The junior year includes continuing work in composition (critical, creative and research), and literary analysis. Students are expected to complete 2 semesters of Junior-level elective English courses. Eligible courses are included below.
This creative writing class (formerly titled Creative Writing 1) will provide students an opportunity to explore their creative and imaginative potential in order to find themselves as writers and discover their true writing voice. The class is divided into three sections. 1) Discovering your own voice and learning to write stories about your life. 2) Character voice: learning how to create a character and mimic other authors' voices. 3) Story Mechanics: the fundamentals of writing including plot, theme, character, description, dialogue, perspective, conflict, syntax, word choice, symbolism, and ultimately style. In order to accomplish these goals, the class will use open ended journaling as well as brainstorming activities to draw on a student's own life experiences for story material. We will also study and model the writings of master story tellers including William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, C.S. Lewis, Edgar Allan Poe, Bernard Malamud, Flannery O'Connor, and John Updike, among others, in order to incorporate their techniques into original stories. Peer evaluations and public readings will also be used to understand criticism and how to incorporate criticism to better students' writing.