10th Grade Language Arts Final 2012

Consider the following list of some of the topics and texts we have studied this year:

1)      The Divine Comedy (Dante)

2)      Italian Renaissance

i)        The Medici family

ii)       The Prince (Machiavelli)

iii)     Humanism

3)      The Protestant Reformation

i)        various translations of the Bible

ii)       Martin Luther

iii)     Erasmus and Luther debate free will

4)      Hamlet (Shakespeare)

5)      Age of Exploration

6)      The Conquista of the Aztecs (Cortez)

7)      The Conquista of the Incas (Pizarro)

8)      The Scientific Revolution

i)        Heliocentric vs. Geocentric world views

ii)       Galileo, Copernicus, Newton

9)      The Enlightenment

i)        The Social Contract (Locke)

ii)       Capitalism (Adam Smith)

iii)     Declaration of Independence (Jefferson)

10)   The French Revolution

i)        Reign of Terror and Robespierre

11)   Les Miserables (Hugo)

12)   Industrial & Agricultural Revolutions

i)        Excerpts from David Copperfield (Dickens)

13)   Pride and Prejudice (Austen)

i)        A Vindication of the Rights of Women (Wollstonecraft)

ii)       Satire

iii)     A Modest Proposal (Swift)

14)   Imperialism

i)        Suez Canal, Congo, China, India, Zanzibar

ii)       Things Fall Apart (Achebe)

iii)     White Man’s Burden (Kipling)

iv)     Ghandi

15)   World War I

i)        All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque)

ii)       Treaty of Versailles

iii)     Russian Revolution

16)   Interwar Years

i)        Great Depression

ii)       Rise of Totalitarian States

iii)     Mein Kampf (Hitler)

iv)     Communist Manifesto (Marx)

17)   WWII and the Holocaust

i)        Maus (Spiegelman)

ii)       Nazi Propaganda

iii)     Perspectives on the Nuclear Bomb

18)   Chinese Communist Revolution

i)        Excerpts from Red Scarf Girl (Jiang)

19)   The Cold War

i)        The Martian Chronicles (Bradbury)

For your final, you will have one hour to write responses to ALL of the following questions.  You may use any notes you have prepared in advance.

• 1.       How do stories define us?
• 2.
       What choices do we make about the stories we tell others and ourselves? And how does Maus reveal those choices to us (Give some specific examples)?
• 3.       How was the Cold War a war of stories?
• 4.       What do we learn about American society by the stories told in Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles?
• 5.       What has Socratic Seminar this year contributed to your story?