• Course Overview

    Unit 1

     

    How do the choices we make shape our identity and lives?

     

    Contemporary literature and media can often reflect the political climate by challenging social and political structures. This unit will examine how the play, “A Raisin In The Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, addresses the social and political structures of race and the family structure in 1950’s Chicago. The unit will begin with an exploration of the play’s context. Students will be asked to identify a primary source that is reflective of the period's political climate to be added to a classroom gallery. Throughout the unit students will explore the use of symbolism and characterization, as well as the persuasive appeals and analysis writing. In the end, students create a multimedia project to persuade a panel of peers to support their concept for the best use of the families inheritance money.


    Unit 2

    How can poetry be used to encourage discourse over controversial issues?

     

    Poetry and journalism are guided by distinct styles and structures, but both can be used to examine controversial historical and contemporary issues. Poets, journalists, and audiences alike can examine the array of stories that can be told about a specific person, event, or place. The second unit will focus on the intertextual nature of poetry and journalism, and throughout the unit, we will examine authors from Tagore, to Neruda, to Langston Hughes and will develop a conversation between these renowned individuals and the most reputable news sources in society. We will create our own “found” poems that demonstrate our interpretation of the most pressing political issues, and will subsequently open a dialogue with our class community and the outside community of Orange

    Unit 3

    How can literature be adapted to encourage political change?

     

    The theater has been used since the birth of democracy as a way to open a dialogue about the most tempestuous political issues. Julius Caesar, a historical figurehead and subject of one of Shakespeare’s most reproduced works, will be examined as a politically charged play ripe for adaptation. In this unit, we will focus on the ways playwrights have interpreted William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and have manipulated the characters, plot design, and structure, as well as the setting to make controversial statements related to the political climate of the place and time. We will examine the limits of artistic expression and the gray space between art and propaganda to assess the value of these various adaptations.


    Unit 4

    What is the value of being able to think freely?

     

    Challenging Power and Offering Solutions: Dystopian texts have been used for decades by authors as a subversive genre that closely, critically dissects the political and social structures of their time. By creating a perfect world founded upon devastatingly imperfect morals, values, and beliefs, dystopian texts issue a clear warning to future generations and present a challenge to change. We will examine Fahrenheit 451 and explore the implications of censorship and the power of stories in shaping the fate of human society. Paired with shorts stories by Vonnegut, Ovid, and Le Guinn, as well as nonfiction articles linked to the ethics of control in North Korea, the impact of technology and media on today’s society, and historical trends linked to censorship, this text will open a gateway to a larger research project that will ask us to answer the question: What kind of society would we build if we had to start from scratch?