Zachary+White's+Thematic+Unit+Wiki

Zakk White // Initial Ideas: // For World Literature, I will probably end up teaching “Things Fall Apart” and “Oedipus Rex” so I might try to focus on the themes of power in both works and the tragic hero.

For American Literature, I will probably have to teach “The Crucible” and “Their Eyes are Watching God” so the theme that my CT suggests I focus on is identity but she couches it in terms of a person’s name and how important that is to their identity to make it more concrete. I am also thinking about teaching “Othello” as part of American Literature and this theme can apply as well as race to create a bridge to “Huck Finn” which my CT will be teaching.

// Organizing Questions //
 * Thematic Unit: //Disaster and the Human Spirit// **
 * Eurpoe Unit: English 10**

-To what extent do individuals have control over their lives? What role does chance, choice, or fate play?

-How can extreme situations affect one’s identity, actions, and attitudes? -How can people (especially young people) deal with the circumstances and situations life throws at them? -When life throws bad situations at people –especially people with few resources – do the principles of right and wrong in dealing with them still apply? // - //Can fiction tell the truth?

// Goals //

-Familiarize students with works of literature and art from Europe and the ideas and history in context -students thinking deeply and critically about personal disaster and larger scale disaster and the lessons we can learn from hearing/reading stories - Investigate generic conventions and mediums and to understand the differences and to create works of their own

// List of Possible Materials and Supplementary Texts // Fiction -Night - Elie Wiesel -The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka

Nonfiction -The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - Jean Dominique de Bauby -Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster - Svetlana Alexievich (NPR Audio Excerpt)

Poetry Musée des Beaux Arts - W.H. Auden

"Into the Ark" - Wislawa Szymborska

"The Second Coming" - W.B. Yeats (Ireland)

Art Francisco Goya - Disasters of War Series Pieter Bruegel - Landscape with the Fall of Icarus Caravaggio - Crucifixion of St. Peter

Music Grosse Fuge - Beethoven

Quartet for the End of Time - Messiaen Requiem - Mozart Requiem - Ligeti Prelude to Tristan und Isolde - Wagner Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima

Film

-Night and Fog

-The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

-Paper Clips

List of Possible Learning Activities