SEC: HS AMerican Lit Project

[Carolyn Gierke <cgierke@shs.k12.ny.us>]

Two of our English teachers would like their 11th grade students (all
300 of them) to do an American Lit project in place of their final
exam.  It will involve reading a selection of American Literature -
fiction, biography, collection of poems, or play.  Students will have to
research the work, the topic of the work, and parallel it with American
history, in a way to show how it reflects our society.

We are working with the following broad topics:

The American Melting Pot
The Corporate World
American Regionalism
Education in American Life
Those Inventive Americans
America At War
Racism
The Suburbanization of America
Women in American Society
The Baby Boom
Student Activisim
Ethics vs. science
The Generation Gap
The Witchhunt
Alienation and Loneliness
Trials of the Century
The American Dream
Working for "the Man"
Puritanism
The Jazz Age
The Red Scare
Crime
Brother, can you spare a dime (the economy)
The Refusal to Conform
America on the Couch (Psychoanalysis)
Greed
Where No Man Has Gone Before
The Indominable Spirit
Rich vs. Poor
The Search for Self

What we need to do now, is compile a list of American Literature  which
would correspond to these topics. For instance:  To Kill a Mockingbird
could work under Racism as well as Trials of the Century. We expect many
titles will fit more than one category.

We'd like your suggestions.  To accommodate the varying reading levels
of our students, S.E. Hinton is as acceptable for this list as James
Michener. Classic and contemporary literature are welcome.  Our goal is
to produce a list of READABLE books to use with this assignment. The
sky's the limit. Please include author and title for each book you
suggest. If you'd like to fit them into the above categories - by all
means do so.

As our thank you for your experience and insight, I will post the
original assignment and the book list as a hit.  Obviously, it will take
a little time, but I think you'll agree it might be a very useful item.

We are already consulting the usual annotated bibliographies.  We need
you to send along your favorites - these are always the best way to find
really good titles that we might overlook otherwise.

TIA

--
Carolyn Gierke, Librarian
Sweet Home High School
1901 Sweet Home Road
Amherst, NY 14228
Phone 716-689-5342
FAX 716-689-5391
cgierke@shs.k12.ny.us

The biggest roadblock to turning information into knowledge is the
belief that they are the same thing.

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