Students will analyze how the seminal works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau convey the central tenets of Transcendentalism, reflecting on their own relationship to those ideas and considering the legacy of Transcendentalism in contemporary poems and essays.

Students will examine how Fitzgerald uses diction, point-of-view, and symbolism to develop themes about class, the past, and the American dream. 

Students will examine Janie's evolution on her journey of self-discovery, exploring how Hurston uses motifs to develop Janie's ideas about love and relationships, independence, and identity.

In reading Tennessee Williams' "memory play" The Glass Menagerie, students examine thematic topics such as individual freedom, obligation, reality and escape.

Students read Chinua Achebe's widely acclaimed Things Fall Apart as they examine themes of identity, culture, and colonialism, analyzing the author's careful choice of words and symbolism.

Students study the institutional processes and popular beliefs surrounding mental health in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, as they discuss and debate the themes of power, order, and authority.

Students read multiple genres of fiction, including the absurdist The Metamorphosis and the ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus the King, with the aim of exploring the question: "What does it mean to be human?"

Christina Garcia's novel Dreaming in Cuban will offer students a vivid picture of distant and present-day Cuba, as they contemplate how our past, good or bad, makes us into who we are today.

Students discover the novel Waiting, examining such topics as the Cultural Revolution and Confucian values as well as tensions between old and new, rural and urban, and communism and capitalism.

Students read the renowned novel The Scarlet Letter, exploring and analyzing the themes of sin, compassion, and hypocrisy as they played out in seventeenth-century Puritan New England.