The Stuyvesant High School Online Course Guide

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Because of the recent revision of the curriculum for 9th and 10th grade History classes, the selection of materials for the sophomore Humanities classes has changed. What was formerly a course in the literature of Western Europe from ancient to modern times is now a course that begins with the Enlightenment and moves into the modern era in a worldwide sweep.

Since the traditional sophomore Spring curriculum is the "Greek semester," we are preserving this long-standing tradition by studying the Greeks in the Fall semester. However, in the Spring we will study post-colonial works of literature, some of which are modern interpolations of classical Greek materials. These works include Brien Friel's post-Enlightenment drama Translations and Griselda Gambaro's subversive allegory about the "Dirty War" in Argentina, "Antigona Furiosa." We will also read Mariama Ba's African novella, So Long a Letter, V.S. Naipaul's Caribbean novella, Miguel Street, short stories from Rosario Santos' Central American anthology, And We Sold the Rain, Albert Camus' Algerian tale, "The Guest," Yusuf Idris' Arabic story "The Chair Carrier," Lu Hsun's revolutionary "Diary of a Madman," Louis Begley's Holocaust novel Wartime Lies, and a selection of twentieth century poets, including Edward Kumau Brathwaite (Barbados), So Chong-ju (Korea), Yehuda Amichai (Israel) and Seamus Heaney (Ireland).

The grades for this one-year course will be based on a series of two to three page essays on various topics. On average students will produce two essays per marking period. Close attention will be paid to grammatical proficiency, the focused development of ideas, and some measure of originality. Students applying for this course must have English and Social Studies averages of at least 90%