Course Outline

1. Reflecting on Roots: Understanding Behaviors and Work Habits

Literary Text: Selections from Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy (selected chapters)

Stretch Text (Optional): Full Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kenney or The Art of Happiness by The Dalai Lama and Howard C. Culter

Rhetorical Perspective: The Personal Essayist’s Voice (Montaigne Tradition)

Critical Lens: Intro to Psychoanalysis, Psychology, and Therapy

Expected Timeline: 2 Weeks

Summary:

In this introductory unit, students will reflect on how their upbringing, environment, and formative experiences have shaped their behaviors, work habits, and self-perception. Through selected chapters from Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy, students will explore foundational psychological concepts including internal “parts,” emotional regulation, and attachment patterns. Drawing from Internal Family Systems Therapy, Buddhist psychology, and thinkers like Alan Watts and Carl Rogers, the unit challenges students to approach themselves and others with curiosity, compassion, and playfulness. This work establishes essential academic routines while laying the foundation for the psychoanalytic and psychological lenses students will use throughout the course. 

Key Graded Assignments:  

Text Annotation

Reading Log

2. Journeys of Reflection: Memoirs as a Gateway to Analysis

Literary Text: Night by Elie Wiesel

Stretch Text (Optional): Man's Search for Meaning by Frankl or Still Alive by Kluger

Rhetorical Perspective: The Historian as Storyteller (Herodotus; Zinn)

Critical Lens: Psychology - Logotherapy (Frankl) and Conditioning (B. F. Skinner)

Expected Timeline: 3-4 Weeks

Summary:

In this unit, students will explore memoir as both personal testimony and historical artifact, using Night by Elie Wiesel to examine how individuals convey trauma, memory, and resilience through storytelling. Through the lenses of psychology (Logotherapy and conditioning) and the rhetorical tradition of the historian as storyteller, students will analyze how lived experiences are shaped, preserved, and interpreted. Emphasis is placed on developing academic voice, using textual evidence effectively, and connecting literary devices to deeper psychological and historical themes. This unit lays the groundwork for structured analysis and critical engagement with complex texts. 

Key Graded Assignments:

Reading Log

First Timed-Writing Exam

Short Response Exam on Rhetorical Perspective

Personal Narrative Outline

3. Brief Stories, Expansive Psyches: Applying Psychological Lenses to Short Literary Texts

Literary Text: "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver; other short stories that could include "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor; "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid; Selections from Dubliners by James Joyce; Narrative poetry: "Goblin Market" by Rossetti; Selections from Paradise Lost by Milton

Stretch Text: Dracula by Bram Stoker or The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Rhetorical Angle: The Literary Critic’s Lens; New Criticism vs. Psychoanalytic Interpretation

Critical Lens: Psychology and Narrative Structuralism - Freud's Consciousness and the Uncanny; Jung's Shadow Self; Campbell's Monomyth; Freytag's Pyramid

Expected Timeline: 3-4 Weeks

Summary:

Students apply the psychoanalytic and psychological frameworks developed in Units 1 and 2 to short literary texts, practicing close reading and critical analysis with increasing independence. Rather than committing to a single novel over several weeks, the compression of the short story form allows for multiple, varied encounters with psychological interpretation. The central text is Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"; Carver's "Cathedral" provides a counterpoint in minimalist realism. Students practice distinguishing between New Criticism approaches and psychoanalytic interpretation, and develop skills in explication, evidence selection, and timed in-class writing. The unit closes with narrative poetry as a bridge toward more sustained literary engagement.

Key Graded Assignments:

Reading Log

Sticky-Note Annotations

Timed-Writing Exams (2)

4. Witches, Kings, and Deconstruction Things: Deconstruction and Shakespeare

Literary Text: Macbeth by Shakespeare

Stretch Text: Hamlet by Shakespeare or Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

Rhetorical Angle: Buddhist Dualism; Dōgen's Dialectic of Affirmation and Negation; Laozi and Daoist Rhetoric (Dao De Jing)

Critical Lens: Deconstruction (Derrida)

Expected Timeline: 5-6 Weeks

Summary:

In this unit, students will explore Macbeth and James Joyce’s The Dead through the intersecting lenses of deconstruction, Buddhist dualism, and non-Western rhetoric. Drawing from Dōgen’s dialectic of affirmation and negation, Daoist insights from the Dao De Jing, and passages from The Diamond Sutra and No Mud, No Lotus, students will examine how both Shakespeare and Joyce dismantle rigid binaries, revealing the instability of meaning, identity, and fate. Christian mythological texts, including excerpts from Paradise Lost, will provide additional perspectives on how suffering, failure, and contradiction can paradoxically give rise to growth, virtue, or grace, a theme echoed in Buddhist and deconstructionist traditions. Through close reading, paraphrasing, and performance-based analysis, students will develop linguistic precision while grappling with the ambiguity, irony, and layered contradictions that define these canonical works. Together, these texts challenge students to question binaries, embrace uncertainty, and investigate how language, belief, and narrative distort and reveal human experience. 

Key Graded Assignments:

Reading Log

Passage ‘Translations’ (Paraphrasing Macbeth)

Timed-Writing Exams (2)

Short Response Exam on Deconstruction, Dōgen's Dialectic, and Daoist Rhetoric

6. Shadows, Ghosts, and Scars: Memory, Trauma, and the Weight of the Unspeakable

Literary Text: Beloved by Toni Morrison (Default)

Stretch Text (Optional): Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison; Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë; Crime and Punishment by Feydor Dostoevsky

Rhetorical Angle: The Historian as Witness; Morrison's Narrative of Rememory

Critical Lens: Psychoanalytic, Feminist, Critical Race Theory, Post-Structuralist

Expected Timeline: 7-10 Weeks (begins final week of Semester 1; continues into Semester 2)

Summary:

This unit bridges the end of Semester 1 and the opening weeks of Semester 2, asking students to live with a book. Students are expected to settle in and let a major work take up residence in them over time. The primary text is Toni Morrison's Beloved; students may alternatively read Ellison's Invisible Man, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, or Brontë's Jane Eyre, with the class functioning as parallel book clubs where conversations occasionally converge. Students are expected to read approximately half of their chosen novel over winter break. When we return, approximately four weeks of sustained reading, discussion, and analysis follow, with weekly analytical presentations that are graded for genuine effort, not polish. The unit closes with a capstone literary essay (the most ambitious writing of the course) introducing students to academic research, library databases, and the beginning standards of ENGL C1001.

Key Supplementary Readings:

"Panopticism" from Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault

"Of Our Spiritual Strivings" from The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois

"The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action" by Audre Lorde

Key Graded Assignments:

Reading Log / Reading Guide Responses

Weekly Analytical Presentations (stand and speak; consistency over perfection)

Capstone Literary Essay with Research Component (take-home)

7. Weapons of Mass Persuasion: The Logic of Argument and the Art of Socratic Destruction

Literary Text: N/A

Rhetorical Angle: The Logician; Deductive/Inductive Reasoning & Fallacy Identification

Critical Lens: Toulmin Model (introduced); Socratic Questioning (Paul & Elder Framework)

Expected Timeline: ~2-3 Weeks

Unit Summary:

After sustained literary immersion, students shift modes entirely: from interpretation to argumentation. Through “Fallacy This!,” students engineer intentionally flawed arguments and watch a classmate dismantle them. Through “FART (Factual Authority for Repurposing Trust),” they construct credible, well-researched arguments on assigned topics, then submit them to three sequential rounds of peer assassination: fallacy identification, Socratic questioning, and formal written rebuttal. The Toulmin Model is introduced as the structural spine and students learn to distinguish ground/observation from claim, and to recognize that Socratic questioning is fundamentally a hunt for warrants. Google Classroom discussion boards allow sustained asynchronous engagement throughout. 

Key Graded Assignments:

Fallacy This! (build a flawed argument; assassinate a peer's)

FART - Factual Authority for Repurposing Trust (three assassination rounds)

Google Classroom Discussion Boards (ongoing)

Cognitive Audit (structured self-assessment of reasoning tendencies)

8. Debate Royale (with Cheese): Applied Argumentation, Presentation, and the Friends We Made Along the Way

Literary Text: N/A

Rhetorical Angle: Oxford-Style Debate; Courtroom Procedure; Toulmin Model Applied Under Pressure

Expected Timeline:  ~3-6 Weeks

Summary:

This unit is the practical application of everything built so far: Toulmin structure, Socratic questioning, warrant analysis, fallacy detection, evidence evaluation. Students are expected to apply all of it, now, under time pressure, in front of an audience, with someone actively trying to take you apart. The format is Mr. Tretyak's custom hybrid model drawing from Oxford-style debate and courtroom argumentation. Students are assigned positions and roles (leader, researcher, contrarian, Socratic questioner). Cross-examination is built in. The audience votes before, during, and after. The unit emphasizes presentation and delivery as seriously as logic.

Key Graded Assignments:

Debate Topic Proposal (justify that topic is genuinely arguable)

Debate Preparation Portfolio (Toulmin outline, roles, counter-arguments, research log)

Formal Debate Performance (opening, cross-examination, rebuttal, closing)

Reflection and Post-Debate Analysis (analytical autopsy)

9. Couples Therapy for Debaters: Argument, Temperature, and the Preservation of the Human

Literary Text: N/A

Rhetorical Angle: Rogerian Argument; Lara Method; Context-Sensitive Rhetorical Strategy

Critical Lens: Toulmin vs. Rogerian vs. Lara Frameworks

Expected Timeline:  ~2-3 Weeks

Summary:

This unit asks students to step back from the adversarial framework of Units 7–8 and reckon with a more complicated truth: that the method of argument is not neutral. Three models anchor the unit. The Toulmin Model (already familiar) is the method for when victory is the goal and the stakes demand it; when racism, harassment, or injustice are on the table, the discomfort of destabilized ideology is not equivalent to the harm of unchallenged injustice. The Rogerian Method operates at a different temperature. It begins with genuine listening and is the model of professional disagreement in relationships that need to survive the conversation. The Lara Method goes further still: for conversations where emotional temperature is high and the relationship is what is most at risk, the goal is not to win or persuade, but to be heard and to hear. Together, these three models give students a repertoire and (hopefully) the judgment to know which instrument the moment requires.

Key Graded Assignments:

Rogerian Argument Essay (genuine comprehension of opposing position before asserting own)

Lara Method Practice (structured high-temperature conversation exercise)

Comparative Rhetorical Analysis (when to use which model and why)

Reflection: Personal Argumentative Tendencies and Defaults