2024-2025 School Year
English w/World Literature Honors GVL
Course Description
Welcome to the world of literature! During this course we will read important works from throughout history and from all over the world. We will read works of fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry, and place each work in the larger context of world history. We will consider each work of literature both on its own terms and in the context of the Christian worldview.
To be successful in this class:
Students must be able to maintain a rigorous reading schedule (about 100 pages or approximately four hours of audio most weeks), take an active part in classroom discussions, and complete essays and other written assignments (including a research paper), as well as presentations and tests, to demonstrating understanding and critical analysis of each work.
Grades: 10th Grade, 11th Grade, 12th Grade
Fees: $465
Prerequisites:
English 1 (must have completed 1 high school English course)
Parents must read UHC High School Literature Class Parent Information before registering their student for a literature class at UHC.
Course Credit: 1 English (honors)
Required Materials
- Three-ring notebook with paper
- Every student in grades 7-12 taking a Literature class at UHC must have access to the Blue Book of Grammar. You can download a free pdf or purchase a hardcopy. You will only need to download or purchase this book once, and your student will use it as a reference for all UHC Literature classes.
- Access to a reliable word processor and printer
Books (no electronic books may used in the classroom)*
- The Odyssey by Homer
- Antigone by Sophocles
- The Aeneid books 1-4 by Virgil
- The Divine Comedy: The Inferno by Dante
- Don Quixote, Part One by Miguel de Cervantes
- Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo (*This book only MUST be required edition!)
- Faust Part I by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
- The Ancient Oral and Classical Epic Tradition Unit (teacher will provide)
- Ancient and Modern World Poetry, Nonfiction, and Short Stories Unit (teacher will provide)
Honors Addendum Summary
Honors Books (honors students will choose two to four of these):
- The Confessions by St. Augustine
- Prison Poems of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- Don Quixote, Part 2 by Miguel de Cervantes
- The Divine Comedy: Purgatorio AND Paradiso by Dante
- The Aeneid 5-12, by Virgil
- Faust Part II by Goethe
- The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Iliad by Homer
- The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen
- Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
- The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
- Oedipus Tyrannus by Sophocles
- Weep Not Child by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
- Nectar in a Sieve, by Kamala Markanday
- The Imposter by Rodolfo Usigli
- Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
- Li Po and Tu Fu: Poems, by Arthur Cooper
Honors students will:
- Complete additional honors work incorporated into class assignments (for example, an extra question on tests, a leadership role in a group activity, or a more challenging essay prompt)
- Complete two additional assignments per semester, for a total of four per year.
The two additional assignments per semester must include reading one additional book from the honors list with its required project/ presentation (fall) or essay (spring). The other required assignment per semester may be any one of the following:
- A field trip and reflection,
- An additional book from the list and a three-paragraph reflection,
- An assignment chosen from the alternative assignments list, or
- An assignment proposed by the student using the proposal form.
Prompts and rubrics are provided for all honors essays, project/presentations, and alternative assignments.
Specific assignments and details for honors work will be provided by the teacher.
Meet Shandi Stevenson
Education: BA Literature in English Excelsior College 2004, MA Humanities California State University 2013
Experience: Freelance writer and tutor
UHC courses taught:
- Middle school journalism
- Fifth grade IEW
- American Literature
- Seventh and eighth grade literature analysis
- English with British Literature
- English with World Literature
- SAT prep verbal skills
- ACT prep verbal skills
Began teaching at UHC in 2009