Exploring authors from a variety of genres, students gain confidence in literary interpretation, using basic concepts such as plot structure, characterization, setting, and theme. Works such as "Twelve Angry Men," "The House on Mango Street," and "Other Words for Home," along with short fiction and poetry from a wide range of authors , provide a framework for oral presentations and interpretive writing. Students develop a foundation in grammar identification, usage, and paragraph development, while also engaging throughout the year in creative work and personal reflections.

Encountering rich works such as "Animal Farm," "They Called Us Enemy," "The Crucible," and the tech dystopia, "Feed"— as well as a wide selection of poetry and short fiction— students refine the skills in close reading vital for effective literary analysis, with particular emphasis on symbolism, figurative language, theme and tone.  Engaging in group projects, oral presentations, personal narratives, and content-oriented compositions, students advance their skills in both expository and creative writing.graph development to consider the essay as a whole. 

Students travel across time and place via texts that address the search for self amid change and challenge, both internal and external. In this yearlong “writing boot camp,” students respond to novels, plays, short fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. Students draft and revise written works in analytical, creative, personal, poetic, and research-based modes, while also honing their skills in presentations and visual projects. Core texts include "Romeo & Juliet," "Raisin in the Sun," "The Poet X," and works by writers ranging from Dashka Slater to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi to Henry David Thoreau. Students receive regular feedback from teachers, as well as self-critique and peer-edit each other’s work, to develop unique ideas and confident writing voices that are concrete, cogent, and lively.

This course connects canonical texts of our past to contemporary literature, exploring life as it exists in the America we inhabit today. The course delves into the works of novelists such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nella Larsen, Michael Cunningham, and Celeste Ng; poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Joy Harjo, and Langston Hughes; and films such as "The Truman Show" and "The Matrix." Each encourages students to explore how regional, cultural, and historical contexts inform a text’s style, message and concerns. At the heart of this course is the questioning of the American dream and one's place within it. Through analytical and creative writing, student-led discussions, and video projects and presentations, students aim to discover how, and why, individuals quest to achieve this dream and against what challenges. 

Students in this course practice close reading and writing using rich texts as a means of understanding the complex world around them today. Exploring a range of major narratives, such as "Macbeth," "Beloved," "Pride and Prejudice," and "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," as well as a diverse chorus of voices in poetry and short fiction, students engage in discussions of class, gender, and race as they reflect on today's world. To do so, students embrace ambiguity and nuance as they craft increasingly sophisticated essays. To complement their written analytic work, students also engage in projects in alternative formats to demonstrate their mastery of the material. In preparation for the AP examination, students write a series of timed interpretive essays from past exams and practice multiple choice strategies.

Students who enroll in this course are required to take the Advanced Placement exam.

From Charles Dickens' London to Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, from the rain-slicked streets of film noir to the neon dystopias of cyberpunk— urban landscapes have served as both setting and character in our most powerful stories. This course explores how writers and filmmakers have captured urban life: its violence and beauty, its alienation and community, its dreams and nightmares.

Ranging from 18th century Paris to 21st century Tokyo, we will examine how the city can shape identity, destiny, and moral choice. Through classic writings by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lydia Maria Child, Ralph Ellison, and James Ellroy, alongside films such as "Gangs of New York," "Chinatown," "Blade Runner," and "The Dark Knight," we will trace evolving visions of the urban experience across centuries and cultures.
 

This course explores the enduring power of the literary canon through modern film adaptations and reinterpretations. Students will engage with classic works such as "Theban Plays," "Frankenstein," and "Hamlet," analyzing their themes, characters, and cultural significance. Then, through films such as "Shutter Island," "The Lion King," and "Ex Machina," students examine how these timeless stories have been transformed to reflect new contexts and audiences. The course fosters critical thinking, comparative analysis, and an appreciation for the creative dialogue between literature and cinema. Through active discussions, presentations, analytical writing, and creative literary and cinematic projects, students develop the intellectual flexibility to recognize how enduring narratives continue to shape our understanding of contemporary issues and the human experience. 

In this course, students will attend curated artistic events in Los Angeles, such as theater, ballet, and museum exhibits. Prior to each event, students will read, study and discuss two types of materials: key texts associated with the artistic event and  the relevant theories for the students to apply. For example, if the class was preparing to see "Cabaret," they would read "The Berlin Stories" by Chrisotpher Isherwood and watch the Bob Fosse film "Cabaret."  Then students would read excerpts from "The Society of the Spectacle" (Guy Debord), "Notes on Camp" (Susan Sontag), and "The Generation of Postmemory" (Marianne Hirsch). After each event, the class will discuss the event and its artistic choices and also apply the theory we’ve studied.

This class is a survey of the language, technology, theory, and aesthetics of the moving image as an art form. Film utilizes various cinematic techniques, such as camera angles, lighting, and editing, to construct meaning and influence audience perception. By analyzing these devices, we can understand how filmmakers shape narratives, evoke emotions, and convey messages.

We will study elements of film production and direction, such as cinematography, camera movement, the creation of mise-en-scene (what’s “within the image”), editing, screenplay, performance/character, and special effects. We will also foray into subject-specific moments in the history of film and directing, and read a variety of film theory and cultural criticism. The course will culminate in students creating their own short narrative or documentary film to be screened at Vidiots. 

What do Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, from the text of the same name, Edward Cullen of "Twilight," and Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy have in common? Each encapsulates a time period’s ideal romantic hero. We will study notions of romance, beginning with the chivalry of Arthurian legend, traveling through the gothic hero from Lord Byron to "Twilight"’s Edward, investigating social commentary in Malinda Lo’s “New Year” and Alice Oseman’s graphic novel "Heartstopper,"  and studying the iconic film "Pretty Woman." While the genre is often scoffed at or dismissed as “chick lit,” this class will discover how, in fact, romances can be nuanced and subversive, questioning the dominant culture more than reasserting it. Students will investigate scenes from pop culture phenomena "Heated Rivalry" and "Bridgerton" and how romantic tropes can be used to further audience empathy. The class concludes with an in-depth investigation of romantic comedy’s rise, fall, and rise again in the era of Netflix and BookTok, with specific emphasis on the ever-expanding diversity of experiences and identities represented in the genre, and how the social and political context of a romance novel shapes notions of the “happily ever after.”  

“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity.” These are the opening lines of Joan Didion’s memoir, "The Year of Magical Thinking." These are the first 24 words that Didion wrote in 2004 after her husband suffered a sudden heart attack and died at the dinner table. These are the four lines that changed the way Americans talked about grief. In this course, students spend a semester inside the mind of one of America’s greatest writers, Joan Didion, reading a wide variety of her texts: her essay about hippies in the ’60s, her opinion piece about the gaudiness of the Getty Villa, and yes, her memoir about the sudden death of her husband. Additionally, students in this course deconstruct not only Didion’s writings—her style, her structure, her words—but also the psychology and mythology of the writer herself. Students write analytical papers, complete creative projects (including one drafted at the Getty Villa as inspired by Didon’s landmark essay on it), and keep a Didion-style notebook documenting their lives and the world around them. By the end of this course, students will understand how a writer becomes a cultural icon.

Who doesn’t get tempted to challenge authority? To ask the bold question, “Why”? Or even to subtly go against the norm in their actions, appearance, opinions? Human nature practically dictates that at some point in our lives, we must challenge authority to carve our own individuality, freedom, and forward path. This course will examine notions of dissent through various genres, voices, and time periods in literature and film. Moving beyond just a “difference of opinion,” we’ll explore how authors use their writing to oppose social, political, and cultural or ethnic conventions, as we become inspired to question, resist, and reimagine the world. We’ll even delve into how writing itself can be a form of disruption, breaking from traditional literary style, tone, and expectation. Authors for this course will include poetry by Emily Dickinson, Joy Harjo, Walt Whitman, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Allen Ginsberg, and Marilyn Chin; fiction by Sherman Alexie, Charles Yu, Jack Kerouac, Julia Alvarez, Cormac McCarthy, Octavia Butler, and David Sedaris; and films including "Into the Wild" and "Mona Lisa Smile." Students will be responsible for personal exploration through journal writing, analytical writing, and a final independent text/paper of their choosing where they get to demonstrate their own ability to defy and inspire change. 

Every day, someone is asking for your time, your energy, or your resources. How do you decide where to commit? How do you ensure you are making decisions that protect your interests and help you achieve your goals? The answer lies in mastering the art and craft of persuasive speech.

This course deconstructs the mechanisms of human influence through the classical pillars of rhetoric: Logos (The Logical): facts, statistics, probability, pure reason. Pathos (The Emotional): the power of inspiration, guilt, flattery, menace. Ethos (The Authoritative): expertise, charisma, virtue, might. Beyond theory, we will apply these techniques to our own writing and communication. Our curriculum spans the spectrum of human interaction — from political speeches and candy bar ads to charitable campaigns and calls to war.

In this course we will break down what makes a great piece of short fiction truly great— how does a writer make her readers curious, excited, nervous, scared? How does she break their minds with an ingenious twist of plot? How is a lovable character brought to life? An evil one? Close readings of stories by James Baldwin, Amy Hempel, Jamaica Kincaid, Jamil Kochai, George Saunders, Yiyun Li, and many others will serve as our gateway to the world of masterful short fiction. Through daily writing exercises, literary/craft analysis, collaborative projects, and peer revision, we will prepare ourselves to participate in two writing workshops. Students will submit polished, original short pieces of fiction, then receive thoughtful and respectful feedback from their peers. Students will emerge from this course with a deep command of narrative thought, a disciplined approach to the revision process, and a clear understanding of what it truly means to write well. This process is designed to be supportive, collaborative, and challenging. Above all else, its purpose is to help us get better. Required materials: open mind, open heart, humble pen.
 

In contemporary times, we've witnessed the human capacity to continue, to create, to find beauty in the midst of devastation. Pandemic, fire, climate disasters—we have witnessed and we persist. In this course, we will study how bearing witness to devastation can call for love, empathy, understanding, and respair. The word "respair" is an archaic term once used to name the experience of finding hope or recovery after despair. Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward brought the word back to life and uses it as an anchor for reflecting on the act of bearing witness and how that can lead to change. Respair. Within that framework, we will study how writers build narratives that allow us to bear witness to experiences that might have been invisible to us. We will read stories that offer beauty from what has been survived, where language becomes the tool for transformation. Community and relationships act as sources of respair. Ultimately, we'll consider how bearing witness through literature can result in respair, both for the communities represented in these stories and for us as readers. Reading will include personal essays by various writers and fiction by Ocean Vuong and Jesmyn Ward. Assignments will include analytical responses and culminating personal projects where students create letter collections, soundtrack essays, collaborative storytelling, or visual narratives exploring their own experiences of finding hope after despair.
 

This course delves into how linguistic expression exists in lyrical form, through traditional poetry, contemporary poetry, prose poetry, and songwriting. Students will explore various written, spoken, and sung forms of poetic expression, analyzing how this art reaches a deeper level of human observation, articulation and “the why” behind such powerful utterance. Beyond discussion and verbal analysis, students will be responsible for written investigation of poetry and lyrics, formally in essays and informally through daily journaling. Such processes will require consideration of rhetorical, syntactical, and grammatical patterns evident in this genre. Imitation and original writing will also allow students to highlight their deep understanding of lyrical form, its power, and its creation. By the end of this course, students will not only be able to explicitly state why lyrical form captivates, lasting through eras, but also how it compels through their own use of it in exploration of the human condition, the world around us, and individual as well as collective identity.

Writer and educator Alexander Chee explains his journey to writing about himself: “How do we write our own literature? I am thinking of when I interviewed Ursula K. Le Guin and she told me she had to teach herself to write as a woman. Or my own first stories... In the 1980s, I had to learn how to write myself and people like me onto the page. My own life on the page felt impossible to explain in any detail when I was a student writer. I had to ask myself why I was embarrassed to mention that I was Asian-American, much less to center it in a story.” Chee's reflection illustrates a central challenge for many writers: finding the language and permission to tell their own stories. In this elective, we will explore similar questions: How do we center our own experiences? What models help us write ourselves onto the page? The course will examine how various writers navigate these challenges. By reflecting on their approaches and storytelling choices, students will build towards a final project where they write their own story onto the page. Along the way, they will craft short, analytical and personal responses to comedic letters, personal essays, stand-up comedy, illustrated memoir, and autofiction. For the final project itself, students will have the option to write in any of these genres: an illustrated essay/story, comedic routine (stand-up), a dramatic story (monologue), a collection of letters, or a personal essay.