Connecting the Visual to the Verbal in the Classroom

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CONTENTS OF CURRICULUM UNIT 10.01.07

Unit Guide

Writing about the Big Picture: American Ekphrasis

James Foltz

Published September 2010

Tools for this Unit:

Is This Unit for You?

This unit is designed for a high school level English class that reads American poetry and prose as its primary literature. Still, aspects of the unit lend themselves nicely to whatever content a classroom is covering, as I have left plenty of "wiggle" room within it. Specifically, the lessons have been designed so teachers can pick and choose which ones they would like to use. Of course, it is preferable for teachers to use this unit in its entirety, as each lesson builds upon previously taught elements of ekphrasis.

Comments:

James Anthony Foltz

September 23, 2010 at 11:48 pm

Elizabeth Pain Gravestone Photo Credit:

Regrettably, Sean P. Aune - who so graciously gave permission to use his work - was not given a photo credit for the Elizabeth Pain gravestone. My sincerest apologies for this oversight.

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Teacher Resources

A&A Studios, Inc. "The Museum of Mourning Photography & Memorial practice." http://antviz.tripod.com/mourningphoto (accessed July 31, 2010).

Hollander, John. The Gazer's Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art. 1 ed. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1995.

Maine Historical Society. "Maine Memory Network – Frances Appleton Longfellow by Rowse, 1859." http://www.mainememory.net/bin/Detail?ln=15474 (accessed July 31, 2010).

"Moby Dick's Coin." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby_Dick_Coin.

Resheph, Philip. "The Iliad of Homer." http://www.philipresheph.com/demodokos/book1/pic60.htm (accessed July 31, 2010).

Smithsonian National Museum of Amiercan History. "NMAH Mountain of the Holy Cross." http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object.cfm?key=35&objkey=259 (accessed July 31, 2010).

Walters Art Museum. "The Scarlet Letter by Hugues Merle (French, 1823–1881)." http://art.thewalters.org/viewwoa.aspx?id=25737 (accessed July 31, 2010).

Notes

Kane, Bob, "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate," Detective Comics. May, 1939.

Hollander, John. The Gazer's Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art. (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1995).

Cox, James. "Longfellow and His Cross of Snow." JSTOR 75, no. 1 (1960): 97–100. http://www.jstor.org/stable/460431?seq=1 (accessed July 10, 2010).

Mcfarland, Philip. Hawthorne in Concord. (New York: Grove Press, 2005).

Ryskamp, Charles. "The New England Sources of The Scarlet Letter." American Literature 31, no. 3 (1959): 257–272.

Shackleton, Robert. The Book of Boston. Philadephia: (The Penn Publishing Company, 1916).

Rozakis, Laurie. "Another Possible Source of Hawthorne's Hester Prynne." American Transcendental Quarterly 59, March (1986): 63–71.

"Scarlet Letter Inspiration," http://www.celebrateboston.com/strange/scarlet–letter.htm (accessed July 10, 2010).

Garrison, Daniel. "Melville's Doubloon and the Shield of Achilles." Nineteenth–Century Fiction 26, no. 2 (1971): 171–184.