Humanities

1 term, solid, 1 credit, B, Approved as an English course by NCAA

In the post-September 11 world, understanding the Middle East is important since it figures so prominently in the politics and imagination of America. Yet despite how much we hear about the region, there is much that we don't understand about this large and diverse area that has a long and rich history.  We all have opinions or ideas about the region and the people who live there, are they valid?  How do cultures and the people of the Middle East understand themselves and what shapes our understanding of them?  What is the role of religion in the region?  We will approach these questions through an intensive study of literature and religion in order to gain a better understanding of the cultures, economics, politics, history and current events of this region.

1 term, solid, 1 credit, B, Approved as an English course by NCAA

How much do we define our identities, and how much are we defined by what others believe about us? What happens when we want to diverge from “self” that others believe we are? In this course, students will examine the novels of Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Toni Morrison. Her stylistically engaging books tell the stories of men and women who are pulled in different directions by what others believe about their history, their gender, and their race—and what they themselves come to believe about those pieces of their identity. Students will analyze Morrison’s novels to appreciate their artistry and to appreciate the idea of complicated identities, and they will respond to their readings through both academic and personal writing about identity.

1 term, solid, 1 credit, B, Approved as an English course by NCAA

Shakespeare has influenced your notions of love, family, war, and loss—whether you’ve read him or not. What makes the legacy of “the Bard” so enduring? At once a poet and a philosopher, a playwright and a politician, Shakespeare wrote sonnets and plays that have given generations the language to navigate their lives. In this course, students will undertake a sustained, in-depth study of two of Shakespeare’s iconic plays and will strengthen their capacity for high-level critical reading and thinking.  This approach to the study of Shakespeare also aims to improve students’ metacognitive ability by providing ample opportunity for reflecting on topics related to the formulation of judgments, the revision of opinions, and the nature of learning that will be of value to students in any academic enterprise in the future.  

1 term, solid, 1 credit, C, Approved as an English course by NCAA

This class will introduce you in a formal way to something you think you already know pretty well: yourself.  Specifically, the workings of your own mind and brain.  We will spend time talking about the nature and limitations of all kinds of things: beliefs, perceptions, feelings, judgments, choices. You will learn about how your brain works (and doesn’t work), what it’s good at (and what it isn’t good at).  By learning about the vast array of ‘automatic functions’ that our brains constantly and unconsciously perform, and by learning about the significant role that emotion plays in human cognition, we can learn to identify moments when our brains tend to mislead us in their attempts to be efficient with dealing with everything that we encounter in the world.  By learning about the brain, we can learn when we need to do the “manual override” of the automatic functions to ensure that our thinking is as strong as it can be.  

As we learn about all of the unconscious factors that affect our perceiving, thinking, believing, and deciding, we will learn how to see and identify these forces in action in ourselves and in others and this will make our thinking better and more deliberate.  In short, you will learn how to think about, evaluate and thereby improve your own thinking.  

2 term, solid, 2 credit, B (Text & Context and Citizenship), Approved as a Social Science course by NCAA

When creating public policy, lawmakers must weigh a number of factors. From moral questions of fairness, to balancing considerations of costs and benefits, to feasibility challenges, to potential electoral consequences if a policy is enacted, politicians are in constant conflict with these tensions – and each other – as they try to resolve issues plaguing society.

But to what end should a policy be constructed?  What obstacles—psychological, ideological, political, social and structural—interfere with conceiving and executing a policy?  What makes a public policy a “good” one?

This two-term senior elective humanities course will investigate social contract theory and moral philosophy to understand the design behind the United States system of government, its changing politics, and the various underlying values and issues that animate and affect contemporary political discourse.  Furthermore, this course will explore some significant developments in the fields of social and behavioral psychology and economics.  These insights have resulted in new understandings of human cognition and behavior that ought to be brought to bear when making determinations about the causes of and relationship between social problems when considering new policies for addressing them.  How do our automatic intuitions and perceptions affect subsequent beliefs and judgments about the source of the problem?  What should policy-makers to do ensure that their assessments of problems are more, rather than less, accurate?   

1 term, solid, 1 credit, B, Approved as a Social Science course by NCAA

This course is a historical and literary study of the American Civil War through an integration of character, leadership and the humanities.  The course will assess and apply character strengths and resilience factors to the study of leaders and organizations along with analyze and interpret the history, literature and culture of the Civil War in American life.  The course will do an in-depth reading of Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels, the Pulitzer Prize winning classic narrative of the battle of Gettysburg. 

1 term, solid, 1 credit, B, Approved as an English course by NCAA

This course is a historical and literary study of the Great War (World War I) through an integration of character, leadership and the humanities.  The course will assess and apply character strengths and resilience factors to the study of leaders and organizations by analyzing and interpreting the history, literature and culture of the Great War in an American and global context. The course will study key characters and moments in the war through close, in-depth reading of memoirs, short-stories, poetry, film, and the central texts My Fellow Soldiers and The West Point History of Warfare. With the help of the Culver Museum, the course will also seek to uncover Culver’s own part of the World War I story and its important legacy to the school.

1 term, 1 credit, solid

In this rigorous writing class, students explore and analyze a diverse range of writers and storytelling techniques; based on these models, students write short stories to develop their quintessential voices, to test the possibilities of the form, and to generate the worlds, the characters, and the conflicts that are the truest representations of existence. This is a workshop-centered class, one in which students engage in a cycle of composition, critique, and revision.

1 term, 1 credit, solid

In this writing and reading-intensive class, students examine the various modes of nonfiction--from memoir to gonzo journalism, from exposition to invention, from plot-driven narratives to lyricism--to discover and to use the forms that connect imagination, memory, research, and experience. Students will first identify the techniques of nonfiction writers, and they will then utilize those techniques in their own compositions. In this workshop-centered class, students receive give and critiques, and they work through multiple drafts in service of developing their mechanics, their analytical skills, their style, and their abilities to ground writing in truth and to render abstract thinking into image-based language.   

1 term, 1 credit, solid

Since its ancient beginnings with the songs of bards, with the cryptic utterances of soothsayers, and with the formulaic chants of ritual, poetry has been an art of set forms and innovations. By utilizing critical theories of poetics to analyze a diverse range of canonical, marginalized, and contemporary poets, students uncover poetry as the intersection between the content of an expression and the form of that expression. Modeling their own poetry on traditional forms and on contemporary experiments with language, students create a hard-fought portfolio of work. This class is centered around the workshop model; students use feedback from their peers and from the instructor to write poetry with an authentic and engaging voice.  

1 term, 1 credit, solid

Students in Research and Composition analyze the rhetorical techniques and strategies of fact-based texts. As they examine the constraints of discipline-specific discourse communities, students research, compose essays, and practice the documentation, the citations, and the writing conventions that are crucial for success in academia. Students develop their voice and their abilities to organize an essay and to engage an audience. Frequent writing, peer and teacher feedback, and mindful revision serve as hallmarks of the course.   

4 term, non-solid, meets 3 days/week, 2 credits, C, Approved as an English course by NCAA

Prerequisites: Students must complete a Writing Workshop (Expository, Imaginative or Creative Writing). They must be active leaders of a campus publication. They must consistently participate in visiting artists and author activities.

In the Creative Writing Honors Seminar, students experience a collegiate-level writing workshop which will culminate with a chapbook (or a similar artifact that fulfills the goals of the program) and a performance. In this seminar, students will become efficient, accurate, and supportive critics of their own work and of others’ work as they prepare work for publication, and they will also read deeply. The application process for this Seminar is competitive; students must submit a 7 to 10 page portfolio of work to honors director for consideration.  

Honors Project

Students will significantly contribute to campus publications and to our writing community. Honors candidates will also design and implement several learning experiences and writing projects for their peers in the workshop. Student must successfully defend their thesis in front of committee of faculty and/or professional writers.

1 term, solid, 1 credit, C, Approved as a Social Science course by NCAA

In order to facilitate a personal connection and civic mindedness, this 12th-grade course focuses on the workings of our national government. The foundations of the U.S. government are laid bare by comparing the types and origins of government and by conducting an in-depth analysis of the Constitution. Political behavior focuses upon the roles played by political parties, interest groups, the voters, the electoral process, mass media, and public opinion. The course further investigates a contemporary look at the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. A review of civil liberties and civil rights concludes the study.

1 term, solid, 1 credit, B, Approved as a Social Science course by NCAA

Comparative Government and Politics is an essential course of study for students in the twenty-first century.  Global events that impact our lives daily underscore the importance of understanding how governments and states operate differently from the United States.  This course focuses upon a theoretical framework in which to compare and contrast political systems from all parts of the world.  Students should grasp the commonalities as well as the differences among the states that are studied, and they should be able to draw conclusions about those states based upon these investigations.  The course takes a country-by-country approach with intense concentration upon conceptual comparisons.  Following the introduction of concepts and theory and the analysis used in each country, the course progresses along much of the same path for each of the core countries to be studied.  Countries that could be studied – but certainly not limited to – are Great Britain, Russia, China, Mexico, Nigeria and Iran. Students will examine the following topics:  Sovereignty, authority and power; political institutions; citizens, society and the state; political and economic change and public policy.

1 term, solid, 1 credit, C, Approved as a Social Science course by NCAA

This 12th-grade course focuses on the moral issues of political economy.  To study these moral issues, students will use lenses such as the justification and distribution of private property, authoritative vs. market allocation, taxation and public goods, education, discrimination, the environment, and actions of government.  In this class, students will apply economic theories and concepts to the study of political action and the formation of policy in addition to learning how economic and political forces may shape the incentives and constraints of policymakers and other political actors.  Finally, students will begin to make use of class analysis as a way to understand the moral issues of political economy listed above.  

Note: This is a course grounded in the controversies or disputes over the moral issues of political economy.  Students wishing to take a more skill-driven, classical economics course should visit the Ron Rubin School for the Entrepreneur course listings.

1 term, solid, 1 credit, A, Approved as a Social Science course by NCAA

This elective explores, through Aguirre & Turner’s text American Ethnicity, the nature of racism and prejudice in American society and culture. Both sociology models and historical examples are used in analyzing the development and maintenance of racism on individual, institutional, and cultural levels. Emphasized are the enslavement and segregation of African-Americans, the historical treatment of Native Americans, the emergence of hate groups throughout the country, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the role of anti-Semitism in the American response to the Holocaust.

1 term, solid, 1 credit, C, Approved as a Social Science course by NCAA

How can we learn to have responsible and civil conversations about ‘hot button’ political topics of the day, and why is this important for strengthening our democracy?  What aspects of human psychology, human behavior, technology, media, and the political landscape do we need to appreciate in order to overcome some of the automatic ways that our brains will behave when confronted with difficult and often politicized issues?  How can we get over our own emotional responses to these issues to be able to trust that those who disagree with us often have the best interests of the nation in mind, just as we do?  What is the nature and what are the origins of our own beliefs, and how can we learn to make cognitive space for diverse viewpoints in order to see the wisdom in “their” position when we value our own position so much?  How can we learn to have our feelings of confidence and certainty in our own positions thrown into doubt?  How can appreciating all of this make conversation, cooperation, negotiation, and compromise in the name of building a strong America more likely?  This class will be conversation and research intensive and its primary goals are to deeply and responsibly engage in the full range of viewpoints on the raging political issues of today including.  Some topics are abortion, guns, poverty, inequality, immigration, political correctness, identity politics, and climate change.  How can we develop the capacity to think more clearly, accurately, and rationally about these topics so that we can be leaders in the nurturing of our fragile democracy?

1 term, solid, 1 credit, C, Approved as a Social Science course by NCAA

Cell phone privacy. Sports gambling.  Affirmative action.  Gay marriage. Health care.  The U.S. Supreme Court has heard cases on all of these topics in recent years, and its decisions ultimately touch the lives of all Americans.  This course will examine the U.S. Supreme Court and its place in government and American culture.  Topics include the evolution of the judiciary and its effects on the other branches of government, the influence of the Court on the incorporation of civil liberties, internal process of the Court, models of judicial decision-making, and the politics of judicial appointments.  What’s the point?  The end goal is to develop in you a greater understanding of how the U.S. Supreme Court and politics interact and to cultivate the ability to critically evaluate commentary on the American judiciary.  In summary, the course will help you become a critical consumer of information about American courts and a better-informed citizen about U.S. government.

4 terms, solid, 4 credits, C - Satisfies Text and Context, Writing Workshop and Citizenship requirements, Approved as English and Social Science courses by NCAA

Admission to European History & Literature with AP requires a minimum PSAT score of 1150 plus a 2-term cumulative GPA of 3.80 or higher.

This reading and writing intensive course provides a college-level introductory survey of modern European History from roughly A.D. 1300 to the present. It also prepares students for the Advanced Placement exam in European History. The goals of the course are to provide students with an overview and understanding of the themes, periods, events, and people of modern Europe; a good working knowledge of historical practice and writing; and the qualifications that will enable them to pursue upper level history, literature, political science, international relations, economics and Humanities studies in college. Students will explore the literature, art and philosophy or Europe within historical, political, economic and social contexts.  These topics also help introduce them to the foundations of modern international relations, globalization, current international problems and human rights.  Students will examine the inter-relationship between these topics, as well as their roles in the development of the identities of the individual, the state, the nation and Europe as an entity.  Students will also consider questions of cause and effect and change over time, as well as other basic elements of practicing history.   This course regularly asks for the analysis and synthesis of primary and secondary sources in written form, as well as the mastery of historical events, people, eras, and themes.  While this is an interdisciplinary Humanities class, students will be fully prepare to sit for the AP European History exam in May.  

4 terms, solid, 4 credits, C - satisfies Writing Workshop and Citizenship.  One course selection from Text & context required, Approved as English and Social Science courses by NCAA

Admission to US & Comparative Government and Politics with AP requires a minimum PSAT score of 1150 plus a 2-term cumulative GPA of 3.80 or higher.

This 12th-grade elective focuses upon the study of politics and government from three perspectives: American, Comparative, and the Art of Political Writing.  Through close contextual reading of the US Constitution and related documents, the American Government and Politics segment will include an investigation of the Constitutional underpinnings of U.S. democracy; political beliefs and behaviors; political parties, interest groups, and mass media; institutions of national government; public policy; and civil liberties and civil rights. Comparative Government and Politics includes an introduction into comparative politics; sovereignty, authority, and power; political institutions; citizens, society, and the state; political and economic change; and public policy. The nations of Great Britain, Russia, China, Nigeria, Iran, and Mexico will serve as paradigms for these topics of study. The Art of Political Writing will include various types of writing for political purposes. Writing briefing papers, free-response questions, expository essays, persuasive opinions, research analysis, and political editorials will expose students to the various types of political writing essential for effective written communication.  

3 terms, solid, 3 credits, D - this course satisfies Text and Context and Writing Workshop.  One course selection from Citizenship is required. Approved as an English course by NCAA

Admission to English Literature with AP requires a minimum PSAT Evidence Based Reading & Writing (EBRW) score of 600 plus a 2-term cumulative GPA of 3.80 or higher.

AP English Literature offers a rigorous college-level approach to the study of literature and prepares students to take the AP English Literature exam in the spring.  Organized thematically, this course requires in-depth analysis and close reading of challenging British and American poetry, drama and novels.  Students are expected to write extensively and frequently on all texts covered in class, to understand and begin to use a number of the important critical approaches to analysis, and to participate in intense class discussion.