English
Boston University Academy’s English curriculum promotes close reading and historical understanding. Through study of major works, in class discussion and in analytical papers, students learn to appreciate both the dramatic sweep of literary and cultural history and the special ways in which fiction, drama, and poetry do their thinking and enrich us individually and collectively. Over the three years, writing assignments grow in length, complexity, and use of sources, and each year students have a chance to do some creative writing.
EN25: The Literary Canon in Conversation: Self in Society (Grade 9)
What is the self–and how does it develop? What role do social processes and interactions play in shaping the individual’s experiences and identity? And what are the boundaries between the self and society? English 9 invites conversation between canonical and contemporary texts to explore these questions. Students join this lively conversation by engaging in the art and science of close reading, the delight and despair of creative, personal, and analytical writing, and the fundamentals of grammar. Ninth graders read selected stories from Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Homer’s The Odyssey, Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and Hamid’s Exit West. In addition, teachers provide relevant ancillary materials.
EN45: British Literature: Global Citizenship (Grade 10)
How does a language almost flickering out of existence not just survive but thrive as a global lingua franca–and produce an enduring, evocative literature? Are there reasons for this language to transcend national boundaries and not just unify but celebrate the difference of its speakers? English 10 surveys the scenes, themes, and players from its Germanic roots in the British Isles to its multicultural present in various continents. Tenth graders refine the reading and writing skills through an extensive study of various literary forms and genres in addition to building on their knowledge of grammar: Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, the anonymous The Woman of Color, Lahiri’s The Interpreter of Maladies, and Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. In addition, teachers provide relevant ancillary materials.
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.EN65: American Literature: Identity and Belonging (Grade 11)
Junior Research Seminar: History, Arts, and Letters (HAL)
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.
In this course, we read books that high school girls love. Most but not all of the literature we’ll read comes from female authors, and all of the protagonists will be girls and women. You might reflect on the fact that the vast majority of the literature you’ve read so far in your education has been written by male authors and has usually focused on male protagonists, and you might want to think about the difference it would might make if this were not so. Why do girls often especially adore the books that are written by and about girls? Are female characters somehow different from the male characters you’ve known? (We might usefully compare Jane Eyre’s story with Pip’s, as a starting point.) Are the challenges facing female characters the same as those facing their male counterparts? And, if we find issues that are specific to female characters, have they changed across time, or have they remained pretty much the same? Are they the same issues you confront in your own lives? We’ll engage these questions and themes, as well as many others (love, marriage, sexuality, reproduction, to name a few), as we delve into a number of big, fat wonderful novels. We’ll start with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, then continue into the twentieth century with Virginia Woolf, and with the contemporary novel The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood. We’ll also read a fourth modern novel tba, and if we have time, we’ll do some modern short stories, and/or poetry. We’ll finish the term with the film Thelma and Louise. For 12s only.EN90: Women in Literature
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. EN90: Existentialism in Fiction and Film
Known as ‘the Hub,’ a term coined by its own beloved Oliver Wendell Holmes, Boston has always been a nexus for intellectual development by using the lure of its phenomenal universities to bring together some of the most capable people from all over the world. This class will relish in some of Boston’s rich immigrant history as we delve into academically acclaimed, recent literature by and about people who have all found themselves in this great city. Originally a term referring to the exile of various Jewish populations, Diaspora can refer to people who have been forced to leave their home countries because of oppression, but it can now also refer to emigrants who have chosen to leave their countries for a variety of reasons. These people have sacrificed everything they’ve known and loved in the hopes of bettering their fates and that of their families and ancestors. Just as Pip needed to leave the forge for the big city to forge a new identity for himself, characters in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Francisco Goldman’s The Long Night of White Chickens, Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation, Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, and Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy, to name a few, have all come out to Boston in their trek toward becoming global citizens. And just as Victor Frankenstein needed the university to realize his creation, characters in many of these texts have all come to the universities here to make their own, sometimes monstrous, cultural discoveries. The class may also consider historical revisionist texts such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Bharati Mukherjee’s The Holder of the World, or Geraldine Brooks’s Caleb’s Crossing. Along the way, we’ll also consider films and art and other media representations. We may also be dipping into some recent fiction, texts like Elif Bautman’s The Idiot or Danzy Senza’s Caucasia, to get a pulse on the discussion beyond the rarefied air of academia. Buoyed by short critical and historical discussions as well as short texts from various genres and forms, students will select the longer texts that we will read together as a class and one or more texts they will pursue on their own. Together we will explore how and why this great city we call home has indeed become the hub of the universe.EN90: Boston in the Diasporic Imagination
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?EN90: Neoliberal Capitalism and Its Discontents