Nathaniel Hawthorne' stories are more often associated with dark examinations of complex systems of morality than any sense of conventional comic humor; and yet Hawthorne's subtle satiric wit oftentimes offered equally piercing insights into the human psyche. In this lesson, students read and examine a humorous story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and compare it to other American literary humorists.
In White Fang, Jack London sought to trace the “development of domesticity, faithfulness, love, morality, and all the amenities and virtues.” In this lesson, students explore images from the Klondike and read White Fang closely to learn how to define and differentiate the terms “nature” and “culture."
This lesson, based on primary source analysis, uses the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition as an entry point to introduce debates and developments of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.
In this lesson, students will comprehend the organizational structure of the Underground Railroad; learn about one of its most famous conductors, Harriet Tubman; and consider ways that heroines and heroes of slavery resistance should be remembered.
Students are often gleeful to discover that their reading homework involves only a few short poems. Yet the attentive student realizes that carefully reading a poem involves as much work as reading a short story, article, or passage from a novel. This lesson teaches students how to read a poem so that they are prepared, rather than simply present, for class discussion.
This lesson explores tea party protests other than the Boston Tea Party, and includes activities to help students analyze the reasons behind the tea protests as well as their consequences for the American Revolution.
Students will explore how Chopin stages the possible roles for women in Edna's time and culture through the examples of other characters in the novella.
In 1845, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and Written by Himself was published. In it, Douglass criticizes directly—often with withering irony—those who defend slavery and those who prefer a romanticized version of it.
In this triumph of magical realism, "One Hundred Years of Solitude," chronicles a century of the remarkable Buendía family’s history in the fictional Colombian town of Macondo. The three lessons presented here explore the fantastic elements of this imaginary world, the real history that lies behind them, and García Márquez’s own philosophical musings on writing about Latin America.
