Poetry by Am Lit 39 Students
updated December 15, 2008
Pantoums on Scarlet Letter
The Wheel by Gabby Pallotto
Hester loves Pearl
She saw her own face, glowing with girlish beauty
Is that my Pearl?
With little Pearl to be guided and...
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COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course involves literature that describes or expresses the American identity. Students will read an array of literature stressing the values and experience of newcomers (Puritans), minorities (Native Americans, African-Americans, and Latin Americans), and outsiders within the larger cultural population of America. Students will explore what it has meant over some 500 years of time to be an American, and how different Americans have expressed their experiences in words. Readings will involve the colonial, enlightenment, romantic, realistic, naturalistic and modernistic periods to the present. Students will explore the characteristics, themes, philosophies and writing styles of various authors in each period. Proving specific statements with evidence from selected readings is emphasized in discussions and in essays.
In addition to reading literature of various types (fiction, non-fiction, poetry and plays), students will study grammar and hone their writing and creative writing skills. An emphasis is placed on reading comprehension, writing and language skills and further development of vocabulary and critical thinking skills. Assignments include reading in class and for homework, journals, essays, and individual and group projects
Note: In addition to certain core texts, this class involves literature not included in the American Literature 37 class. Further, this class moves through the core texts at a faster pace and with greater emphasis on textual criticism and analysis.
NB: I have posted several creative writing assignments on our site, for extra credit. If an assignment does not relate to the main text we are reading at any given time, you may assume it is such an assignment. For example: Betrayal Story (February 9 due date) does not mention Huck Finn, our current text, and is extra credit.
Link to AM LIT 39: Class Description |
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Syllabus
Welcome to Mr. Pershan's American Literature Class.
This course involves literature that describes or expresses the American identity. Students will read an array of literature stressing the values and experience of newcomers (Puritans), minorities (Native Americans,
African-Americans, and Latin Americans), and outsiders within the larger cultural population of America. Students will explore what it has meant over some 500 years of time to be an American, and how different Americans have expressed their experiences in words. Readings will involve the colonial, enlightenment, romantic, realistic, naturalistic and modernistic periods to the present. Students will explore the characteristics, themes, philosophies and writing styles of various authors in each period. Proving specific statements with evidence from selected readings is emphasized in discussions and in essays.
In addition to reading literature of various types (fiction, non-fiction, poetry and plays), students will study grammar and hone their writing and creative writing skills. An emphasis is placed on reading comprehension, writing and language skills and further development of vocabulary and critical thinking skills. Assignments include reading in class and for homework, journals, essays, and individual and group projects
Projected Texts
The Scarlet Letter
The Crucible
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Ethan Frome
The Great Gatsby
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Played
Additional readings in anthologies
Grading Policy
1. In class exercises (reading questions and quizzes): 35%
2. Classroom Participation -Attitude 15%
3. Homework: 30%
4. Unit Tests and Special Assignments (Essays, Projects, Creative Writing): 20%
Requirements
All students must bring a notebook and pen or pencil to every class.
All written assignments must be typed.
Link to American Literature 35 |
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Welcome to Mr. Pershan's English Class.
This course involves literature that describes or expresses the American identity. Students will read an array of literature stressing the values and experience of newcomers (Puritans), minorities (Native Americans,
African-Americans, and Latin Americans), and outsiders within the larger cultural population of America. Students will explore what it has meant over some 500 years of time to be an American, and how different Americans have expressed their experiences in words. Readings will involve the colonial, enlightenment, romantic, realistic, naturalistic and modernistic periods to the present. Students will explore the characteristics, themes, philosophies and writing styles of various authors in each period. Proving specific statements with evidence from selected readings is emphasized in discussions and in essays.
In addition to reading literature of various types (fiction, non-fiction, poetry and plays), students will study grammar and hone their writing and creative writing skills. An emphasis is placed on reading comprehension, writing and language skills and further development of vocabulary and critical thinking skills. Assignments include reading in class and for homework, journals, essays, and individual and group projects
Projected Texts
The Scarlet Letter
The Crucible
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Ethan Frome
The Great Gatsby
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Played
Additional readings in anthologies
Grading Policy
1. In class exercises (reading questions and quizzes): 35%
2. Classroom Participation -Attitude 15%
3. Homework: 30%
4. Unit Tests and Special Assignments (Essays, Projects, Creative Writing): 20%
Requirements
All students must bring a notebook and pen or pencil to every class.
All written assignments must be typed.
Link to American Literature 37 |
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In this one-semester course students will learn about and write a variety of expository compositions. Our principal text will be Basic English Revisited, which includes examples of good expository writing, as well as a primer on basic style. Students will write on a variety of topics -- Should abortion be legal? What is the proper punishment for murder? Why are reality TV programs so popular? We will make a weekly trip to the computer lab to write and to review certain stylistic issues (combining related sentences; achieving coherence and transition; eliminating wordiness; finding parallel structure; varying subject placement; and avoiding the passive voice). In addition to expository writing, students will have some opportunity to write creatively (poetry, short stories, and journalism).
To vary our regimen, and because vocabulary is essential to good writing and useful on the SATs, students will work on mastering and using a list of 400 college vocabulary words.
Link to Expository Writing |
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Literature and the Law
Richard Pershan
Fall 2010
This one semester course will investigate various legal issues in American law through a reading of Western literature. Students wil examine images of lawyers, judges, courts and defendants in through a variety of works. In addition, this course is designed to demonstrate how the study of literature can be made relevant to the practice and study of law. Each class will analyze a particular legal problem.
The course will involve reading fiction, plays and poetry involving trials or litigation, as well as actual transcripts of various trials. Principal texts include:
William Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice
Charles Dickens: Bleak House
Herman Melville: Billy Budd, Sailor
Gilbert & Sullivan: Trial By Jury
Franz Kafka: The Trial
Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
Albert Camus: The Stranger
Scott Turow: Presumed Innocent
Jonathan Harr: A Civil Action
Percival Jackson (ed): Anthology of American Legal Poetry and Verse
Key legal issues to be discussed will include the presumption of innocence, the principle of spousal privilege, and sentencing and the rationale for mandatory sentencing. For each reading students will be given study questions and background legal readings. Students will have to make an oral presentation, submit a final paper, and take a final exam covering the course readings.
1. Images of lawyers: New Yorker Cartoons; Daumier Illustrations
2. Rape and Racism: To Kill a Mockingbird
3. Rape and Racism: Part 2 The Fairfield Rape Case/ The Tawana Brawley Case
4. The Quality of Mercy: Merchant of Venice
5. Sentencing Guidelines & Pleas For Mercy
6. Spousal Credibility & Inheriting From a Victim: Witness for The Prosecution
7. Movie and Legal Issues From Witness For Prosecution
8. Of Their Own Will: Compelled Confessions: Rumpole of the Bailey
9. Exclusionary Rules: Outrage
10. Courts Martial: Billy Budd and My Lai Massacre
11. The Jury System: Twelve Angry Men
12. Divorce Law: Trial By Jury
13. Presumption of Innocence: Presumed Innocent
14. Exam
Grade Criteria. Students will be graded on the following three criteria:
30% classroom participation and study questions
30% quizzes, tests, critical reading exercises and hypotheticals
10% final exam (covers material from the entire semester)
30% final paper and in-class presentation.
Vigorous participation is required. When you come to class, I will expect you to be able to summarize the central points and the main arguments of the readings. If you dont understand the reading, then I expect you to come to class with a list of questions about the parts you dont understand.
Grade for participation: I reserve the right to raise your grade by half a grade if you participate actively in class, or to lower your grade by the same amount if you cut class, or if youre not prepared for class.
Classroom Presentation
Students will make a 10 minute presentation on either
some legal issue in a book or movie. Subjects include contrasting civilian law with the naval law described in Billy Budd, or examining the validity of the assertion in Outrage, that confessions made in the absence of a lawyer from a pending case (in addition to the instant case) are inadmissible
the final project
Final Project.
Students must do either
a substantial research project (10-12 pages), using 8-10 legal sources (cases, statutes, law review articles, etc.). It should be blue booked and shepardized. Students will eventually present a synopsis of the paper as their class presentation; OR
writing and arguing a brief on a legal topic. I will distribute hypotheticals that will be the basis for this assignment.
Possible subjects for term papers include:
Legal Issues of Particular Writers: Shakespeare, Dickens, Trollope
Images of Particular Courts (e.g.,The Warren Court Becomes Literature)
Images of Criminals, Judges and Lawyers in Certain Bodies of Literature (e.g. 19th))
Courtroom Literature (Evan Hunter, John Mortimer, etc)
(Perry) Masonic Trials (The Writing of E.S. Gardner)
Legal Issues in Poetry, Folklore and Light Verse
Inspiring Subjects: Literature Reflecting Particular Legal Crises (e.g. Rosenbergs)
Law in Medieval Courts
Law, Literature and Feminism
Run-away Jury Verdicts And To Kill A Mockingbird
Justice Miscarried: Mockingbird Verdicts Today
Outrage and Inadmissibility of Confessions: Was the Play right?
Merchant of Venice: Issues Involving the Dead Hand.
Mercy or Rule of Law: in Merchant of Venice; Dead Men Walking; and Furhman
Opinion Writing: Story Telling and Literary References in Judicial Opinions
Liars and Distorters: The Tarnished Image of Lawyers in Contemporary Literaturre
Go Go Lawyers: Lawyers in the Writing of John Grisham and Scott Turow
Allie Says: Images of Lawyers on TV
Women and The Law (Demographic study of women in law school and in practice)
Some of these subjects are discussed in essays or texts listed below.
Additional topics will be suggested in the first few readings.
Schedule For Final Paper
Select a topic: October 10
Submit outline, including list of sources and summaries of these sources (holdings) October 31
Submit draft paper November 18
Submit Final Paper December 12
Hypothetical Topics Include
Civil Rights Suits against the Government (1983 case)
Sentencing Guidelines
Martial law
Spousal immunity
Forced Confession
1st Amendement (law and literature and obscenity)
Freedom of Speech or Civil Rights Violation (Requiring Students to read objectionable material)
Hypotheticals
1983 Suit
In a close, hotly contested game, a black highschool basketball team defeats a white team for the state championship, before a highly partisan white crowd. After the game, the black players are heckled, and pennies are flung on them. The black teams coach, an Afro-American, goes into the crowd to make them stop heckling his team. A white fan takes a punch at the black coach, who refrains from punching back. The towns police are called and arrest only the black coach, charging him with disorderly conduct. He is made to spend the night in jail. He feels humiliated. At his job the following day, the coachs supervisor suggests that the coach did not perform his job well, since a fight occurred at the game. Additionally, the coachs son feels ashamed of his father for being arrested. At the sons school the following day, a classmate says, Heard your dad got arrested for punching out some fans at the basketball game. Can the coach successfully under 42 USC 1983?. Why or why not?
Forced Confession? The police have arrested William Gibbons for rape. Gibbons is brought into a police station and read his Miranda rights, and certain personal effects are taken from him, including his wallet and a vial of pills he is carrying. Gibbons is kept overnight and given his Miranda warning. In the morning Gibbons reports that he has a bad headache. The police offer to take him to a doctor. He declines, but asks to take one of the pills hes carrying. The police deny this, saying that they are not sure it is a prescription drug. They tell him if he confesses, however, they will release him and return his property to him. This will thereby allow him to take the drug. Gibbons confesses and is given his drug. Is his confession compelled.
Sentencing Guidelines
Five years ago, Ralph Jeppers was convicted in state court of possessing a firearm without a license, of possessing 2 pounds of crack cocaine, and of assault and battery on a police officer. Now he has just been convicted in Federal Court of possessing 5 pounds of marijuana with intent to sell. Jeppers is married but does not live with his wife, who is a parapalegic with no means of support. The Jeppers have four children, all under the age of ten, all in the custody of the state department of youth services. What are the maximum and minimum sentences the court could impose on Jeppers? Pretend you are either defense counsel or prosecution, and write a sentencing brief. What other facts or factors might be helpful to your case?
Freedom Of Speech or Civil Rights Violation?
A Jewish student whose English class reads The Merchant of Venice sues Fairfield high on the grounds that play is an anti-Semitic text. Is it a civil rights violation for a public school to require a student to read a racist text, or a text depicting racism or anti-Semitism? Would any civil rights problem be cured by any of the following accommodations a) sending a letter home to the childs parents preparing the student and parents for the text, denouncing any anti-Semitism depicted and saying the school officially disassociated itself from any anti-Semitism depicted; b) not requiring the student read the work (but still requiring the student attend class and including test questions on the work)? If some greater accommodation were necessary, what would the least intrusive accommodation be? Research the applicable civil rights law (and any relevant state laws, such as Connecticuts hate crime law if relevant), and write a brief or term paper.
LEGAL ISSUES
1. The Merchant of Venice
Sentencing Guidelines
Pleas For Mercy
Dead hand Theory
Billy Budd, Sailor
Difference between martial and civil law
My Lai Massacre
To Kill a Mockingbird
Wrongly Accused: The Sensational Bridgeport Rape Trial
Civil Rights Action against government
Images of Good Lawyer: Clarence Darrow
Believability of Testimony: White versus Black: He Said versus She Said
Mockingbird Reversed: The Case of Tawana Brawley
Rumpole For the Defense
Forced Confession
Presumed Innocent
Presumption of Innocence
Outrage
Exclusionary Laws: Search and Seizures
Confessions Without lawyers
Witness For Prosecution
Spousal Privelege
Inheriting From a Victim
12 Angry Men
Jury System
Secondary Sources
Breen, Jon L., Novel Verdicts: A Guide to Courtroom Fiction, Scarecrow Press, 1984.
Brook, Thomas, Cross-Examinations of Law and Literature : Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, and Melville
Blaustein, Albert P., ed. Fiction Goes to Court. Henry Holt, 1954.
PN 6071.L33B4
Gemmette, Elizabeth V. , Law In Literature, Whitson Pub (1995)
Jackson, Percival E., comp. Justice and the Law: An Anthology of American Legal Poetry and
Verse. Michie, 1960.
Koessler, Maximilian, ed. Masterpieces of Legal Fiction. Lawyers Cooperative Pub. Co.,
1964.
Literature and Legal Problem Solving: Law and Literature as Ethical Discourse
Paul J. Heald, Editor, University of Georgia
A Guide to Law and Literature for Researchers, Teachers and Students, 1998 80 pages
ISBN 0-89089-789-1 CIP 98-85310
London, Ephraim, ed. The World of Law. 2 vols. Simon & Schuster, 1960.
Posner, Richard. Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation. Harvard Univ. Press, 1988.
K 290 .P67 1988
Also by Posner: Law and Literature:
Polak, Alfred Laurence. Legal Fictions: A Series of Cases from the Classics. Stevens, 1946.
Polak, More Legal Fictions: A Series of Cases from Shakespeare (1946), PN 6231.L4P61
Polak, Criminal Legal Fictions: A Series of Cases from Folk-lore and Opera, (1948)
Jeong, Sangjun., Representing the Rosenberg case : Coover, Doctorow, and
the consequences of postmodernism (1994)
Beyond Portia : women, law, and literature in the United States (1997)
edited by Jacqueline St. Joan and Annette Bennington McElhiney.
Essays:
Bloomfield, Maxwell. "The Warren Court in American Fiction," Journal of Supreme Court
History, Annual 1991, pp. 86-96.
Diggs, Terry K
Through a Glass Darkly ABA Journal, vol 82 (1996), pp 72-76, (A look at the American legal system as portrayed in the writing of John Grisham and Scott Turow.)
Gemmette, Elizabeth. "Law and Literature: Joining the Class Action," Valparaiso University
Law Review, vol. 29, no. 2 (1995), pp. 665-859.
Green, Eve. "Masonic Jurisprudence: Perry Mason in the Courtroom," Practical Lawyer, vol.
32, no. 8 (December 1986), pp. 69-78.
Fortunato, Stephen J. "The Literary Judge," Judicature, vol. 80, no. 3 (1996), pp. 141-142.
Review of Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life by Martha C. Nussbaum.
"Lawyers as Storytellers & Storytellers as Lawyers: An Interdisciplinary Symposium Exploring
the Use of Storytelling in the Practice of Law," Vermont Law Review, vol. 18, no. 3 (1994).
"Legal Storytelling," symposium issue, Michigan Law Review, vol. 87, no. 8 (1989)
Morse, Anita and Jean Bourguignon. "Criminals in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century
American Law and Literature: An Essay and Annotated Bibliography," Law Library Journal,
vol. 79, no. 4 (1987), pp. 639-665.
Pahl, Eileen. Book Review of The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood) and The Good
Mother (Sue Miller), Harvard Women's Law Journal, vol. 10 (Spring 1987), pp. 335-340.
Roam, Kim M. "Mark Twain: Doctoring the Laws," Missouri Law Review, vol. 48, no. 3
(1983), pp. 680-718.
Rushton, William L. Shakespeare's Legal Maxims. Young, 1907.
Stevens, Thomas W. Magna Carta: A Pageant Drama. American Bar Association, 1930.
Wigmore, John H. "A List of One Hundred Legal Novels," Illinois Law Review, vol. 17, no.1
(1922), pp. 26-41.
Link to Law and Literature |
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In a workshop environment, students work independently and cooperatively, brainstorming and developing ideas, and critiquing one anothers writing. Students will experiment with a variety of creative writing formats: principally short stories, but also poetry, rap, journalism, and possibly screenplay writing. This elective will be a read/write course, in which students read a successful example of each genre, then try their hands at writing it.
We will do various writing exercises, including interviewing a stranger, writing journalism on school events or issues, extemporizing a round-robin story, and writing persuasive essays. To vary our regimen, and because a rich and precise vocabulary and correct grammar are essential to good writing, once a week students will work on these issues.
Generally, students will receive a new assignment each Monday, turn in a rough draft on Wednesday for peer editing, and submit a final draft Friday. All work must be typed and students should retain a back-up copy. The class will likely culminate in a Blog publication of our best work.
Possible Texts include:
Sleeper Cell; Showtime script by Cyrus Voris
50 Great Short Stories, Crane, ed.
Winesberg Ohio, S. Anderson
Link to Writers' Workshop |
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Hamden High School
Richard Pershan
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