Students explore the themes of technology and nature, language, illusion, ethnicity, gender, culture, family, and identity by reading culturally diverse selections within a variety of genres. Students will investigate and respond to some of the major themes in American literature and see how they encompass and are influenced by diverse historical, cultural, geographic, gendered, and class perspectives; explore, interpret, analyze, and respond to diverse genres (short story, novel, poetry, drama, nonfiction, testimony, and autobiography), and verse perspectives (history, culture, geography, age, gender, sexual orientation, and class); experience writing as a form of thinking, selfexpression, and communication through reading other writers’ works and through their own writing; learn grammatical and compositional information in the context of reading and writing; gain further understanding of themselves and others, and critically examine their own beliefs and attitudes through reading and discussion; and develop multicultural awareness through reading, reflection, application, and writing. Students may take the first semester of the course without taking the second semester but may not take semester 2 without taking semester 1
