What's Included
- American Literature: Social Transformation Coursebook
- Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
- Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
- Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli
- Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West by Lauren Redniss
- Oak Meadow blank journal (for use as a reader’s journal)
Additional Materials Recommended
The following books are optional but are recommended to get the most value out of this course (not included in the course package):
Course Overview
Course Length: One semester
Suggested Grade Level(s): 11 12
View samples of our high school curriculum here.
American culture has undergone countless social transformations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Today new social transformations are underway.
In this course students will study how American literature reflects and contributes to social transformations. Presenting a diverse set of voices the course centers on the intersection of literature history and current events.
Students read a selection of fiction poetry and essays that explore important topics in American culture: the efforts for liberation that African Americans have engaged in during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the motives that have brought immigrants to the United States and the environmental struggles that have created tensions between various segments of society. Students examine themes such as xenophobia bias and the legacy of the past through the lens of different settings and perspectives.
Suggested prerequisites: Composition or The Hero’s Journey
