Scholars' Seminar: Competing Identities

Full-year course. Scholars’ Seminar in Literature is designed to engage advanced rhetoric-stage students in critical reading, literary discussion, and literary analysis. This year’s seminar focuses on exploring themes of identity and society. Students will examine how one’s private identity often competes with their public persona. We will explore how both kinds of identities are constructed, challenged, and represented in literature. Through critical reading and analysis, students will engage with a diverse array of classic and contemporary works, analyzing how authors from different backgrounds and time periods address similar themes of the inner and outer self. This course encourages critical thinking, deep reading, and thoughtful discussion, fostering an understanding of the complex interplay between individual and societal identities.  Each week’s sessions will be oriented around the essential question, “How do literary works depict and respond to the construction and challenges of personal and public personas?”

"My child is working independently at this point, but I can say that whenever I've pulled up an assignment she's done for Scholar's Lit, I have been BLOWN AWAY! My goodness, I cannot believe the insights my child is seeing in the works she's reading. I love the comparative literature angle...taken with this class, and I love the [reading] selections. I KNOW my child has become a deeper thinker and writer because of this class. She already loved reading, but this class has really allowed her to reach beyond her usual, favorite genres and blossom in her deep-reading skills." - Parent Course Evaluation
"In the seven years I’ve been here, this is the best class I have ever taken at WTMAcademy.... I love this class so much and the friends I’ve made from it. The selected books were great. I loved the way we focused on different subjects throughout the semesters, starting with feminism and ending with war history. I highly encourage WTMAcademy to continue to make this class available." - Student Course Evaluation

    This course requires students to read multiple texts in advance of the weeks that are spent discussing them in class. As such, students will develop the ability to manage cognitive load as they practice daily reading and notetaking habits for one set of readings while working through in-class discussions and assignments on the previous set of readings, a valuable skill set for further academic success.

    Please note: This course is designed for high-school students. Several of these readings contain topics, scenarios, subjects, and themes that younger and/or more sensitive readers may find upsetting or unsettling. While these texts are appropriate for most mature high school students, students and parents should be aware of the complexities and intensities of these readings in advance. If you have any concerns we encourage you to check the texts out at the local library before enrolling your student.

    *Alternates with Scholar’s Seminar: Literature at the Limits.

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    Scholars' Seminar: Competing Identities Information

    • Example Syllabus
    • Class meets once per week for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
    • Class cap: 15 students.
    • Designed for grades 11-12.
    • Students in grades 9-12 may be awarded 1 Language Arts credit upon completion of this course.
    • Taught by Jennifer Roudabush

    Course Materials

    • Click here to purchase the course texts.
      • How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Live and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines, Revised Edition by Thomas Foster (Summer Reading)
      • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Optional Summer Reading)
      • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
      • The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Available Online)
      • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
      • Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
      • When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
      • Antigone by Sophocles, translated by Robert Fagles
      • Hamlet by William Shakespeare
      • Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
      • The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
      • James by Percival Everett
      • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
      • When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
      • Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (Instructor Supplied Excerpts)
      • Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Instructor Supplied Excerpts)
      • The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
      • We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
      • Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
      • Evicted by Matthew Desmond
      • The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
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