The Boarding School in Fiction and Fact

From Tom Brown’s School Days to Prep, writers have commemorated the boarding school experience. Through studying novels, short stories, memoir excerpts, and film, we will identify recurring archetypes and consider how they have changed over time. We will also examine the reciprocal relationship between these schools and society. For example, is the experience of students in these schools fundamentally different from that of students who live at home? Do these schools have an agenda beyond their professed ones? Students will work on independent projects according to individual interest. We will read works by John Knowles, Louis Auchincloss, P. G. Wodehouse, Curtis Sittenfeld, Anita Shreve, and others. LIT (K. Kramer)