English

Understanding and appreciating literary genre and technique are objectives of the freshman literature curriculum. Students read and write about a wide variety of novels, short stories, plays, and poems throughout the year. Frequent creative and expository responses are required and student skills in correct usage, punctuation, and grammatical concepts are refined during this year. Vocabulary skills, analogies, and word building skills are integrated throughout the program. In addition, the use of the web as it relates to producing papers with MLA format is examined. Students will be assigned on-line research projects to examine the quality and reliability of web sources.

English II aims at refining a broad range of skills in students. In addition to continuing the study of grammatical principles covering sentence structure, variety, and paragraph unity begun in freshman year, students further develop vocabulary skills from PSAT-SAT lists and words gleaned from the literature studies. A focus on writing includes experiences in expository, fiction, and poetry, as well as free-response writing. Students are required to respond, edit, rewrite, and refine his work. Students must also keep a writing notebook and a portfolio of his finished work for review.

Students are also required to use technology for research and investigation culminating in a research term paper.

During the course of the year, students will read classic literature spanning from Shakespearian drama to modern contemporary novels, plays, and poems. As students read and discuss the novels, the focus will be on the continued development of critical reading and thinking skills as well as the ongoing instruction in literary analysis. Along with this, students will contrast the view of the traditional hero, studied in English I, with that of the more modern hero who faces moral dilemmas and must choose which path they will take. Students explore both the positive and negative outcomes of those decisions.

Required for sophomores.

Honors English II aims at refining a broad range of skills in students. In addition to continuing the study of grammatical principles covering sentence structure, variety, and paragraph unity begun in freshman year, students further develop vocabulary skills from PSAT-SAT lists and words gleaned from the literature studies. A focus on writing includes experiences in expository, fiction, and poetry, as well as free-response writing. Students are required to respond, edit, rewrite, and refine his work. Students must also keep a writing notebook and a portfolio of his finished work for review. Students will be asked to read challenging texts and maintain a greater level of individual responsibility. Students are also required to use technology for research and investigation culminating in a research term paper. The sophomore literature component includes analysis of selections from the classic Greek tragedies to 20th century contemporary novelists and poets. Its focus is on the development of skills that will enable the student to read and think critically.

Department Approval Required

Prep's third year course is a study of the distinctive character of American literature. Students read and analyze selections from colonial America to the present and become familiar with the ideas, themes and characters who define the American Literary tradition. Portfolio assessment continues this year with expository, fiction, and poetry, often modeled on the literature.  While vocabulary and SAT work continue on this level, extensive instruction in literary criticism begins.

Required for juniors.

This college-level course is organized chronologically around the theme of the American Identity, highlighting major American authors from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. It trains students to become skilled readers of prose and poetry written in a variety of periods and rhetorical contexts, and sophisticated writers of expository, analytical and argumentative essays. All students are required to take the AP Literature Exam in May. 

Department Approval based on GPA and English class grades.

American Studies is an interdisciplinary program consisting of paired American History and American Literature classes. In this course, students examine the nation’s history and culture through literature, primary and secondary historical documents, art, music, and politics. Starting with the pre-Columbian era and ending in the 20^th century, students work chronologically and thematically through American fiction and non-fiction texts in an effort to understand the evolution of the United States as a nation, as well as the evolution of the American character and literary tradition. The course prepares students to read and write about a wide range of texts over the span of several centuries -- texts like Puritan sermons and poetry, captivity narratives, the Declaration of Independence, the essays of Thoreau and Emerson, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, famous speeches, and 20th century plays. In addition to their work for each class, students complete at least one interdisciplinary project each quarter that synthesizes the ideas of literary and historical texts, important historical events, and the music and/or art of a given era. 

The course places great emphasis on the development of critical thinking skills, especially the ability for students to recognize and grapple with enduring values, conflicts, and tensions in American life, and to develop their own essential questions about them. Student-generated essential questions serve as the starting point for their formal and informal writing, including their quarterly interdisciplinary projects. Another central component of the course is its commitment to guiding students through the writing process, which includes the creation of questions and topics, drafting, conferencing and revision.

Requirements: Approval of English and Social Studies Department Chairperson

This course is a college-level seminar leading to possible college credit for one year of English based on the student's score on the AP English exam. The course introduces students to the literary history of the English language, and provides him with a variety of critical modes with which to analyze literature. Strong emphasis is placed on the student's ability to do close reading and to communicate his ideas in writing. The first semester focuses on the epic and the picaresque novel. The second semester focuses on shorter poetry, drama, and the modern novel. Students will read authors ranging from Sophocles to Shakespeare and modern writers as well.

Department approval based on GPA and English class grades.

In the first semester, the lens of African-American literature and art will be used to more deeply examine the evolution of American art and culture. This course will focus on how Black voices fir into, and help define, the full American experience. The primary readings in the course will surround 20th century literature during, and after, the Civil Rights Era. The course will focus on analysis of poetry, prose, music, film and visual art. Further, students will be instructed in analytical and expository essay strategies to prepare seniors for writing success in college. In the second semester, using film, music, television and popular writing, students will reflect on the “Graduate at Graduation” in everyday life. Students will be challenged to examine how our culture supports and rejects “graduate at gradation” values. Evaluations will be short essays and cumulative multi-media project.

Plays were never meant to be read by someone sitting alone in a chair; they were meant to be watched. American playwrights like Arthur Miller, August Wilson, and Tennessee Williams show us a great deal about human nature and the American experience. This class will be a great chance to put together an interest in history, literature, art, and film as it will take a look at how directors bring these iconic works to life. Along with traditional essay writing, assessments will include film making, design projects and criticisms.  This is an elective course offered to seniors.

Beginning with the ancient epic Beowulf and ending with Huxley’s A Brave New World, the British Writers course explores major literary movements and the creation and development of modern literature as we know it. The course concentrates on a core of literary classics and non-fiction models to explore great themes in literature and how that literature exposes the struggles of a modern people. Over the course of the year, students will be exposed to foundational pieces of literature, but also the contemporary with a focus on the monster stories of Jekyll and Hyde and Frankenstein. Class work will include the traditional literary analysis and writing assignments, but also oral presentations and debates. Students will also have an opportunity to view and analyze clips of various film adaptions looking for differences between the author and the screenwriters’ vision.

American capitalism provides us with prosperity, the opportunity to create limitless wealth irrespective of one’s background or education, and unparalleled technological advances. It also imperils our society with a vast chasm between the rich and the poor, corporate malfeasance, and wrenching moral and ethical dilemmas. This course will examine these issues as presented in literary works including novels, plays, essays and poetry. Students will focus on two primary areas of concentration: the conflict between labor and management in the context of the Jesuit quest for social justice and the moral and ethical challenges that occur regularly in business and which conflict with principles of Ignatian spirituality. Secondary topics include economic and social mobility and technological innovation.

This course will guide students toward the development of a creative voice. Formal course work will center on writing short-stories, but students can expect to delve into poetry, screen-plays, drama, film and creative non-fiction. Students will also gain valuable informal experience editing, in the publishing process, in portfolio development and peer constructive criticism.

The work produced in this course will be instrumental in supporting the publication of the Bellarmine Review Literary Magazine.

This is an elective course offered to seniors.

The Roman Catholic Church is richly blessed with many wonderful authors who write passionately and compellingly about our faith. How many do you know? Augustine, Aquinas, Belloc, Chesterton, Dante, Day, Endo, Finnis, Greene, L’engle, Merton, O’Connor, Percy, Tolkien, and so many more. This course explores several diverse Catholic authors and their works and ideas, hones students’ critical reading and interpretative skills, and brings students together from Catholic schools around North America to celebrate our rich literary heritage through individual and group projects and presentations. This course is a semester long course that isoffered online through the Arrupe Virtual Learning Institute.

Literature is paradoxical by nature: it attempts to hold a critical mirror up to the very society that produced it and of which it is part, and so it requires skill to uncover what authors want to say, what they do say, and, critically, what they don't say. Comic books are no different. Despite being marginalized by traditional literary circles, comic books feature the same literary techniques and devices as canonized literature and therefore offer an accessible entryway into literary analysis. In this course, you will learn and/or sharpen reading, writing, and analytical skills while reading some of the most lauded comic book titles. Join me, the X-Men, Spiderman, and Batman among others on an epic literary journey. This course is a spring semester course that is offered online through the Arrupe Virtual Learning Institute. This course has a weekly synchronous meeting that is mandatory.

This course aims primarily to develop communication skills through student expression of his or her ideas using multimedia technology. Students will study models of multimedia composition used by professional and student writers and then create their own multimedia content, pushing the students to a mastery of the concepts and technical skills the composition requires. In order to fully participate in the class, the student must have a computer (Mac or Windows) on which he or she can install new programs. They will also need access to a digital camera. The semester will culminate with each student producing an original, substantive multimedia project on a topic of the student’s choice. This course is a semester long course that is offered online through the Arrupe Virtual Learning Institute.