Departments & Courses

This semester length course will examine several classic African American writers, with a particular eye towards the use of writing to address social change, oppression, and the examination of the self as an individual. We will begin by positioning African American literature within an American literary history. Specifically, we will consider models of storytelling that shape African American narratives. We will consider African Americans’ understandings of themselves in narratives, as well as the ways in which they have historically been understood in the American popular imagination. Finally we will dissect not only the historical and political contexts of the works, but also the ways in which issues of gender, sexuality, and class  inform the works.

Prerequisites: English 1-4.

This course explores the literary, geographical, political, and cultural influence of setting and authorial background on narrative, content and style. What happens to narrative voice when we cross oceans? How can stories honor our ancestors and ourselves? What do we do when our hearts belong to two or even three countries? This course surveys short stories, poetry, memoirs, and brief nonfiction writings by Asian American authors, as well as writing by authors from China, India, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. Besides enjoying vibrant prose, students will refine their college level skills in oral and written discourse, as well as closely examine the issue of narrative perspective.

Prerequisites: English 1-4.

This course’s study of archetypal literature provides a basic understanding of the writer’s craft. English 1,2 teaches vocabulary and grammar through context and application. Students compose creative writing inspired by the literature as well as practice the composition of timed essays and the process method for basic three-part explanatory, contrast and problem-solving essays. Throughout the course, students employ literary terminology in text-centered verbal and written discourse. Note: students in the DePaul Scholar and I2 Programs will have a summer assignment in this course.

Incorporating service learning and highlighting the immigrant experience, students build upon their skills from English 1,2 with a greater focus on poetry and drama. Students will engage with a variety of perspectives surrounding the themes of epiphany, adolescence, morality, and ethnicity as they strengthen their critical literacy and writing abilities.  

This course explores all the topics covered in 10th grade English, but in greater depth and intensity. Students read more and at a more rapid pace; students write more challenging and more frequent essays. This course is designed to prepare underclassmen for the English advanced placement program.

Note: this course includes a summer assignment.

Prerequisites: 1) Either an A in English 1 or a score in the top quartile of the PSAT 8,9. 2) A writing sample (English 1 final essay.) 

This rigorous course is the study of rhetoric, the art of verbal expression. This course examines the cultural contexts for critical thinking and writing, focusing on the myths that dominate American Culture. Reading widely from both fiction and nonfiction, students learn to identify stylistic strategies rooted in voice, tone, diction, punctuation and structure. In this writing intensive course, students become more accomplished writers by consistently applying what they have learned to their own compositions. Students must take the Advanced Placement exam.

Note: this course includes a summer assignment.

Prerequisites: 1) Either a cumulative 3.5 GPA in all previous English courses or a score in the top quartile of the PSAT. 2) Either a writing sample (including the English 3 final essay) or an "A" in the first semester of a 2021-22 AP English course or English Selective.

Surveying world literature, this writing-intensive course focuses on college-level literary analysis. Taught like a college class, the course includes close reading of sophisticated texts, an examination of narrative style and structure, and an extensive review of poetic technique. Each semester, the course culminates in the composition of a college-level literary paper. Students must take the Advanced Placement exam.

Note: this course includes a summer assignment.

Prerequisites: 1) Either a cumulative 3.5 GPA in all previous English courses or a score in the top quartile of the PSAT.  2) Either a writing sample (including the English 3 final essay) or an "A" in the first semester of a 2021-22 AP English course or English Selective. 

Designed by university faculty, the Expository Reading and Writing Course (ERWC) is a college preparatory, rhetoric-based English language arts course designed to develop academic literacy, or advanced proficiency in rhetorical and analytical reading, writing, and thinking. Student performance in this course is a primary factor used to determine entry level English placement in the CSU and UC systems. NOTE: as of 2023-24, ERWC is reserved for 12th graders only. 

Prerequisites: Three years of English.

More than a form of communication for the Irish people, language is often a means for playing a verbal game and for creating an identity. As anyone who has attempted it will no doubt attest, mundane conversation with an Irish person is virtually impossible. Irish writers are renowned for their satirical accounts of life in a war-torn, impoverished nation. This course will examine several classic Irish works, with a particular eye toward the use of humor as a means for coping with oppression and depression. Prerequisites:  English 1-4.

Journalism is the systematic gathering, interpreting, processing and disseminating of information, opinion and entertainment for publication. This course is an academic subject requiring substantial reading and writing. Legal, ethical and sociological aspects of journalism come under intense scrutiny. Students learn many aspects of newspaper and magazine journalism, including reporting, interviewing, feature and investigative writing, new journalism techniques, editing, computer layout and design. Note: As an elective, this course does not count toward the English graduation requirements. It is offered block 7 or 8.

Prerequisites: Students must be 10th, 11th, or 12th graders with a cumulative 2.5 GPA in all previous English courses.

Note: As an elective, this course does not count toward the English graduation requirements. 

What does it mean to be human? How much control do we humans have over our physical and mental capacities, or over our external world? Does technology allow us to play God? Literature and Science seeks to define what it means to be human by examining classic and contemporary literature that explores bioethical issues. Based in texts such as Shelly’s Frankenstein, Hawthorne’s "The Birthmark", Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, students explore and debate some of the most provocative political and moral issues of our time.  As young adults, as emergent voters in the biotech hub Bay Area, as students at a Catholic school, and ultimately as human beings, our students will be asked to understand and to decide an array of bioethical issues. Though it will not manufacture answers, this course will stimulate ethical inquiry through narrative as well as hone literary and writing skills.

Prerequisites:  English 1-4.

The “Golden Age of Athens” has a rightful claim as the basis of western civilization; architecture, sculpture, art, politics, philosophy, and drama flowered in this brief period of history. This course will try to form a picture of life in the “Golden Age” of the Greeks from the fragments we have left. How can imagination fill in missing pieces of this historical puzzle? Students will study the dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes in context of the Festival for Dionysius as well as the chronologies of Herodotus (“the Father of History”) and Thucydides. Students will also take a look at the major characters that shaped this protean period of time: Pericles, Socrates (via Plato), Themistocles, and Phidias among others. Students will then finally contemplate a new question: why does this classic era still influence today’s postmodern world? 

Prerequisites: English 1-4.

Before humankind invented written language, we told stories with pictures, evidenced by the crude drawings found on caves walls in southern France and Spain. As written language evolved and became the preferred medium for storytelling, visual storytelling persisted through church windows, tapestries, oil paintings and comic texts, maintaining an important role in the transmission of the stories of the people by whom and for whom they were created. Ours is an era of increasingly complex visualization with the use of digital technologies and the proliferation of these images via the Internet.How well do we understanding the medium of visuals for storytelling? In this course, students will learn the vocabulary of graphic novels and examine how graphic novels build the interpretive skills students already know about works of fiction and non-fiction. Readings will include texts that showcase the possibilities of graphic novels to tell a story, convey historical knowledge, offer commentary on the human condition and more. While the majority of assessments will be written in text-only language, students will have an opportunity to create their own short-length graphic stories.Prerequisites: English 1-4.

This course explores the genre of literature known as Magical Realism, and requires readers to willingly suspend their disbelief of the fantastic and supernatural, and instead accept as the framework in which to understand very real world situations. The artistic genre emerged in Latin America as a subversive means to give voice to the marginalized and disenfranchised. To that end, this selective focuses on the work of Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chilean-American writer Isabel Allende, and13 contemporary American Indian writers. Students will continue to refine their skills in oral and written discourse, as well as closely examine the genre and its impact.

The word “modernism” implies a self-conscious break from the past. In the United States and Europe, from the late 19^th century to the early 20^th century, the ache of modernism was so fervent in literature, art, philosophy and architecture that the era took this “modern” name. While engaging with the era’s poets and authors, students will examine this break from the past and the impact it has had on literature as a whole. Students will then examine modernism as a specific era of history and analyze the wave of modernism in other branches of expression. Prerequisites: English 1-4.

Poetry asks students to engage deeply with a broad expanse of poems, building upon knowledge and skills learned in earlier English courses. This course will examine the elements of poetry - images, figures of speech, tone, symbols, allegory, sounds, patterns, and rhythm. Students will read diverse poets and various genres to glean patterns, style and approaches, as they develop their unique voice and create their own poetry. Since poetry is a medium that appeals simultaneously to the intellect and the senses, and should be read aloud and heard to be fully enjoyed, students will engage in myriad independent and collaborative activities involving sound and sense. Prerequisites: English 1-4.

Revolutionary Women’s Literature takes a scholarly approach to the appreciation and understanding of the impact American female writers have made on American literature and social history. The course examines the challenges these literary pioneers overcame through analysis of the intersection of their personal lives and the social issues that inspired their work. While disparate in style and subject matter, Dickinson, Chopin, Hurston and Hellman all flouted convention to promote the causes of women and other disempowered Americans.

Prerequisites: English 1-4.

The completion of this course will develop the student’s Shakespearean eye and ear through poetry and drama, and the study of William Shakespeare, the person within his historical context. Since even a year-long university course would have difficulty examining the entirety of Shakespeare’s works (38 plays, 154 sonnets and other long poems), this semester course does not aim to digest the whole of Shakespeare at once or promise the mastery of Shakespeare, but rather provides an in-depth sampling of each of the three categories of plays (history, comedy and tragedy) originally presented in the First Folio, along with a tasting of some of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Shakespearean drama was meant to be seen and heard; while our postmodern world offers us the convenience of Shakespeare’s works in text format, participation as both an audience member and as an actor will be essential to the completion of this course. Putting drama into action will also help students imagine the motivation of the playwright, actor and audience member during Shakespeare’s time. 

Prerequisites: English 1-4.

This course takes a scholarly approach to the appreciation and understanding of classic science fiction. Far from the light sabers and scaly monsters of pop/genre fiction, this course presents an argument for speculative literature as one of the most cogent, serious and exciting literary forms in modern times. The course examines the history and evolution of speculative literature from its origins in ancient folklore through its golden age and onward to its contemporary forms, with special attention to such enduring sci-fi motifs as technological innovation, robotics, alien contact, time and space travel, human evolution and apocalypse. Prerequisites:  English 1-4.

This course explores the literary, geographical, political, and cultural influence that land and place can have on narrative, content and style. It then dives into questions that offer multiple answers. How do place and culture shape us? What can we glean about our shared humanity from reading stories from other regions and cultures? While not attempting to span all parts of the globe in one semester, this course surveys short stories, poetry, and novels from all continents. Besides enjoying vibrant prose, students will refine their college level skills in oral and written discourse, as well as closely examine the issue of narrative perspective.