Welcome to Mr. Allen's Summer English Class!

Mr. Allen, M.A. Ed. - Teacher 9-10 English - Gordon Parks High School

I would like to take the opportunity to welcome each of you to this great class. I promise we will have meaningful, interesting and in-depth conversations about society, life and who we are in the big picture using the lenses of English literature and theory.

A very basic way of thinking about literary theory is that these ideas act as different lenses critics use to view and talk about art, literature, and even culture. These different lenses allow critics to consider works of art based on certain assumptions within that school of theory. The different lenses also allow critics to focus on particular aspects of a work they consider important.

For example, if a critic is working with certain Marxist theories, s/he might focus on how the characters in a story interact based on their economic situation. If a critic is working with post-colonial theories, s/he might consider the same story but look at how characters from colonial powers (Britain, France, and even America) treat characters from, say, Africa or the Caribbean. Hopefully, after reading through and working with the resources in this area of the OWL, literary theory will become a little easier to understand and use.

Our course, "Masculinity and the meaning of Education and the Black Body," will look at the relationships between men, women, race, class and socioeconomic placeholders and how they came to be. 

Please, for this first discussion, tell the your classmates a little something about you and respond to two (2) classmates. 

Discussion Question - Day 1: How does a theme develop over the course of the text? (Answer on blog or notebook paper before tomorrow morning.)

Thank you - Mr. Allen