American Literature Honors allows high school students to read iconic works of great depth and complexity, to write expository, narrative, and fictional genres for themselves and other audiences, and to further a lifelong appreciation for how women and men have dedicated their lives to producing work of great import and beauty. Through the two-semester course, students will move from short story to poem to non-fiction text to novel within each unit that unifies a series of related themes, motifs,
and cultural expressions of the time periods studied. Although not a designated Humanities Course, this class will also introduce the background of the authors, the importance of the time period for the writer and the work, and how culture, society,
and historical events helped propel the creation of their art. Students will discuss in small groups, participate in large class discussions, create panel presentations, present and defend ideas before the class, and use a range of electronic and tactile modalities for these endeavors. Lastly, they will write: reading responses to the literature; narrative pieces; literary analysis; comparison and contrast papers; argument; a raft of genres (both fictional and journalistic); and create a semester long research project with an annotated bibliography; a works cited page; source citation; and multiple sources of varying types.