Introductions
Welcome to UW in the High School, English 111 — a course designed to engage you as a reader, writer, and thinker.
In your lifetime, the notion of reading has changed. Whereas literacy used to be your ability to read a book, an essay, or a poem, it has now grown into visual media that requires to look — also to think critically and write about — movies, commercial, ads, and symbols.
In this course, we will move from the Book of Genesis to Post-Modern thinkers you have never heard about, and probably will never hear from again (unless you are one of us — the English teacher types). But everything we study centers around one of three questions:
- Who Are You?
- How Did You Get Here?
- Where Are You Going?
Every story we read, every painting we examine, every movie we watch, yes, will be designed to help you improve your reading, writing, communicating, and thinking. But, more importantly, they will also be the stepping stones to life’s big questions. Maybe you have asked them of yourself already; maybe someone has asked them of you. But this class will press you to consider how to use literature as a mirror to your soul, and, together, we will find something worth discovering.
Section I: Martin Dressler: Tale of an American Dreamer
Week 1 – Dressler: Modernism Week 4 — Dressler: Intertextuality
Week 2 – Dressler: An Ideal Husband Week 5 — Dressler: What is America?
Week 3 – Dressler: City as a Container Week 6 — Dressler: What is a Hero?
Section II: The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Week 7 – Fundamentalist: Introduction
Week 8 – Fundamentalist: Assumptions
Week 9 – Fundamentalist: Patriotism
Week 10 — Fundamentalist: Literary Criticism
