Unit One: Personal Perspectives in Literature

Readings:

"Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin 3/5/08

"The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant 3/5/08

"The Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway 3/10/08

http://www.has.vcu.edu/eng/webtext/hills/hills.htm

"To Build a Fire" by Jack London

http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/firelndn.html

3/10/08

"Young Goodman Brown" Nathaniel Hawthorne 3/12/08

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor 3/12/08

"Araby" by James Joyce 3/17/08

"The Sniper" Liam O'Flaherty 3/17/08

http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/sniper.html

"The Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe

http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/telltale.html

3/19/08

"The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe 3/19/08

In Class Writing Assignments:

1. "Memory Trigger" 3/5/08

An informal writing assignment where students write out a memory (Physical description or a narrative account of the event) that has been tapped by any of the course readings.

2. "Letter to the Author" 3/10/08

An informal writing assignment where students write a letter to the author expressing their own thoughts and feelings regarding the text.

3. "Top-quoting" 3/12/08

An informal writing assignment where students quote a passage from a text that resonates with their own experience. Students will quote the passage then explain why it seems particularly meaningful for them.

Formal Writing Assignment #1: "The Personal Essay" 3/19/08

This first personal writing assignment is a personal essay that grows out of a close, sensitive reading of the first few texts in the course. The purpose of this piece is for students to articulate and develop a connection between their (or their family's ) own experience/memory/identity and one of the readings. This essay is equally grounded in the student's reading of an assigned text and their own experience. This essay requires students to quote directly from the text.