1. Show clip from “Little Women” where Jo talks about transcendentalism.
2. Explain to students that American literature and the American people were about to go through a major paradigm shift. Make sure students understand what paradigms are.
3. Tell the students that transcendentalism is a uniquely American phenomenon that is hard to neatly define.
4. Show students the transcendentalism PowerPoint.
5. Have students read to themselves the quintessential transcendental work, Emerson’s “Self Reliance,” paying attention to each sentence. Emerson writes in aphorisms or sound bytes. He would have been a great presidential speech writer.
6. Have them choose one sentence and write about what it means to them in their journals.
7. Time to work on scripts
Homework Collected: Name Paper and Zombie Haiku
Homework Given: Alexie Paper and scripts due tomorrow.
Handouts given out: None
To Read: excerpts from "Self-Reliance," on page 363 in the yellow literature book
