Lakeside School
English Department
Erik C. Christensen [Department Head]     (Send email to erik.christensen@lakesideschool.org)

Frederiksborg Castle, DK     Mt. Blanc seen from North of Lake Geneva      The Valiant Dane Arriveth      Sunlight Beach, Whidbey Island                J & E in Monaco               

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•English 12: Chaos Theory and Literature
[Team-taught course: Erik Christensen & John Newsom » see official course description]
   » Syllabus and Schedule            

Romanesco fractal broccoli ("froccoli")         Mandelbrot Set                          Jorge Luis Borges                          Connie Willis                      Lorenz's Butterfly Effect
(Images: EC, www.integralscience.org, www.tomorrowland.org, www.wikimedia.org, www.pbs.org)    

•English 10: Exploring World Literature by Theme and Genre
   » Syllabus, Schedule, Homework, Author links  

        
Innocence & Experience         Conformity & Rebellion      Culture & Identity      Love and Hate     The Presence of Death

(Picture Credits)

Other Important Links

   » Go to the Lakeside School English Department Writing Guide
   » Go to Lakeside School's Home Page
   » Go to the English Department home page

   » Go to Erik's Moodle courses
   » General course information & policies (e.g. lateness policy)

   » Room to Read Fundraisers: Haiku Contest Results! 
   » Reminder: Haiku Contest & Parent Book Group -- we hope to have these activities again in 2008-09!

"If self-absorption, vague yearnings and a nagging sense of incompleteness are sins,
then surely I will burn for all eternity, and I will save you a seat. "

    -- Colson Whitehead (from a review of Richard Ford’s A Multitude of Sins, NYT 3/3/02)

"One wanted, she thought, dipping her brush deliberately, to be on a level
with ordinary experience, to feel simply that's a chair, that's a table, and yet
at the same time, It's a miracle, it's an ecstasy."
                     -- Virginia Woolf, from To The Lighthouse

“I enter the Library. Almost physically, I can feel the gravitation of the books,
the serene atmosphere of orderliness, time magically mounted and preserved…
Tomorrow I too will be dead and our times will run together
and chronology will melt into an orb of symbols…”
                      -- Jorge Luis Borges, Foreword to El hacedor [The Maker]

PREVIOUS COURSES

Fall 2007-08
English 12 - Ancient to Modern Literature
Imaginary (and Real) Geographies

Hypothetical mapping of       Godrevy Lighthouse (Woolf)   Inferno by Gustave Doré       Slum in Mumbai
Odysseus' route       
[www.classics.upenn.edu, www.penwith.gov.uk, www.britannica.com, www.wcc-coe.org]

Principal Texts:

Homer, The Odyssey (trans. Lombardo) - see multi-genre assignment
Dante, Inferno (trans. Hollander) - see the infernal project
Calvino, Invisible Cities Woolf, To The Lighthouse

Borges, Collected Fictions - see personal essay project

LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea
Final Project

» SYLLABUS and HOMEWORK SCHEDULE

SPRING 2007-2008
English 12 SHAKESPEARE
   »Syllabus and Schedule for 2007-08

 Texts:

     Julius Caesar

     Hamlet
     Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (by Tom Stoppard)

     Much Ado About Nothing

     Macbeth

A few useful Resources:

   » Open Source Shakespeare - complete works online
   » Words coined by Shakespeare
  » List of the many phrases from Shakespeare we use day to day
   » Follow the authorship debate:
   » T he traditional view (the man from Stratford wrote the plays)
   » The Oxford Society's view (it was Edward de Vere)
   » See original Shakespeare Quartos, page by page, at the British Library

General Course Information:

» General class policies
» Guidelines for Mini-Seminars
» Grading Scale: The Check System

A Few Literary Resources:
» Virginia Woolf
» Jorge Luis Borges
» On the history of the Novel