Next fall, English teacher Matthew Querino brings something more intense, more dark and more mysterious to the English hallway with a new postmodernism elective. The new course–which Querino dreamed of teaching since his first year–will be offered to both juniors and seniors.
The class is not meant to replace his popular Children’s Literature elective.
“I just really wanted to teach something new, so I’m really looking forward to teaching this class. I think it will have a smaller but more devoted following because it’s definitely darker than Children’s Lit.,” Querino said.
Postmodernism is unlike any English class currently offered and is geared towards students more interested in the arts.
“We will have a unit focused on the graphic novel concept,” Querino said.
Throughout the course of this half year class, students will be reading a variety of detective stories as they take on the role of a detective and try to solve the cases and define what Postmodernism really is.
“What’s different about this elective compared to the other new [English] electives is that this class will focus on fiction and the others are non-fiction. There’s a big push for nonfiction in the new common core curriculum; I guess I’m pushing back with this class.”
One novel that students will be concentrating on for most of the semester is Mark Z. Danielweski’s House of Leaves.
Now, the difference between a regular detective story and a postmodern detective story is that at the end of the postmodern detective story the villain isn’t caught or the solution isn’t revealed. Therefore, readers are left to interpret their own ending. There’s no exact or wrong answers compared to other English classes where you’re mostly searching for that one exact answer that can be a struggle to find.
“Postmodern studies are strongly interested in how different forms of media work together to expand storytelling possibilities through music, film, video games, and graphic novels,” Querino added.