote in his 1972 essay collection No Name in the Street. In a career as an author, activist, cultural critic, and public intellectual who traversed decades, continents, and literary genres, Baldwin left a rich legacy of writing and thinking which students explore in this author study. As the class reads and discusses Baldwin’s novels, short stories, essays, and speeches, it examines his understanding of the country and its racial past and present, how he defined an authentic selfhood against the backdrop of its racist society, and what it meant to him to face oppression and generate change. Students read Go Tell it on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, The Fire Next Time, and selections from Going to Meet the Man.
Author Study: Jhumpa Lahiri

“For surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time...to affect us and alter us, as profoundly as real people and things do” - Jhumpa Lahiri

If storytelling is magic, Jhumpa Lahiri is a master magician. One of the most internationally acclaimed writers of our time, Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize and was named by The New Yorker as one of the “20 Writers for the 21st Century.” In her essays, short stories, and novels, she has written powerfully about family, identity, immigration, alienation, and the pursuit of dreams, often through the lenses of Indian and Indian-American characters. In this class, students examine the dimensions of her characters and their stories, explore her place in the larger context of American literature, and consider the ways in which her work is essential for us, as 21st Century readers and writers.
Author Study: Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is one of the most celebrated and honored American novelists of this as well as the last century. Winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, Morrison’s artistic and political project is to give voice to the silence of the African-American experience. The focus of this course is Morrison’s major novel Beloved. This novel challenges readers to examine Morrison’s complex use of language, memory, and imagination in her exploration of Black women’s experiences under slavery. At the same time, Morrison also asks us to consider Black masculinity under enslavement as well. As part of our study, the class also reads a constellation of texts that inform this novel such as slave narratives, spirituals, modernist writing by Joyce and Faulkner, and some of her essays on writing and memory. Modern artistic and cultural explorations of enslavement are also included, such as the Alvin Ailey dance troupe’s piece “Revelations” and Kara Walker’s silhouettes. At the end of the course, students read Morrison’s Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech. Throughout the term, students write short analytical and creative pieces.
Dante's Inferno

Have you ever felt that you were in “a dark wood” where “the straightway was lost”? Have you wondered about the consequences of sin? What is hell like, in the imagination of a great poet? Dante’s "Inferno," the first part of his three-part "Divine Comedy," explores these issues and many more, such as political exile, the evils of capitalism, and the attractions of sin. In Dante’s long poem of astonishing sweep and drama, we encounter cruelty, tragedy, personal fidelity, passionate love, and heartbreaking betrayal in equal measure. This course’s trip through Dante’s underworld explores the historical setting in which Dante worked, demands a close reading of the poem itself, and draws on the many references to Dante’s great poem in contemporary music, visual arts and literature.
Detective Literature

Curiosity and the desire to know are basic human motivations. The modern invention of the detective is a key part of the search for answers. Detective fiction involves a professional or amateur investigator who tries to solve a crime. In this class students read a number of detective narratives and various other sources related to this form of storytelling, such as essays and the “rules of the game.” Like all good detectives, students use their critical thinking as they examine the clues and motives. Students make their own predictions by remembering small details, investigating circumstances that surround the crime, and recognizing literary and stylistic breadcrumbs left by different authors. Criminal motive can span a great range of things like: racial injustice, revenge, greed, class, a personal vendetta, or even the urgent need to keep a secret. This class considers how they depict the detective, the criminal, the victim, the crime, and the society; and what may these stories reveal about us and our fascination with them.
Disobey!: Literature of Resistance

When is disobedience an urgent act essential to a functioning democracy? From what wells does disobedience spring, and what are the various forms and modes it takes? In this course, students study past and present forms of civic disobedience and lyrical protest so as to better understand how to cultivate critical democracy and ethical resistance. Working from Frederic Gros’s book Disobey! A Philosophy of Resistance, students begin by exploring the roots of political obedience, social conformity, economic subjection, respect for authorities, and constitutional consensus, eventually focusing on how people across historical moments have asserted their humanity to bring about a better world. A particular focus of the class is the extent to which art—literary, visual, and performative— has intersected with activist movements and interventions, serving various political purposes: from offering imagined alternatives to current practices and ideas, to documenting and exposing injustice, to providing a dreaming-away from an unjust reality. Students examine and discuss texts, documents, visual art, and performances in which writers/thinkers/artists have represented political ideas, movements, and critiques as a means of protesting against a range of injustices. Students also explore their own capacity to ethically disobey by undertaking projects in various genres: from poetry and prose to performative/visually inclined text-based work.
Dystopian Literature

Over the years, thinkers have used dystopias — stories of worlds gone wrong, of worst-case scenarios – to warn their contemporaries about what they viewed as dangerous trends in society and challenge their readers to think critically about the world in which they occupy. This class considers a variety of historical and current “what if?” thought experiments, including classics such as 1984 and current bestsellers such as Chain Gang All Stars. Students explore the specific conditions that inspired these dystopias, the general warnings inherent in them, and the broad trends in dystopias over time.
Epistolary Meditations on Race

“You know, and I know, that this country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free,” James Baldwin wrote in a 1962 letter to his nephew. More than 50 years later, Ta-Nehisi Coates published a letter to his son, Between the World and Me, exploring what it means to be Black in America today and how to live in the kind of body his country has plundered and destroyed through centuries of violence. In this course, students read and compare Baldwin and Coates’ epistolary meditations on race. They consider the relationship between America’s racial past and present, seek to define and envision true “freedom,” examine the systemic barriers to racial justice, and interrogate their own positions as audience members for these letters. Students conclude by crafting their own epistolary meditations on an aspect of their identities.
Existentialism in Literature

Have you ever wondered: What is it to be a human being? Does God exist? What’s the meaning of life? Why does your existence matter? These are all good questions! An important 20th century intellectual movement called Existentialism tried to answer these ontological issues in a new way. The class reads writings from important thinkers in this field and looks at characters in works of literature that exhibit existential tendencies. Throughout the course, students also explore the influence existential philosophy has on art, film, song and even children’s literature.
Gender & Sexuality in Shakespeare

Elaborate, multi-layered drag performances. Constant suggestions that gender itself is fluid, unstable, and flexible. Overt expressions of queer love and lust. No, these aren’t just the contents of the most recent Netflix Original series: in fact, Shakespeare’s plays contain all this and more! In this course, students examine the Bard’s works with a focus on gender and sexuality, specifically the gender-fluid and queer aspects of these plays. What might be seen differently if seeking a radical, liberatory vision in these works? Could these plays indeed help to imagine a broader landscape of gender and sexuality, even as their oppressive and traditional aspects are acknowledged and confronted?
Genre Study: Weird Tales

Weird tales are meant to terrify the reader—or at the very least, to disrupt their trust in the reality they think they know so well. The borders of the safe and the familiar are rarely as certain as one wants to believe. These stories, sometimes referred to as ‘cosmic horror’, depict contact with beings of indescribable, galactic power. The class carefully examines the devices and language authors use to establish the backdrop for this genre. Many of these works feature a good-natured, ordinary protagonist who faces something so terrifying that they cannot comprehend its scale. Thrust into strange territory and often against impossible odds, this protagonist tackles a problem and almost always fails. This class explores how these tales reflect fear of the unknown, fascination with the supernatural and attraction to scaring ourselves. Students learn what these works tell them about literature, and what they tell them about themselves.
Immigration Literature

In this course, the class examines the experiences of those who leave or are displaced from their homes, homelands, cultures, ways of life, and identities -- some by force, some by choice. As the class reads personal essays, short stories, and poetry, it asks itself: What does it mean to be physically, emotionally, or spiritually displaced? How do individuals find belonging and connection? How can storytelling serve as a radical tool to disrupt harmful narratives? A component of the class is some community engagement and advocacy work with organizations in the city.
Intro to Black American Literature

This course focuses on the literature and culture of Black Americans through nightly reading, daily discussion, and frequent analytical and reflective writing. Via the work of Black authors, the class examines a violent and terrible past, explores a complicated present, and imagines a better future.

This is a difficult class that requires students to examine how they have been affected by and perpetuated anti-Black racism. Through looking at the Black American experience, they come to a greater understanding of the country as a whole and, along the way, consider how notions of gender, class, ability, sexuality, privilege, power, and justice have shaped America's history and their own lives.
Literature from the Asian Diaspora

The Asian diaspora is incredibly vast; depending on who is asking, “Asian” can refer to East Asians, South Asians, Southeast Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Central Asians, among so many more groups of people. This course focuses on literature written by South Asian and Southeast Asian immigrants to North America. Through close reading and analysis, the class grows its understanding of identity, community, and belonging. Students read fiction, non-fiction, essays, poetry, short stories, and graphic novels to get a sense of the multiplicity of experiences within the Asian diaspora. Class discussions are situation in an intersectional and historical framework in order to have nuanced conversations and broadened perspectives.
Literature of Graphic Novels

“With great power there must also come -- great responsibility!” Stan Lee, Amazing Fantasy 15

Comic books, graphic novels and the superhero genre encompass resonant and compelling themes that speak to all of us, from the tragedy of Spider-Man to the dark moral psychology of Batman, from the shifting national symbolism of Captain America to the norm-defying race and gender questions raised by Ms. Marvel. Through the metaphors and archetypes leaping across the pages of comics, students examine such themes as trauma, justice, patriotism, identity, race and gender, parsing psychological and social motifs that are all about the real world and how it constructs its heroes.
Literature of Shame

What does it mean to be shamed and silenced, and how have these concepts developed over the course of literature? Beginning with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, examining Suzan-Lori Parks’ In the Blood, and continuing through to contemporary times, the class examines the depth and complexity of shame as it is represented in fiction, plays, and poetry. Students discuss whose identities and voices have been shamed, silenced, and excluded throughout literature and history and how we can use this understanding to analyze the contemporary culture war over “canceling.” Via nightly reading, daily discussion, and frequent analytical, creative, and expressive writing, students hone their literary skills and their cultural criticism, engaging with difficult questions around identity, free speech, abjection, and the bounds of social acceptance.
Literature Study: Radical Joy

“Joy…floods me like the sun / On rain-drenched trees / That flash with silver and green. // I abandon myself to joy – / I laugh - I sing.” – Clarissa Scott Delaney

Sometimes it feels like despair is at the center of all the great books. But what place does joy have in literature? In this course, students explore a tradition of writers and thinkers working to illuminate the complexities of this powerful yet sometimes elusive emotion. They read texts from a variety of genres, including essays, poetry, and short stories, and ask ourselves the following questions: Where do we find joy and how do we hold on to it? How do we cultivate joy amidst suffering and injustice? Why is joy essential? What transformative and transgressive powers does it possess? How does it help individuals and communities assert their dignity and humanity? Throughout the class, students also do their own writing, centering the people, places, experiences, and wonders that bring us joy. Authors may include: Aristotle, Ross Gay, Khalil Gibran, Lisel Mueller, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Mary Oliver, Zadie Smith, Henry Thoreau, and others.
Love & Literature

What is love? A question that everyone ponders at some point yet seldom are able to collectively agree on an answer. This class is a meditation on love for all of its beauty, its complexity, and the many ways it can manifest. Students read bell hooks All About Love, Alain De Botton’s On Love, and Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red in addition to supplemental short stories and poems. Through their studies, students are forced to consider love in the context of community, politically, platonically, and romantically.
Modern & Contemp. American Poetry

While poets are notorious for disagreeing with each other, perhaps one thing they all agree on is that if you want to write poetry and/or if you want to understand poetry, you have to read a lot of it. Sounds simple enough, but reading poetry takes time and focus that we are often too busy to maintain. In this survey of American poetry, which moves relatively chronologically from the 1910’s to our contemporary moment, the class collectively explores and companions the work of a wide array of American poets from a large spread of time so as to diversely immerse itself in what a poetic “tradition” means today. In this class students pay sustained, careful attention to the characteristics and preoccupations of individual poets, poems, poetry schools, movements, and moments that fit within the American canon to better understand the way poetry at once imagines the world otherwise and subverts the status quo. Our work centers care and collaboration, and takes many forms, including: seminar-style discussions, small group discussions, a student-directed poet study project (that culminates in a class session that students are responsible for organizing and teaching), regular informal writing assignments (including writing your own poems!), at least one analytical essay. This work is supplemented by audio recordings, videos, songs, photographs, paintings, sculptures, as well as criticism and essays that situate poems and poets in their cultural, social, political, and historical contexts.
Monsters & Misfits in Literature

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss looks back into you.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Monsters and misfits have fascinated writers and artists throughout the ages. This class reads stories about characters who live outside the “norm,” who deviate from the expectations of society and have been shaped and misshaped by the forces of conformity and exclusion. The class explores the depiction of these “monstrous” characters as outcasts, heroes, and representations of our own (in)humanity, and uncovers the cultural and personal fears, anxieties, and phenomena from which they emerge. As students do so, they have the opportunity to construct their own monsters, through writing and art. Course readings include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as well as selections from children’s literature, folktales, and fairy tales from around the world.
Othello

In this class, students examine how trust, betrayal, and jealousy unravel the lives of the characters and drive the dramatic tension. Students explore how race and other identities are interwoven and portrayed in this Elizabethan drama, particularly through the “Moor of Venice,” Othello. How does this play address timeless issues like the nature of evil, self-control, and destiny? Is it still relevant today?
Place, Class & Identity

“And so you needn’t let that slightly funny feeling you have from time to time about exploitation, oppression, domination develop into full-fledged unease, discomfort; you could ruin your holiday.” Jamaica Kincaid pens in her opening to A Small Place. Conversely, as she begins accounting her time in New York, Joan Didion states, “Nothing was irrevocable; everything was within reach. Just around every corner lay something curious and interesting, something I had never before seen or done or known about.”

These two authors are clearly exploring drastically different experiences; however, they both challenge us to think critically about the spaces we occupy and how these spaces affect us internally. Place, class, and identity are intrinsically connected. As they read and discuss, students immerse themselves in the lives and experiences of the rich and poor, those foreign and domestic, and ultimately analyze the intersection of physical location, class, and identity. Students are challenged to deeply empathize and interact with their readings, while also being provided the opportunity to reflect on their own identity in relation to the class's studies.
Plays for Stage & Screen

Plays deliver stories primarily through dialogue. By reading plays as works of dramatic literature, we can - maybe even more than with other genres - use imagination to interpret the tone, pacing, characters, symbolism, and intention of the author. Plays are meant to be performed, but because they are so concentrated (usually meant to be performed in about two hours), through reading and studying them we can gain a unique appreciation for and mastery of some of the building blocks of all literature: character, voice and dramatic tension. Studying plays closely unlocks a deeper appreciation for the form - including its modern counterpart, the screenplay, improve our ability to write and understand dialogue, and give us insight into the authors, their own identities and the cultural and historical contexts in which they lived. In this class we read a wide range of plays from across different eras and genres and consider questions like, What impact did the playwright intend to have on their audience? What devices are they using to accomplish this? How might the meaning be amplified or altered with direction and staging? And finally, why was this play important artistically and culturally at the time it was published and what makes it important now?
Science Fiction Literature

Science fiction (sf) often conjures images like ray guns and trips to Mars with flying cars, but what this genre really explores is a series of what ifs. Often the story takes place in a world like ours, but the futuristic setting makes possible what is today scientifically & technologically impossible. The limitless possibilities of things like robots and rockets, and the dark consequences of pervasive surveillance and artificial intelligence, have all been the fodder for many sf tales. This can be imagined as a Utopian paradise of or a totalitarian Dystopia. The class considers the social questions these works raise and their relevance to our time.
Surrealist Literature

This course focuses on modern and contemporary literature that has been influenced by the ideas, principles, and aesthetic innovations of (or associated with) French Surrealism. Taking André Breton’s First Manifesto of Surrealism as a starting point, the class collectively studies works that employ and develop Surrealism’s defining ideas and sets of creative practices aimed at unleashing the power(s) of the creative act without thinking: free logic of association, collisions of opposites, disjunction, and access to the unconscious.

Through assignments that include, but are not limited to, readings, discussions, formal and informal writing, dream logs, collages, and other “art” projects, students consider and analyze how Surrealism’s goal of “complete nonconformism” and “disinterested play of thought” ignites ungoverned, unfettered insights and the subversive thinking necessary for imagining the world otherwise.
The Art of the Short Story

George Saunders once said in an interview with the New York Times, “When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you.” Though often felt, the beauty of the short story and the profound impact that a short story can have on a person can be largely forgotten. In this course, students study this distinct literary genre, and more particularly, how the American short story has evolved. Students dissect the ways in which a short story provides a literary experience that is similar to and different from that of the novel, while also being able to discern a short story from other genres such as a tale, fable, parable, novella, etc.
The Beats

Howl. With a one-word title Allen Ginsberg's epic poem gives voice to an artistic movement that revolted against the status quo. The Beats were artists of the American counterculture. They wrote against conformity, consumerism, and challenged the values of mainstream culture. After World War II, first on the East Coast in Greenwich Village and then on the West Coast in San Francisco, they used poetry and prose to express their radical visions. We sample this movement, including the obscenity trial surrounding Allen Ginsberg’s great poem “Howl” (1956), and the idea that in the book On the Road (1957) Jack Kerouac was speaking for an entire generation of young people. This class considers how dissent and writing mattered then and how they matter now.
The Odyssey, Remixed

In a New York Times interview, Emily Wilson, the first woman to translate The Odyssey, stated, “If you’re going to admit that stories matter, then it matters how we tell them.” The Odyssey is considered by some a foundational text, impacting much of Western Literature and civilization. Some would say it’s a story that matters. But, it also matters how we challenge and lay claim to a text that has historically belonged to the West. How have writers across cultures and centuries reshaped or adapted the story for their own purposes? What does it mean to move it to the West Indies, see it through a feminist lens, or imagine Odysseus as a refugee? How do we disrupt and remix the narrative, using it to tell our own stories of culture and identity, the stories that matter to us? How can adaptation be a powerful act of critical engagement and citizenship? In this course, students read selections from Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, alongside authors and artists like Margaret Atwood, Naomi Iizuka, Yusef Komunyakaa, Dorothy Parker, Van-Ahn Vo, Derek Walcott, and Ai Weiwei. Students have the opportunity to craft their own adaptation inspired by the epic.
Trans Literature

This course focuses upon works written by trans, genderqueer, genderfluid, and non-binary authors. As the class encounters fiction for both adult and young adult audiences, memoir, poetry, and essays, it frames its understanding with important theoretical foundations in transgender studies. Together, students and teacher seek to understand how authors have represented these identities in literature, and consider the unifying and diverse questions and concerns in these texts. They critically examine the ways in which other identities such as race, religion, social class, sexuality, and ability, among others, shape the content of these narratives and the experiences of these authors. Along the way, they learn about the evolving conversation around who should tell these stories (#ownvoices), and they have the exciting chance to address these questions to authors and members of the publishing industry experienced in this field. As always, students of any and all gender identities are welcome!
World Literature 9

World Voices, Individual Stories: What do a shapeshifter, a werewolf, and an adolescent have in common? All experience significant transformations that alter them both physically and emotionally. In this world literature course, students read texts that span genre, region and time period to explore the theme of transformation through multiple lenses, examining characters' internal transformations and those that occur in the world around them. Essential questions include: How do transformative experiences change their understanding of themselves and the world around them? In what ways do their relationships—with family, with friends, with themselves, with the world--shift as they themselves change? What power does the individual have to change themselves and their communities? Over the course of the year, students dig deeply into the readings and central themes of the class through analytical, personal, and creative writing. As the class engages in steps of the writing process, they pay particular attention to building strong arguments and making effective writerly choices.
Writing Workshop: Art of Protest

Students in this creative writing workshop examine and discuss texts, visual art, and performances in which writers and artists have represented political ideas, movements, and critiques as means of protesting against a range of injustices. Art--literary, visual, and performative-- has served various political purposes: from offering imagined alternatives to current practices and ideas, to documenting and showing injustice, to providing a momentary escape from an unjust reality. Students research how art has intersected with major political movements and interventions, both historically and contemporarily. Students also undertake creative writing in various genres: from poetry and prose, to performative/visually inclined text-based work, and have the opportunity to workshop and develop their writing practice throughout the course. Students visit various art spaces in Manhattan and reflect and write on the political undercurrents of the exhibited work.
WW: Analytical Writing

Do the words “analytical writing” strike fear in your heart? Do you break out in a cold sweat when you think of TEAC structure? Have you ever found yourself staring down a writing assignment with absolutely no idea where to start? OR, are you someone who absolutely loves writing essays, generating specific argumentative claims, and supporting these with well-chosen evidence? Do you find quote integration soothing, even meditative? No matter your current relationship status with analytical essays, this could be the perfect class for you.

Throughout this course, students work together to harness the genuine thrill and joy of writing great analytical essays, and to understand why these can be enjoyable ways to express their opinions and interpretations of literature. Students leave feeling CONFIDENT in their abilities to brainstorm, organize, draft, and revise analytical pieces, whether they are conquering a brief paragraph or a full essay. By the time the class concludes its journey, students are fully empowered to take on analytical assignments with enthusiasm and comfort! Along the way, students get to make decisions about what they read, share what they learn with their classmates, and support their peers in growing as fluid writers who believe in their abilities and their voices. The class also discusses and practices strategies to read, understand, and apply professional literary criticism. Students complete this course prepared for the kind of work they will undertake in undergraduate-level English literature courses.
WW: Creative Writing

In this workshop course, students develop their creative writing skills through in-class writing exercises, journaling, and prompted writing assignments focusing on dialogue, characterization, point of view/perspective, and form/structure. In addition to the written component of the course, students examine short stories and excerpts from authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Jhumpa Lahiri, William Carlos Williams, and Jamaica Kincaid, learning to read fiction for craft and discussing how these authors employ these same elements of fiction.

Frequent revision gives students the opportunity to further develop and experiment with their own ideas as well as the suggestions of their classmates. All students are required to workshop at least two pieces of their writing with the full class over the course of the term. A willingness to share one’s writing and to participate in offering feedback during workshops is a must for this class. Students walk away from the course with a portfolio of creative work showcasing their growth over the course of the trimester.
WW: Documentary Poetics

This writing workshop takes as its focus documentary poetics, which participates in not only the social field of contemporary poetry but in the larger social movements of the day. Loosely defined, documentary poetry is poetry that captures and investigates a historical moment and/or social phenomena through an assemblage of various media, ranging from newspapers, witness testimonies, court transcripts, and interviews, to more contemporary methods incorporating video, hyperlinks, and other new media. According to Philip Metres, the documentary poem is “meant to testify to the often unheard voices of people struggling to survive in the face of unspeakable violence.” To that end, documentary poetry is a deeply international, lefter-than-liberal, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist mode of investigation and expression.

In this writing workshop, students read works by an array of poets associated with this movement/genre/faction of poetry, using analysis of their work as inspiration for their own writing. In addition to readings, class discussions, and informal and formal writing assignments, students create their own documentary poetics project on a social “beat” of their choosing; they conduct research, compose and workshop poems, and collaborate with the photography department to document their investigations. These works constitute the course’s final project, which is shared at the end of the trimester. Note: this course includes a collaboration with the photography department.
WW: Graphic Memoir

This course focuses on storytelling via graphic memoirs. Through close reading and creative assignments, students explore what visual literacy means to different communities, specifically looking at how marginalized voices use visual literacy to tell stories. The class begins with analyzing the form and function of various texts, including graphic memoirs, comics, and animation. By deconstructing how each text “works,” students gain a deeper understanding of the various layers and components that make up a successful graphic novel and memoir. Students work on telling their own stories throughout the course, beginning with smaller creative and analytical pieces and building up toward a class anthology.
WW: Hybrid Fiction & Creative Writing

In this workshop course, students develop their creative writing skills through in-class writing exercises, journaling, and a series of prompted writing assignments focusing on various aspects of fiction and hybrid-genre writing: prosody, tone, diction, pacing, dialogue, characterization, point of view/perspective, form/structure, etc. In addition to the written component of the course, students examine short stories, poems, lyric essays, video-essays and excerpts of book-length projects from an array of writers, learning to read and discuss writing in terms of craft. Frequent revision gives students the opportunity to further develop and experiment with their own ideas as well as the suggestions of their classmates. Students walk away from the course with a portfolio of creative work showcasing their growth over the course of the trimester.
WW: Journalism

This class dives headfirst into the world of reporting—the heart of journalism—telling the stories from our own community that go unnoticed, unreported, and unappreciated each day. Students study and take seriously the ethics by which journalists must abide in order to be trusted by their readers, and tackle the Big Questions that all journalists must wrestle with: What makes a story “newsworthy,” and how does one decide how to tell it? Is it possible for a journalist to be “objective” in their writing? Where does the public’s “right to know” intersect with individuals’ “right to privacy”? Can Tweets and Instagram posts be considered acts of journalism? Is it ever acceptable to use anonymous sources in a story? How can journalists (and our readers) evaluate the credibility of a particular source? The class navigates these questions (and others) together as they report news stories and, eventually, write op-eds.
WW: Personal Essay

Personal essays are everywhere these days: in TED Talks, in podcasts, on Instagram. The personal essay occurs at the intersection of a topic — something out there that one is interested in — and you — your perspective, voice, and story. But, you say, what if I don’t have a voice? Or a story? Or I’m not even sure what I’m interested in?! Fear not! Through fun writing exercises, getting out in the world and doing stuff, and reading a range of essays from lyrical to comic, outraged to contemplative, students discover — as Montaigne, the founder of the genre, wrote — “we are richer than we think, each one of us.” In this workshop-based class, students practice how to organically develop and structure an essay (goodbye five-paragraph essay!), how to give specific and loving feedback, and how to harness their voice(s). The root of the word “essay” is an attempt or “try” — a seeking out of something. Come seek with us, and be delighted by where you end up.
WW: Poetry

Poetry can be dangerous. It can be personal and political. It can play with language; it can take risks; it can move us to laughter or tears and everything in between. What are the limits of poetry? Where do our impulses to write poetry come from and how do we harness these impulses? In this writing workshop, students practice the craft of poetry through their own writing and through the reading of published works. The class is conducted workshop style: Students regularly share and respond to each other’s writing. Emphasis is placed on revision and the writing process, as well as experimentation and risk taking with language, form, voice and imagery.
WW: Short Stories

What does a Hemingway short story have in common with a novel written exclusively in tweets? What does a six-word memoir share with a masterful tale of suspense? These storytelling forms require concision, precision, and the art of omission. Often, the best storytelling hinges on what is not said. In this writing workshop, students compose short stories and narratives that play with the art of omission, as they look to say a lot without saying all that much. While the stories we write may be very short (less than 750 words!), they should pack a powerful punch. Doing this is easier said than done. The class is conducted workshop style. Emphasis is placed on revision and the writing process, as well as experimentation and risk taking.

A Pre-K-12 Progressive Education

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