World Lit II Overview

World Lit II examines the essential question: How do humans express themselves through their political and personal relationships?

Atwood and Austen

In February we will read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and view the hot new Kiera Knightley re-make of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Political and personal concepts studied during this unit include women's roles, oppression, civil liberties, sexism, censorship, religious fanaticism, the death penalty, love and war.

We will also make thematic connections to short stories and poetry in the World Masterpieces textbook.

Choice Unit

In March students pick one of the following novels to read:

Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
July’s People by Nadine Gordimer
Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya
Waiting by Jin Ha

This choice unit continues to explore many of the concepts introduced in The Handmaid's Tale, and book clubs discuss how people survive political upheavals while maintaining their personal relationships.

With March also comes a World Lit all-time favorite--the Bollywood blockbuster Lagaan. 99% of World Lit students love this film. In fact, whenever I run into past World Lit students, they ask me if I have shown Lagaan yet. A few years ago a bunch of World Lit boys, inspired by this film, even started playing cricket on Sunday afternoons at an Edina park.

Politics and Relationships in Plays

During the Fourth Quarter, World Lit students will not only read the following plays (either in their entirety or excerpts), but also see the dramas come to life through film. The guiding question for this drama unit is: What are the personal and societal obstacles that people must overcome to have a successful marriage/committed relationship?

Othello by William Shakespeare
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Supplies Needed

World Literature students use a single subject, composition notebook to showcase their thinking and writing in World Literature. Notebooks need to be in class every day as participation points will be given on a regular basis vs. turning in the notebook at the end of the unit like in World Lit I.

The classroom magic markers are all running dry. To make all of our Thinking Map posters, A to Z lists, and other activities, room 271 desperately needs markers. Consider donating a pack of markers for extra credit.

Definitions of Culture

According to Dictionary.com culture is partly defined as:

• the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits, etc.
• a particular form or stage of civilization, as that of a certain nation or period: Greek culture.
• the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group: the youth culture; the drug culture.
• In anthropology, the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.

Wikipedia partly defines culture this way.

"Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate") generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance. Cultures can be "understood as systems of symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed boundaries, that are constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another."

Cultural anthropologists most commonly use the term "culture" to refer to the universal human capacity and activities to classify, codify and communicate their experiences materially and symbolically. Scholars have long viewed this capacity as a defining feature of humans (although some primatologists have identified aspects of culture such as learned tool making and use among humankind's closest relatives in the animal kingdom)."


Here's a video with a definition of culture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOwuNZqh6PU


The author of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, said this about culture:

"Culture is like the sum of special knowledge that accumulates in any large united family and is the common property of all its members. When we of the great Culture Family meet, we exchange reminiscences about Grandfather Homer, and that awful old Dr. Johnson, and Aunt Sappho, and poor Johnny Keats." --Aldous Huxley

World Lit I: Cultural Studies & the Humanities

World Literature I examines the essential question:

How do science & technology, religion & philosophy and the arts (music, poetry and the fine arts) impact culture and explain what it means to be human?

The texts in the course are organized by the following units:

Cultures Under a Microscope: Science & Technology

Guiding Question: How do science, technology and economics impact culture?
Full-length Text: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Selections: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, W.H. Auden, Shu Ting and Stanislaw Lem

Cultures Influencing Other Cultures

Guiding Questions: How do people use the fine arts to express ideas about their culture? What happens when a culture comes in contact with new ideas and a new culture? How does music bring meaning to life and unite all cultures through common influences?

Full-length Texts: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and Surviving Picasso (film)

Selections: Thomas Mann's short story "The Infant Prodigy." Hip Hop songs. Excerpts of Francoise Gilot's memoir, My Life with Picasso, which is the basis of the film Surviving Picasso.

Religion & Philosophy Impact Culture

Guiding Question: How does spirituality (either an organized religion or a life philosophy) become an essential element of a culture?

Selections: World Masterpieces philosophy pieces from Plato, Blaise Pascal, Dante, Rumi, and Albert Camus. Literary analysis of sacred texts found in World Masterpieces will include selections from Genesis, Pslams, Upanishads, Rig Veda, Bhagavad-Gita, and the Koran.


Student Choice Literature Circles

Guiding Question: What does your choice novel say about culture and being human in terms of science, religion, philosophy, art, music and poetry?

Select one of the following full-length texts:

Last Summer of Reason by Tahar Dajout
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Snow by Orhan Pamuk

Capstone Cultural Study

Guiding Question: How do you synthesize cultural influences on your personal journey to find yourself?
Full-length Text: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse


NOTE: In addition to the short selections listed above, World Literature I integrates an ongoing study of poetry, including examining standard poetic forms such as Chinese Shih, Japanese Tanka and Haiku, and sonnets.

Supplies Needed

World Literature students use a single subject, composition notebook to showcase much of their work for class. Notebooks need to be in class every day! Use a Sharpie to write your name on the notebook and bring it to class every day starting Thursday, September 4, 2008. Fully prepared students also come to class with a pen, pencil, and highlighter.

In fact, you need to bring the following supplies to class on Thursday, September 4, 2008 as a required 3-point assignment:

1 composition notebook
1 pack of two glue sticks for use as a common classroom supply

You may also bring one of the following items for use as a common classroom supply to receive two points of extra credit:

a box of Kleenex
a ruler
a scissors
a pack of markers
a box of #2 pencils

Copies of Brave New World are also needed.

Student schedule changes over the summer resulted in increased enrollment for World Literature this fall, and the English department finds itself short copies of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

We begin reading the novel this week, so please consider purchasing your own copy of the book for your personal library. Not only will you help out the class by being a good citizen, but also you will be able to mark your book, keeping track of key thematic quotations, summarizing events at the top of key pages, and creating a character tree map in the front cover. You could also check your bookshelves at home. This book is such a classic that many of you may have the book readily available from your home library. And some students have even found a copy of the book in an older sibling's room, and that sibling had me as a teacher and the novel is marked up already with key quotations.

Students have found copies of Brave New World for as low as $2 at Half Price Books in Miracle Mile Shopping Center.

Did you know?

Welcome to World Literature

Congratulations on selecting World Literature for your senior English class! I hope that you will not only enjoy learning about what the world loves and hates through the literature we study this year, but also that you will leave high school a little bit more prepared to succeed in the increasingly connected global society.

I want you to challenge yourself to take your study of the world seriously. Read, talk, write, think, cooperate, and know your world! My World Literature vision statement, "Know Your World," aligns closely with the school district's mission statement.

"The mission of the E------ Public Schools, working in partnership with the family and the community, is to educate individuals to be responsible, lifelong learners who possess the skills, knowledge, creativity, sense of self-worth, and ethical values necessary to survive and flourish in a rapidly changing, culturally diverse, global society."

Since World Literature is a senior only class, students discuss literature and its mature themes courageously and respectfully. Sometimes controversial conversations may generate sharp disagreements or strong emotions. However, the most productive of these types of conversations are courageous, civil, respectful, and adult.

I will also guide you in your quest to become an increasingly autonomous, adult learner so that you feel better prepared for life and school beyond high school. Part of our time together will be spent on how you learn; I won't just rush you through the course content. This year I will also challenge your notion of what the term "word literature" means. A quick scan of our common textbook, World Masterpieces, reveals that world literature goes beyond novels, poems, plays, and short stories to also explore the realms of philosophy, religion, and the fine arts.

To strive for cultural literacy today, I feel that you need to expand your notion of literature, so during the fall semester, you will encounter "texts" beyond the traditional English class genres. You will notice in the World Literature I course overview, that fall semester also covers a quick study of the five major religions of the world--Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Students who took World History should have a strong academic background in the five religions; however, we will do a quick review so that our class will have a common understanding of ideas to discuss the World Masterpieces selections.

In case you were wondering, studying religion in a public high school is not a violation of church and state laws. The Supreme Court has ruled that public schools may not sponsor religious practices but may teach about religion. (Engel v. Vitale (1962) 370 U.S. 421.) This serves the academic goals of educating students about history and cultures.