Harper's Academy U.S. History and American Literature

Here is the link to your reading for Frederick Douglas this week.

This week's class will explore transcendentalism, Emerson, and Thoreau. But like most of the topics we've studied so far, we can find modern connections. Transcendentalism was a religious movement that grew out of Romanticism between 1836-1860. We can define it as a spiritual, philosophical, literary movement with ties to the Unitarian Church around Boston. Like Romanticism, this movement emphasized individual rights and inspiration, the latter, especially within nature. Transcendentalists believed that individuals can discover truth for themselves, rather than learning it through tradition. It differs from Romanticism in that it focused on God. Transcendentalists believed that God was everywhere and could be discovered through intuition and that all people have a divine inner light. By accessing this light or intuition, they can transcend the ordinary and experience the spiritual. The five tenets of Transcendentalism: 1. Nonconformity 2. Self-Reliance 3. Importanc

Please bring your OBAP book to class tomorrow. We will be discussing "Blight" in class. Make sure you read through this poem a couple of times! Also, I hope you have finished your movie posters and poems. Bring those, also. I'd like to hang them up in the room. :) See you tomorrow, Heather

·        October 31—The birth of the American reform and the Second Great Awakening: religious and secular roots, religious revival; public schools and Horace Mann, Walt Whitman, Abolition and resistance (Nat Turner’s Rebellion, Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe) Underground Railroad; emergence of women’s rights movement and connections to abolitionist movement (Susan B. Anthony, Grimke sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton) Assignment: Please choose one of the above topics for further research and prepare 2 academic paragraphs on one of the following questions. You must include textual evidence from your research and a citation.  Consider: 1.      What was it about the message of the Second Great Awakening that inspired so many social reform movements? 2.      How does religion continue to shape American society in the 21st century? 3.      How did abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass manage to c

Our exploration of America is about to shift and expose two very different ideologies and cultures within the borders. Often, even today, many folks will recognize this difference occurs right about the location of the Mason-Dixon line. This will be important for you to remember, but I'm visual. I like to see where this is located, so I'm putting up a small map as a reference.