Senior Seminar in Contemporary Literature

Terms: 2 (fall and winter)

Grades: 12, PG (Required for all 12th Grade and PG students)

Students choose one of the following:

The Distracted Globe

In this course we will consider the art and practice of writing fiction in the 21st century. A quarter way through the 21st century, our globalizing world is facing multiple challenges whose kind and degree were previously unimaginable: climate change, the Internet, genetic engineering, religious extremism, human migration, endemic war, democratic collapse, etc. We will read novels written in and/or translated to English from 2000 to the present that describe and reflect upon how our lives have been radically upended by the convergence of proximate and distant realities and histories.

Reckless Libertines

This course will explore how literature helps us better understand identity’s influence on romantic and intimate relationships. We will move somewhat chronologically, beginning with Shakespeare’s Hamlet to examine how fiction (and theater, specifically) explored relationships in Elizabethan times. We’ll shift to short stories for the remainder of the Fall term to efficiently cover many perspectives, styles, and ideas. In our December “Interwinter” we’ll read James Baldwin’s novella, Giovanni’s Room, to consider how some of the ideas we have been discussing are dealt with in a (relatively) longer work. When we return in January, we will examine more contemporary short stories. In the second half of the Winter Term, you will also work on your Senior Thesis, the capstone English assignment for Peddie students.

Stay, Illusion!

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” the writer Edith Wharton once asserted, “but I am afraid of them.” This course will explore various iterations of ghosts and spirits in literature and film. We will examine how apparitions function in these narratives: how they demand personal and societal justice; reflect characters’ guilt and rage; and explore the undiscovered country, what happens after death. Our core texts will include Beloved, Lincoln in the Bardo, and Hamlet; we’ll also study short works by a range of authors and explore the various creative uses of the undead, ghouls, and spirits.