Students, teachers: What's on your lit. syllabus?

Just curious about what's on the required reading lists for English lit. courses these days, and especially American literature. I'm wondering how much they've changed in recent decades.

If you've taken or taught high school or college courses in literature lately,

- what's the name of the course?
- where? (location or region)
- what level? (high school junior, senior, college lower division, upper division, grad school)
- when did you take or teach it/them?
- what's the required reading? and are those complete works or excerpts?

Thanks for your response.

Meredy

Are you interested in grad-school lit courses as well?

Yes. Do please mention the level, though.

I took an early American Lit course in 2012. We read six full-length novels: Moby-Dick, The American, The House of Mirth, Clotel, Hope Leslie, and Iola Leroy. No excerpts that I remember. This was for an undergrad class at the University of California, Riverside. I took another American Lit course at my local community college in 2011 (still in southern California), but that one was nothing but excerpts. We used the Norton Anthology of American Literature, 7th edition, volumes A and B, but I don't remember which specific excerpts we read. I just graduated with an English degree, so I could list quite a lot more, haha.

Oh good grief - I totally forgot about this thread. I hate this time of the year, my brain simply falls out.

I will post mine when I get home to my syllabuses - sadly I don't remember all of the readings, even though I'm sure I should.

I'm currently in high school in Texas and taking Advanced Placement English Literature (senior year/ English 4). Last year I took Advanced Placement English Language and Composition (junior year/ English 3). These are theoretically college level courses. In practice, it varies immensely depending on the teacher.

In AP English Language and Composition:
- The Scarlet Letter
- The Great Gatsby
- One Flew Over of the Cuckoo's Nest
- The Crucible
- Beowulf
- King Lear
- Candide
- The short story The Yellow Wallpaper
Also an independent reading project where we had a number of choices. I went with The Illustrated Man.
We had a group assignment on romantic poets. Blake, Keats, and Byron where among the choices, but I don't remember the others.

In AP English Literature (last semester):
- Pride and Prejudice
- Heart of Darkness
- How to Read Literature Like a Professor
- Atonement
- Hamlet
- An excerpt from The Canterbury Tales
- An excerpt from Arthurian legend, part of The Green Knight
Also an independent reading project where we could chose between:
- Sense and Sensibility
- Middlemarch
- Wuthering Heights
- Jane Eyre
There was also poetry assignment with assorted poems that we read each week.

I think we read Macbeth second semester, but other than that I'm not sure what else.

I can remember a some books from the first two years.

Freshman year (Honors English 1):
To Kill a Mocking Bird
The House on Mango Street
Romeo and Juliet
Excerpts from The Odyssey
Fahrenheit 451
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Count of Monte Cristo

Sophomore year (Honors English 2):
In the Time of the Butterflies
Julius Caesar
Of Mice and Men or East of Eden
Their Eyes Were Watching God
A Modest Proposal
Catch-22

I am not taking any course, but I frequently encounter syllabi for various academic coursework. The one that caught my eye most recently was one on the British novel which was entitled Songs of Innocence; Songs of Experience. Naturally, the poetry of William Blake was included but other works included were Othello and Frankenstein both of which makes sense in light of the course title. However, what caught my eye was the inclusion of Price and Prejudice. My first thought was to question whether the professor was presenting the characters of Elizabeth and Darcy as examples of innocence and experience. That struck me as a bit dull and pedestrian. But then my brain caught the tail-end of an idea. Look at the problem of Lydia Bennett as the innocent and then as the woman of experience. Then I thought about the parallel of Lydia and Georgiana. And by the time I was done, I was thinking that it would be wonderful to encounter some of these same works through the lens of innocence and experience.

Thank you, thank you! Please keep them coming. >6 pwaites: that's exactly the level of detail I was hoping for.

Follow up on my post in >7 jillmwo: above, the titles included in that syllabus were
1) Othello
2) Paradise Lost
3) Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience
4) Pride and Prejudice
5) Frankenstein
6) Poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
7) Dracula
8) Remains of the Day

An interesting way of grouping together those works, particularly the addition of that last one.