English for Everyone

Highlighting Unique English Courses Offered at Maclay School

Photo by Vine Butler/Maclay Andalusian

Maclay School’s English Department offers an extensive array of courses for all students to take, ranging across various focuses of study. While the freshmen and sophomores are advised to take more general courses to set a foundation for their English and literary education, upperclassmen, mainly seniors, are presented with a unique opportunity to explore different areas of study in the English field.

Contemporary Literature and Graphic Literature, taught by upper school English teacher Jessica Kerner, are two classes split up by semester. In Contemporary Lit as well as Graphic Lit, students will be presented with texts such as Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid's Tale” and  Louise Edrich’s “Love Medicine.” Some other works students will also read include the comic series “Watchmen” and short stories by Kurt Vonnegut.

“There's usually something that one leads on to next or they're connected in some way,” Kerner said. “And so that's where next year, I've kind of decided to split it into contemporary with a focus on speculative fiction and then graphic lit, so all the comic books are together. It's a nice second semester class where the reading assignments, while long, move very quickly because you get the pictures too. First semester there'll be more actual reading words on the page, but it's kind of fun to see how different authors, I don't know, it's just cool.”

Contemporary Lit and Graphic Lit are classes generally less test focused, and the coursework is built upon projects where students are able to analyze and understand works of literature through a more creative lens. For example, students will partake in Socratic Seminars, where groups of students engage in conversations led entirely by them, as the teacher observes.

Kerner generally assigns one big final project, where students can use various creative mediums to display their knowledge and understanding of their reading. For “The Handmaid's Tale,” students completed a “Create your own Dystopia” project, and could create posters, video games and many other things to show their understanding of the book.

“I hope [my students] find a book that they vibe with so that they can see that we can read fun things at school and reading doesn't always have to suck,” Kerner said.

Additionally, Southern Literature and Mystery and Detective Literature, taught by upper school English Department Chair Lee Norment, are another pair of semesterly classes seniors can take.

In Southern Lit, students will study works by writers such as William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and contemporary poetry from writers such as Terrance Hayes, James Dickey, Naomi Shihab Nye and Robert Penn Warren. In Mystery Lit, students will study works such as Edgar Allen Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Agatha Christie’s “Poirot” and some classic stories that feature Sherlock Holmes. Moving into the 20th and 21st century, students will read noir novels including “The Maltese Falcon,” “The Big Sleep” and  “Devil in a Blue Dress.” This class also includes watching film versions of various readings, such as the Japanese short story “In a Grove” accompanied by the film version “Rashomon.”

“I really try to adapt [the classes] and update them frequently,” Norment said. “So, if I read something or watch something and I want to pull it in, I do and I don't have to worry about it. And so, that sort of flexibility, I think, creates a really dynamic class and students sense that. And so, you know, I think that buy-in and engagement, because of the creativity and freedom associated with the class, is really the best part of it.”

Lastly, Film as Literature taught by English teacher Thomas Bevilacqua is a unique course that is built to  provide students with the skills to watch things with a critical eye, enhancing and strengthening their visual literacy.

“As we move more towards a more visual based media, that is the primary way things are consumed, to have that kind of literacy and savvy to be somebody who can make your way in the world, like that's important,” Bevilacqua said. “And I think that's something that having a curriculum with a little bit more freedom, where it's not as constrained, where you don't feel like you have to, there aren't these sort of things that you have to specifically get through in an ordered period of time, it makes it easier.”

With units on the classic Film Noir genre and moving into Neo-noir for more contemporary examples of the genre, this course covers films such as “Citizen Kane,” “Sunset Boulevard” and more. The class is structured around screenings of the films, discussions about the themes, directorial choices and cinematography, with assignments to analyze the films and see them as literature. There are also assignments where students will write their own review of a film of choice, to think about how critics view film.

“We talk a lot in other English classes about being active readers,” Bevilacqua said. “Being an active viewer is something that's essential to watching great film, but also how we engage with the world that is so visually driven and seeing that moment when students start to become active viewers and pick up on, oh, the director is choosing to shoot this way in this kind of lighting with the camera either angled this way or moving this way, and it's to make me feel something, like that's really rewarding, because again, in the same way in book-based English classes, seeing that literacy and that insight developed there, seeing that in this new visual element is, that, for me, is the most rewarding thing and what I really want students to walk out of here grasping.”

Some choose to take the Advanced Placement (AP) English courses, while others may feel more comfortable in a class that doesn’t have to follow a strict curriculum with a college-level exam at the end. Luckily for Maclay upper school students, there are diverse options for their English education.