Pretend you are working as a historian or news producer, your boss asks you to
summarize the map in one or two sentences. Summarize the map by explaining
the area shown with the disposition of religions.

Why read literature? To many of us, that question seems as strange as asking “why breathe?” Literature has been part of our life, family, school,

and community for as long as we can remember. Of course, there are those who

argue that what today’s students need is preparation for the “real world,” but in the

push for practical university and workplace preparedness we sometimes overlook

the importance of educating students’ imaginations. Literature offers windows to

worlds outside students’ experience as well as mirrors onto the world they already

know. Literature also prepares students for the personal challenges and moral

dilemmas they are likely to face. How better to refl ect on the demands of contemporary life than to study William Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much with Us”

alongside Nathalie Handal’s “Caribe in Nueva York”? And does not the proffered

wisdom of William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heaney, and Rita Dove

provide important preparation for surviving and thriving in this complex world?

Literary analysis is an intellectual discipline that hones students’ thinking by

requiring them to probe a text deeply and analyze the means that writers employ

to achieve their effects. Along with preparing students for the rigors of an

Advanced Placement* exam, learning how to analyze text and articulate a perspective prepares students for life, both in academia and in the workplace. This

preparation and exploration are what we hope to achieve in Literature & Composition by specifi cally targeting the skills and habits of mind that are the keys to

success in an Advanced Placement Literature course.  

Explanation:

the answer is: the sesquicentennial of the american civil war is an occasion to consider the legacy of that great conflict. this legacy is our inheritance, and despite many indelible features, we continue to negotiate the resolution of that conflict. the civil war was fought over slavery, but not always on behalf of slaves