Juniors

Grade Eleven: American Literature

Essential Questions: Literature

What does it mean to be an American?

How does being an American relate to our identity?

How has the American dream evolved?

 

We choose specific works of literature from the list below, some in conjunction with material covered in the American history course all students take in eleventh grade, as teachers keep in mind the particular needs of each class.  Honor students have the option of taking AP English Language and Composition, also discussed below.

Selected Non-Fiction:

The Point of Vanishing: A Memoir of Two Years in Solitude, by Howard Axelrod

When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi

Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

The Google Story, by David J. Vise

Blink: The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell

Freakonomics, by Steven J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt

Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, by Martin Lindstrom

The Big Short, by Michael Lewis

The Bullies of Wall Street, by Sheila Bair

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot

Why We Make Mistakes, by Joseph T. Hallinan

The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

Devil and the White City, by Erik Larson

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, by Angela Duckworth

The Road to Character, by David Brooks

Nickel and Dimed - by Barbara Ehrenreich

The Tipping Point - by Malcolm Gladwell

 

Essays by such writers as Martin Luther King, Jr.; B. Mukherjee, J. Didion, A. Quindlen, G. Naylor, inaugural speech of JFK

Early American Literature - Crevecoeur, Paine, Jefferson, Franklin

Short story unit - Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Chopin and selected others

Excerpts from Walden, “Civil Disobedience” - Thoreau and Self-Reliance - Emerson (Transcendentalism)

Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

Poetry unit - Whitman, Dickinson, Frost

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Death of a Salesman – Arthur Miller

The Crucible – Arthur Miller

The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

Macbeth – William Shakespeare   

 

AP English Language and Composition:    AP English Language and Composition, a course sponsored and accredited by the College Board and one that follows the scope of a college freshman composition course, is taught to the honors eleventh grade English class, with the important goal of making each student a more perceptive and sophisticated reader and writer. Analysis, argument and synthesis of information are key components of the course.

To that end, we read texts closely in order to discern what modes writers use to achieve a variety of purposes and we use this knowledge to write rich and purposeful prose. Many of the texts read in AP English Language dovetail texts read in AP U.S History and taking the two courses simultaneously enriches the students’ understanding of both of them. In AP English Language, students read and analyze mostly American texts—works of fiction and non-fiction, longer and shorter works from a variety of periods and written in various rhetorical contexts—and find that the ability to read closely turns into the ability to write well.

 

Additional Texts for AP English Language and Composition:

The Language of Composition -  by Renee Shea, Lawrence Scanlon, and Robin Dissin Aufses

Thank You For Arguing - by Jay Heinrichs