Unit+6+Challenges+and+Successes+of+the+20th+Century

Unit 6: Challenges and Successes of the 20th century

Overview:

 * It includes a few titles from the twenty-first century as well. The unit traces the flourishing of the American short story and the development of the novel and dramas since World War II. Students will read masters of the southern short story—writers like Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor. The unit also explores works by Richard Wright and Ra" lph Ellison, whose texts expose tensions within the emerging African American literary tradition. The 1960s are rich with both informational and literary works mirroring profound cultural shifts in the American landscape. This unit also emphasizes how the changing political landscape, including the words of leaders like John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, shaped the world in which we live.

Focus Standards:

 * **RL.11-12.5:** Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.
 * **RL.11-12.7:** Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem (e.g., recorded or live production of a play or recorded novel or poetry), evaluating how each version interprets the source text. (Include at least one play by Shakespeare and one play by an American dramatist.)
 * **RI.11-12.2:** Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.
 * **W.11-12.2:** Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.
 * **SL.11-12.3:** Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, assessing the stance, premises, links among ideas, word choice, points of emphasis, and tone used.
 * **L.11-12.5:** Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.
 * Interpret figures of speech (e.g., hyperbole, paradox) in context and analyze their role in the text.
 * Analyze nuances in the meaning of words with similar denotations.

Suggested Student Objectives:

 * Analyze the development of the short story in post-World War II America.
 * Trace the development of the “southern gothic” tradition in American literature.
 * Distinguish between the two distinct views within the African-American literary tradition as represented by Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison.
 * Explore the nature of African-American literature during the civil rights movement following World War II.
 * Recognize the emergence of dynamic views represented in literary texts by first- and second-generation Americans.
 * Explain how the “Beat Generation” challenges traditional forms and subjects in literature.
 * Identify multiple postmodernist approaches to critical analysis of literature.
 * Note the influence that postmodernism has had on the “common reader.”


 * LITERARY TEXTS**
 * Novels**
 * //Love Medicine// (Louise Erdrich)
 * //Song of Solomon// (Toni Morrison)
 * //The Joy Luck Club// (Amy Tan)
 * //Invisible Man// (Ralph Ellison)
 * //Native Son// (Richard Wright)
 * //Seize the Day// (Saul Bellow)
 * //The Catcher in the Rye// (J.D. Salinger)
 * //Cat's Cradle// (Kurt Vonnegut)
 * //Into the Wild// (Jon Krakauer)
 * //All the Pretty Horses or The Road// (Cormac McCarthy)

Short Stories
 * "The Man Who Was Almos' a Man" (Richard Wright)
 * "Petrified Man" (Eudora Welty)
 * "A Good Man is Hard to Find" (Flannery O'Connor)
 * "The Swimmer" (John Cheever)
 * "A Small, Good Think" (Raymond Carver)
 * "Flying Home" (Ralph Ellison)
 * "A & P" (John Updike)
 * "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" (Joyce Carol Oates)

Drama
 * //Death of a Salesman// (Arthur Miller)
 * //A Streetcar Named Desire// (Tennessee Williams)

Poetry
 * "Sestina" (Elizabeth Bishop)
 * "The Fish" (Elizabeth Bishop)
 * "One Art" (Elizabeth Bishop)
 * "American" (Allen Ginsberg)
 * "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World" (Richard Wilbur)
 * "Skunk Hour" (Robert Lowell)
 * "Memories of West Street and Lepke" (Robert Lowell)
 * "July in Washington" (Robert Lowell)
 * "The Black Swan" (James Merrill)
 * "The Octopus" (James Merrill)
 * "Days of 1964" (James Merrill)
 * "The Tartar Swept" (August Kleinzahler)
 * "Happiness" or "The Current" (Raymond Carver)
 * "The Vistor" (Carolyn Forche)
 * "My Friends" (W.S. Merwin)
 * "Tulips" (Sylvia Plath)
 * "Advice to a Prophet" (Richard Wilbur)


 * INFORMATIONAL TEXTS**
 * The Feminine Mystique (Betty Friedan)

Speeches
 * "Address to the Broadcasting Industry" (1961 - Newton Minow)
 * Inaugural Address (January 20, 1961 - John F. Kennedy)
 * Brandenburg Gate Address (January 12, 1987 - Ronald Reagan)

Essays
 * "On Being an American" (H.L. Mencken)
 * "Seeing" or other essays from //Pilgrim at Tinker// (Annie Dillard)
 * "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
 * "Remembering Richard Wright" (Ralph Ellison)
 * "The Content of His Character" (Shelby Steele)

Biography/Autobiography
 * //Patton: A Biography// (Alan Axelrod - excerpts)
 * //The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley// (Malcolm X - excerpts)

Art
 * ART, MUSIC, AND MEDIA**
 * Willem de Kooning, //Excavation// (1950)
 * Barnett Newman, //Concord// (1949)
 * Jackson Pollock, //Number 28, 1950// (1950)
 * Mark Rothko, //Untitled// (1964)
 * Franz Kline, //Untitled// (1957)
 * Robert Motherwell, //Elegy to Spanish Republic, 70// (1961)
 * David Smith, //Pillar of Sundays// (1945)
 * Mark di Suvero, //Are Years What?// (For Marianne Moore - 1967)
 * Louise Bourgeois, //Red Fragmented Figure// (1953)

Architecture
 * Farnsworth House, Plano, Illinois (1951)
 * Seagram Building, New York City, New York (1957)

Music and Lyrics
 * "This Land is Your Land" (Woody Guthrie)
 * "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (Pete Seeger)
 * "Blowin' in the Wind" (Bob Dylan)

Film
 * Elia Kazan, dir., //A Streetcar Named Desire// (1951)
 * Glenn Jordan, dir., //A Streetcar Named Desire// (1995)

Media
 * //Omnibus: A Streetcar Named Desire// (television episode, 1955)