STATEMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
Literature provides the awareness of a complex world through a multiplicity of views focused upon the fullness of life rather than upon any given accepted social, political, or religious orientation.  Concomitant to the study of literature is the study of language, which provides the ability to perceive and formulate meaning. The following objectives reflect the commitment of the Interlochen Arts Academy English Department to assist students in the exploration of human experience through the pursuit of literary appreciation and language skills.

To cultivate an approach to literature from varied perspectives through the development of reading and analytic techniques.

To encourage a commitment to literary expression as an experience which confronts intellectual and personal values by process rather than precept.

To promote an awareness of language as a means of organizing and expressing thought.

To develop proficiency in the elements and techniques of composition.

To encourage student responsibility through placement in situations requiring independent initiative.

Literature often concerns itself with matters of the deepest and most enduring human preoccupations – life and death, sex, religion, war. Any serious study of literature will therefore necessarily be a study of humanity itself, in all its complex and sometimes disturbing truth. Students should understand that classroom discussions will occasionally require a willingness to entertain subject matter they may find troubling or provocative, and that this willingness to be troubled or provoked is a necessary prerequisite to a fully realized liberal arts education.

GRADUATION REQUIREMENTS
The minimum IAA graduation requirements for English consist of English I, English II, and two one-semester elective English courses during the junior or senior year taken at Interlochen.
The English courses offered at the junior or senior levels are taught on a semester basis.  The offerings are not sequential.  Each student is able to select courses on the basis of his/her interests and to fit individual needs throughout the year.
Selected Creative Writing courses may be elected by a junior or senior to fulfill the English requirements for graduation.
Enrollment by freshmen or sophomores in the Creative Writing courses does not satisfy the English graduation requirements.

ADVANCED PLACEMENT PREPARATION
English I and English II are college-preparatory courses.  They are designed to prepare students to meet the standards of literature and composition study found in the upper-level elective classes.
All upper-level literature classes offered by the English Department are academically accelerated employing methods and materials consistent with and/or beyond traditional AP courses.
Students who are interested in taking AP examinations should seek the advice of their instructors regarding specific skills and content upon which to place emphatic focus.
Prior to AP examinations, faculty assistance in group and/or individual tutorials is available to assist students in their preparation.

AMERICAN RENAISSANCE: 1825-1865
Grades 11/12 
First semester course
.50 credit,  class meets daily

The rich literary period prior to the Civil War brought vibrant, new ideas about Nature and art that invigorated American literature.  This course provides students with a survey of writers in the American tradition, from Washington Irving to Mark Twain.

Students keep a reading journal; write two formal essays; develop public speaking skills and participate in a variety of projects that explore the connections between arts and academics. 

Objectives:
To encourage generative knowledge and understanding of the period in which a truly American literature took shape.
To develop connections between the student’s own arts field and this course as entry points to understanding literature.
To practice and understand critical reading, reasoning and writing skills.
To generate a variety of performances that demonstrate students’ ability to interpret, analyze, and evaluate literature.

Book List:
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 7th ed., Vol. B

BRITISH LITERATURE I
Grades 11/12 
First semester course
.50 credit,  class meets daily

This course introduces the student to the rich heritage of English literature.  Various literary forms are studied through a historical format from medieval Chaucer to the 19th-century poem and novel.

Objectives:
To see, in literature, the development of the English language: Old English, Middle English, and Modern English.
To read early examples of English literature, tracing its development as a literary form and as historical spokesman.
To develop unity and coherence in formal essays, precise thesis statements, and logical arguments.

Titles and authors to be selected from the following:
Beowulf (author unknown)
Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
Hardy, The Return of the Native
Shakespeare, Othello
Swift, Gulliver's Travels
Selected essays and poetry, which could include works by: Bacon, Donne, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, Shelley, and Coleridge
O’Conner, Woe is I (optional)
 
ILLUMINATING LIVES: BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIR
Grades 11/12 
First semester course
.50 credit,  class meets daily

This course explores what the artistic life has meant to a group of artists, writers, and musicians and how they’ve lived that life.  The primary goal of the course is to introduce students to the nonfiction genres of biography, memoir, and the personal essay. The course also makes interdisciplinary connections with faculty in the arts. 

Students keep a reading journal; write two formal essays; develop public speaking skills and participate in a variety of projects that explore the connections between arts and English.

Objectives:
To encourage generative knowledge and understanding of the nonfiction genres of biography and memoir.
To develop connections between the student’s own arts field and this course as entry points to understanding literature.
To practice and understand critical reading, reasoning and writing skills.
To generate a variety of performances that demonstrate students’ ability to interpret, analyze, and evaluate literature.

Book List:
Freedman, Martha Graham: A Dancer’s Life
Stravinsky, The Autobiography
Van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

LITERATURE OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH
Grades 11/12 
First semester course
.50 credit,  class meets daily

The American South is a region that has produced some of the world’s finest modern literature – a literature of custom, culture and place.  Like that of the Irish, the language of the American South rings with an almost musical quality, and one frequently has the feeling that the stories and poems that come from the region could have been produced nowhere else on earth.  In this course students will explore the nature of “southern-ness” in all its multifariousness, from the shadow of slavery that Faulkner called the south’s special curse, the the southern gentility of Eudora Welty and the dark, gothic humor of Flannery O’Connor.  Fiction, drama, poetry, and criticism will be studied, with particular emphasis on the way southern writers have helped to shape the American literary and cultural landscape.  In addition to those writers mentioned, additional handouts will include short works by Katherine Anne Porter, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Fred Chappell, Wendell Berry, Peter Taylor, James Dickey, and Zora Neale Hurston.

Objectives:
To begin to understand the historical context of the Modern American South and the influences that have shaped it.
To form a basic understanding of literary theory through critical and biographical materials, and to develop critical acuity through literary analysis and interpretation by close and repeated readings of text.
To recognize the distinctly “southern” qualities both from a cultural and literary standpoint and to understand how these qualities have resulted from, and given rise to, a “southern ethos”.
To hone and polish writing skills through regular writing assignments and essay examinations, and to increase vocabulary. 

Book list:
Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Toole, The Neon Bible
Welty, The Optimist’s Daughter
Williams, The Glass Managerie

LITERARY FAIRY TALES
Grades 11/12 
First semester course
.50 credit,  class meets daily

The influence and expression of literary fairy tales are evident throughout the arts. This course examines various versions of classic fairy tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Hansel and Gretel, from the 17th century to the present. Using a variety of critical approaches, students examine the genre as an evolving expression of socio-cultural values.

Course Objectives:
To examine the origins of classic literary fairy tales.
To compare various versions of similar tales from different cultural traditions.
To examine the cultural and historical context of the genre as it has evolved.
To become familiar with various critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of fairy tales.
To examine the influence and expression of fairy tales in various art forms from the 17th century through the present.
To develop skill in critical reading, writing, and oral expression.

Book List:
Card, Enchantment
McKinley, Rose Daughter
The Poet’s Grimm: 20th Century Poems From Grimm Fairy Tales or Transformations by Anne Sexton
Tatar (ed), The Classic Fairy Tales, A Norton Critical Edition

RUSSIAN LITERATURE
Grades 11/12 
First semester course
.50 credit,  class meets daily

The nineteenth-century Russian authors established an artistic tradition which even today sharply differentiates Russian literature from its Western counterpart.  In a nation that historically prohibited normal avenues of free expression, literature and its creators became the voices of society's most urgent concerns.  The course examines the lives and representative works of major Russian authors.  Attention focuses on the evolving literary aesthetic and the socio/political shifts which influenced its development.

Objectives:
To better understand the Russian character through history and literature.
To learn the contributions and influence of Russian literature to world literature.
To relate the social and political conditions which influenced the Russian authors.
To write well-developed essays emphasizing clear theses supported by specific and relevant details.

Book List:
Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Gogol, "The Overcoat"
Pushkin, selected stories
Solzhenitsyn, selected works
Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych, Hadji Murad
Akhmatova, Brodsky:  selected poems
O’Conner, Woe is I

 SHAKESPEARE
Grades 11/12 
First semester course
.50 credit,  class meets daily

A thorough study of several of Shakespeare's plays acquaints students with the versatility and universality of the playwright.  The course includes five plays, several films, and discussion of the literary and theatrical techniques of Elizabethan drama.

Objectives:
To learn a critical approach to the reading of dramatic literature and to demonstrate the techniques of literary criticism in controlled, persuasive essays.
To gain insights into Elizabethan language and the relationship of that language to contemporary English.
To place Shakespeare in a historical perspective and to relate him and the plays to the contemporary world.
To read and grow with blank verse and the Shakespearean sonnet.
To appreciate Shakespeare's plays not only as literature but as theatre; to learn about staging a Shakespearean play, both in Elizabethan times and today.

Book List:
Hamlet
Macbeth
The Merchant of Venice
The Tempest
Twelfth Night
O’Conner, Woe is I