This is a two-year course, providing students with long-term preparation to excel at college applications and courses in the humanities. Students may take one, some or all of the course sections, however they are designed to provide a comprehensive introduction across four 12-week semesters and a 4-week summer semester, as follows:
YEAR ONE
Fall Semester: Strategies of Analysis
Students will learn how to analyze stories, poems, plays, images and films, writing short responses appropriate to each genre.
Spring Semester: The Art of the Essay
Students will write and revise two personal essays (one based solely on experience, one employing research), to be submitted to one or more student writing competitions.
Summer Semester: Reading Historical Fiction
Students will read a popular novel written before 1900.
YEAR TWO
Fall Semester: Advanced Analysis (Narrative & Poetics)
Students will read and respond to stories and poems featuring more complicated and nuanced aesthetic forms.
Spring Semester: Full Length Historical Analysis
Students will apply analytical techniques to a novel and film, reading them in historical and contemporary contexts. They will write a research-based analysis using appropriate secondary sources.
