The Gothic Imagination: Fear, Death, and the Uncanny | English | Fulfills one-third 12th Grade English Requirement (Offered in Fall Term). What do the dead want from the living, and what do our fears about them reveal about us? In this course, students explore one of literature’s most enduring and psychologically rich genres, tracing the ghost story from its pivotal role in the rise of the short story form in the nineteenth century through its flowering in the twentieth. Reading works by masters of the uncanny, among them Poe, Sheridan Le Fanu, Edith Wharton, M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, and Robert Aickman, students will develop a working knowledge of the genre’s defining figures, tropes, and formal conventions, while engaging with the critical debates that have shaped how we read and interpret supernatural fiction. By the end of the term, students will be equipped to analyze the ghost story not merely as entertainment, but as a serious literary form with deep roots in questions of mortality, memory, guilt, and the limits of human perception.
English 12 : Trimester Electives English | Grade 12 | Fulfills 12th Grade English Requirement Hyde's 12th Grade English program gives seniors and postgraduates the opportunity to pursue focused, seminar-style literary study through a series of elective courses. In the fall and winter terms, students select from the following course offerings, each a deep dive into a distinct literary tradition or genre. All seniors conclude their English experience in the spring with the Senior Capstone: The Hyde Words in Life and Literature , a culminating course in which students select one of Hyde's Five Words and trace its meaning across a major literary work and a text in philosophy or ethics, presenting their analysis in a final oral thesis defense. Students enrolled in AP English Literature and Composition follow a separate, exam-focused track, though capstone themes and texts may be incorporated into that course following the AP exam in May.
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