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

Class, We have moved into Realism this week and with that, we will be exploring our first novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Your assignment (a link to Audible is provided in another post) is to read or listen to the first ten chapters. I imagine this will take you up to 2 1/2 hours this week. As such, there is no writing assignment due for the next class. However, there is the final semester essay that is due November 28th, our last class of the semester. For that essay, please choose any literary movement, historical event, person, author, poem, or short story and write a 2-3 page argument or analysis. You have freedom to explore your interests here. You may write on the Puritans, Emerson, the Suffragettes, Andrew Jackson, the Trail of Tears, Frederick Douglass's letter...anything that has sparked your interest. For history this week, I would like for each of you to look into Andrew Jackson, read about the Trail of Tears, and the Indian Removal Act. Y...

We are beginning our first novel this week and it's one of my absolute favorites, although it certainly isn't without its controversies. Mark Twain wrote one of our first regional texts, and within this text, we certainly get a lot of dialect. This fits with the whole realism movement in literature. Twain writes the way folks might have spoken, and this means his spelling is difficult and can be hard to read. For this reason, I highly recommend using Audible's version, my personal favorite is the reading by Elijah Wood. Yep, you read that right. Frodo reads us Huckleberry Finn, and he does so brilliantly. If you do not use Audible, consider trying it out for a month, just to get this text. You may find that an Audible subscription is as valuable as a cable subscription. I take mine over the latter. Now, I still use my book. I follow along, highlighting and annotating really important passages, symbols, and quotes that I know I want to use in my paper. I also use little sti...

Many Americans are unaware of the prevalence of modern day slavery. In fact, 27 million people are enslaved around the world today. There are numerous TEDtalks available that hope to shed light on these dark atrocities. Here is one from a photographer that travels the world, sharing these images often ignored in our media and absent from our lives. But absent from our lives does not mean absent from our world. How do we end slavery? Here's the other video I mentioned in class.

For those of you that are Poe fans, or interested in the "real story" surrounding his death, PBS is airing this October 30th ! This is not assigned, but just a little extra fun for those of you interested.

There will be a short (5 questions) pop quiz October 31st, over our readings, the academic paragraph model, and some information found on this blog. (Review past posts to help you refresh your memory!) Those of you that score a perfect 100 will receive one homework pass for a future essay.

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...