English

Focusing on major works of American prose, plays, and poetry, students are invited to discover what is American about American literature, and to explore – in conjunction with the junior history course – how America’s literature, like the nation itself, forged its own unique identity. Extending from American Romanticism through the contemporary moment, the class investigates American literature’s rather fraught response to social and political changes. In that spirit, students are encouraged to discover and discuss how American literature is singularly informed by ideas and cultural debates concerning freedom, destiny, adversity, success, community and belonging, class, gender, and race. Students are also introduced to literary research and literary criticism. Assignments include interpretive arguments and comparative analyses, research-based responses, as well as opportunities for reflecting on films and for creative writing. Students read Severance (Ling Ma); The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne); There There (Tommy Orange); Passing (Nella Larsen); The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald); The Talented Mr. Ripley (Patricia Highsmith); Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates) and Giovanni’s Room (James Baldwin). 

Students will learn how one starts a research project–including the use of libraries, web-based resources, bibliographies, and other finding guides–and how one actually writs a long paper. Each student will develop a research plan and a bibliography for work over the summer on the senior thesis. For 11s only.

Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes the individual and his or her freedom to create meaning. By embracing this freedom, the individual takes ownership of his or her own life in the face of death and an absurd world. Doing this is called lucidity or authenticity or good faith. Existentialists are also aware, however, that such radical freedom creates anxiety and despair in the individual, who often would rather renounce freedom in order to live in bad faith. More troubling still, people often force others to conform to their values in ways which produce alienation, objectification, and oppression. Thus, existentialism, as we’ll see, has much to say about sexism and racism; indeed, this philosophy even today continues to make significant contributions to such social issues.

In this course, we will explore the philosophy of existentialism primarily through literature and film. Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the best known existentialists, claimed that art is often a better means for conveying philosophy than a treatise or essay. While the final reading list is not yet set, among the pieces we are likely to read and discuss are Kafka’s Metamorphasis, Melville’s “Bartleby the Scribner,” Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Illych, several plays and stories by Sartre, Camus’ The Stranger, Percy’s The Moviegoer. Most of these pieces are short stories or novellas. We will also watch several films including My Life Without Me, Crimes and Misdemeanors, I Heart Huckabees, and/or Fight Club. Students will write a film review for the course on an existential movie of their choice, and two additional papers – one of which students may write as a short story of their own that incorporates the themes of the course. For 12s only. 

Modernity seeks to build a rational, free, and fair society founded on liberalism and capitalism. Over the last forty years the main advocate of this view has been Neoliberal Capitalism, which has come to dominate many aspects of our society.  This seminar explores the strengths and weaknesses of neoliberalism by studying some of its proponents and its critics from the schools of socialism, feminism, anti-colonial and racial theory, and Native American philosophy. Thus, we will read Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, Mark Fischer’s Capitalist Realism, Wendy Brown’s In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, Angela Davis’s The Meaning of Freedom, Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. NOTE: this is not a class on economics, but rather an ethical/philosophical critique of the intersection of the Neoliberal Capitalists ethos and its limits E.g. does Neoliberalism really lead to a just and fair society, as its proponents claim? And if not, what should we do? What can we do?