Romanticism: Poetry

• Fireside Poets
• Remember, Americans are still trying to find their "voice." The "Fireside Poets" (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier,Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and William Cullen Bryant) are among the first American poets to mimic the European style, while still making their work their own
• Analysis: "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls" by Longfellow
• Analyzing Poetry Handout

• Emily Dickinson
• From PoetryFoundation.org: Emily Dickinson is one of America’s greatest and most original poets of all time. She took definition as her province and challenged the existing definitions of poetry and the poet’s work. Like writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson,Henry David Thoreau, andWalt Whitman, she experimented with expression in order to free it from conventional restraints. Like writers such as Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she crafted a new type of persona for the first person. The speakers in Dickinson’s poetry, like those in Brontë’s and Browning’s works, are sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable limitations of their societies as well as their imagined and imaginable escapes. To make the abstract tangible, to define meaning without confining it, to inhabit a house that never became a prison, Dickinson created in her writing a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. Like the Concord Transcendentalists whose works she knew well, she saw poetry as a double-edged sword. While it liberated the individual, it as readily left him ungrounded. The literary marketplace, however, offered new ground for her work in the last decade of the 19th century. When the first volume of her poetry was published in 1890, four years after her death, it met with stunning success. Going through eleven editions in less than two years, the poems eventually extended far beyond their first household audiences.

American Hero and Transcendentalism

Agenda:

• Discussion of "A Rescue"
• How does the Deerslayer set the stage for the concept of the American Hero? Check out the heroic qualities in action in the trailer for the film adaptation of Cooper's Last of the Mohicans..
• History themes
• Transcendentalism
• Accessing prior knowledge/Connections: Discussion
• What is Transcendentalism? Notes.
• Read: "Self Reliance" and "Nature" Take a stab at the questions for the two pieces--but don't freak out if you cannot answer them all--just try. Trust your gut.

Is American Literature possible?

Review of history terms

Discussion: Is American Literature possible? Could literature and art thrive in this new nation? Were literature and art possible in the special political, social and economic conditions Americans created? How could the language and literary models of England be naturalized to the conditions of America?

This is what we will explore today, as we read some introductory notes on American Romanticism, and dive into some James Fenimore Cooper with an excerpt from The Deerslayer. To set up this excerpt: As this scene opens, Natty Bumppo -- known as Deerslayer to his Native American friends -- has been taken captive by the Hurons, allies of the French and sworn enemies of Deerslayer’s (and England’s) friends, the Delawares. Hist, a Delaware female who just happens to be in love with Deerslayer’s buddy, Chingachgook, has also been taken captive, as have two white women, Judith and her sister Hetty.

WELCOME!

Welcome to Honors Comprehensive American Studies II!

This blog was created by Mrs. Mireault and Mr. Bujold to help communicate more effectively with students and parents this year in Honors Comprehensive American Studies II. We will be blogging often with the class agenda, links to assignments, and links to interesting and informative topics that we see on the internet.

You will notice there are two additional tabs: "Unit Handouts" and "Resources." These will provide ample support as we journey through the year.

We are very excited to begin this year!

Here is our class expectation sheet

We will kick off our class with a quick summary of your summer reading, and use that as a basis for discussing the purpose of the class--to synthesize literature AND history, and how they are intertwined. You will informally present/summarize what you read & discovered. Most of you shared a book with somebody, and if that is the case, you will present as a group. This should be very quick-no more than 5 minutes. Touch base with your group to share your thoughts and make notes. Make sure to cover all three tasks you were to complete (unless otherwise noted in the handout).

Contemporary Civil Rights

Today, we take such freedoms as the right to privacy and freedom of speech for granted. But our civil liberties and rights are the result of many years of agitation and activism. Plus, our conceptions of civil rights and liberties have evolved. Recent events such as the debates over gay marriage, immigration, voter suppression, health care, and the war on terror ensure that our conceptions of liberty and equal rights will continue to evolve in the years to come.

The thing to always keep in mind: What basic, human rights should everyone have, and are these rights being violated by the government, corporations, or groups of people?

Your task is to choose a topic and write a researched, contemporary civil rights speech. Go to the libguide sau57.org/civilrights for current articles concerning the topics. Here is The Assignment and Rubric

WWII: Saving Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan is an Oscar-winning film, winning for Best Director, Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound, and Sound Effects Editing. The film was praised for its gritty, realistic portrayal of combat in World War II (particularly the storming of the beach).

Our focus while watching this film is to study the “film form.” We discussed “form following function” with graphic novels and comics (with Maus), and it is the same idea with filmmaking. The filmmaking form provides tools for the director to better tell his/her story. We will focus on two such tools unique to the film form—Sound and Cinematography.

Sound & Sound Effects Editing

Believe it or not all sound in a film is put in AFTER principal photography (with the exception of dialogue, but even sometimes THAT is dubbed over). The sounds themselves are created artificially in a studio. The sound editing is the seamless blending together of all the sounds.

• HOW IS SOUND USED EFFECTIVELY IN THIS FILM?

Cinematography

The cinematographer is responsible for the technical aspects of the images (things like lighting and camera work), but works closely with the director to ensure that the “look” of the film supports the director's vision of the story being told.

• HOW DOES THE CINEMATOGRAPHY OF THE FILM ADD TO THE STORY?

Use the sheet to track these elements of the film form.

World War II/Maus

One of the goals of this unit is to analyze different media that we may not be accustomed to analyzing in a traditional English/Social Studies course. We will do this by looking at Maus by Art Spiegelman and Saving Private Ryan directed by Steven Spielberg.

• Looking at Comics Protocol
• Maus introduction
• Maus: Chapters 1-2; chapters 3-4; chapters 5-6
• Sample Analyses: Chapter 1 and Chapter 4