CTY humanities courses expose students to new fields of academic inquiry and start them on a life-long journey of becoming stronger writers and passionate, informed human beings. Whether students are pursuing history, writing, or international relations classes, CTY humanities courses help students answer the “why” behind human thoughts and behaviors. As students engage the foundations of our political, cultural, and social worlds, they examine why nations behave the way they do and how historical events shape not only our present but our past. Through writing workshops and discussions of various literary genres, students examine the various ways we express our thoughts and beliefs through oral and written expression. Under the careful tutelage of an instructor, students discover their own voices as historians, writers, and citizens. Students complete CTY humanities courses with the ability to critically judge others’ positions and to construct well-reasoned arguments as opposed to merely stating their own opinions. They gain the critical and analytical skills necessary for uncovering the complexities inherent in the simplest seeming assertions or events. As students learn the value of participating in a community of writers and scholars who give and receive constructive feedback, they leave our courses ready to be more active, knowledgeable participants in the world in which they live. Please refer to our Eligibility web page. Sample syllabi for all courses are also available.
Writing and Imagination
Writing is an act of imagination; it builds from the raw materials of life experience and encounters with language. Students in this course read, write, and discuss a variety of genres from poems and short stories to essays and articles. They are encouraged to approach writing as a craft and to discover the processes and techniques that writers in all genres share. For example, students learn strategies for generating ideas, and they explore the concept and techniques of point of view. Based on the model of a writing community created in the graduate-level courses in Johns Hopkins University’s Writing Seminars, this course brings together students and instructors who, as experienced writers themselves, serve as mentors to guide students through the process of creative writing. During writing workshops, both the instructor and peers offer detailed criticism geared toward revision. Through this process of writing, critiquing, and revising, students develop confidence in their own writing and creative powers. Sample texts: Materials compiled by the instructor; a supplemental text such as The House on Mango Street, Cisneros, or Past Perfect, Present Tense: New and Collected Stories, Peck. Students must have completed grades: 5 or 6 Session 1: All residential sites, La Jolla, Sandy Spring
Session 2: Bethlehem, Chestertown, Palo Alto, South Hadley, Alexandria, Sandy Spring Top
Writing Workshop: Images and Text Every day, we are bombarded with images. These images are more than just marks on a page or pixels on a screen. They have meaning, and understanding that meaning is fundamental to understanding the world around us. In this writing course, students analyze, discuss, write about, and create texts that use both words and visuals to interpret and make meaning in our visual world. By examining elements of art such as line, shape, and color, as well as principles of design such as balance, proportion, and emphasis, students acquire the skills necessary to understand and use images in conjunction with their writing. For example, they may analyze the interplay of writing and images in various types of texts, such as how-to books, craft books, or sports fundamentals books. Students also consider content and context in their visual analyses and interpretations. They might decode photographs and primary documents to use in a biographical piece with historical facts. Students generate four to six major written pieces. They might take photographs and research a self-selected topic to create a photo essay. They may collectively produce a field guide detailing the plants and animals at their site or work together on a class concept book. Students also complete a number of small projects which might include storyboarding, analysis of political cartoons, or production of a travel brochure. Throughout the session, students' writing is developed through a process of drafting, critiquing in workshops, and revising. Sample text: New course. Students must have completed grades: 5 or 6 Session 1: Brooklandville
Session 2: Sandy Spring Top
Elements of Drama
As they instruct and entertain, plays provide us with unique opportunities to reflect and write about ourselves and the world around us. In this course, students’ critical and creative writing is fueled by their close readings of great dramatic works. Throughout the session, students explore the myriad possibilities that dramatic texts provide for thoughtful writing. For example, students might draft an analytical essay about the metaphorical implications of the storm that opens Shakespeare’s The Tempest, or they might write and revise their own dramatic dialogues and scenes. To bolster their understanding of how theater has evolved over time, students might read and write about plays ranging from Sophocles’ Antigone to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Students complete three to four major writing assignments in addition to a number of shorter projects. In receiving a thorough introduction to the elements of drama, including character, plot development, and stage direction, students expand their literary tastes and develop an individualized approach to literary study as they acquire an understanding of the ways in which playwrights craft their work. Note: Although students may participate in a limited number of dramatic exercises, this is not an acting class. Sample texts: Death of a Salesman, Miller; Antigone, Sophocles; The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde; Twelfth Night, Shakespeare; The Piano Lesson, Wilson. Field Trip Fee: $65 Students must have completed grades: 5 or 6 Session 1: Chestertown, Palo Alto
Session 2: Palo Alto Top
Heroes and Villains
Whether as the evil sultan of Moroccan legends, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the villain, like the hero, is an archetype who appears in literature, drama, and local lore across cultures and centuries. Narratives about heroes and villains are an important part of our shared written and oral traditions. Why do we create them, and what do they say about society? In this writing intensive course, students explore what it means to be a hero or a villain and how those terms have changed over time. Through close reading, group discussions, and writer’s workshops, students produce four to six major writing projects, as well as additional smaller pieces. Students might, for instance, construct an analysis that compares Darth Vader from Star Wars to Grendel from Beowulf, or draw from their own experiences to narrate an example of heroism or villainy. Students also learn to distinguish subtle shades of meanings by examining misunderstood villains like Shelley’s Frankenstein or anti-heroes such as E. B. White’s Templeton the rat, characters who help students discover heroes and villains are rarely all good or all evil. By balancing both critical and creative writing, students gain the necessary skills for close textual reading and hone their abilities to read and respond thoughtfully to a variety of texts. Sample texts: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson; Dungeon Vol. 1: Duck Heart, Sfar and Trondheim; The Thief Lord, Funke. Students must have completed grades: 5 or 6 Session 1: Chestertown, Palo Alto, South Hadley, Pasadena, Windward
Session 2: Bethlehem, Chestertown, Palo Alto, Pasadena, Windward Top
The Middle Ages
Were the Middle Ages really the “Dark” Ages? How did the ideals of nobility, piety, and chivalry shape medieval people’s lives? How did the flowering of art, culture, and science in Andalusia under the Moors compare to advances in the rest of Europe? Students consider these questions and more as they explore the cultural, social, and intellectual life of the medieval world from the fourth to fifteenth centuries. Students examine a rich variety of medieval literature, including excerpts from Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and French vernacular fables. They also become familiar with characteristics of Gothic and Moorish architecture and use the legacy of art to trace the social, political, and religious character of the period. Projects range from writing reports on medieval inventions to making paper models of a stained glass window. Sample texts: The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer; The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History, McEvedy; The Rise of Islam, Child; Beowulf. Students must have completed grades: 5 or 6 Session 1: Bethlehem
Session 2: Palo Alto, South Hadley Top
The Renaissance
The European Renaissance brought radical changes to Western civilization: reason surpassed revelation, strong city-states and a growing merchant class replaced feudalism, and scholars began to view the classics through a humanistic lens. Using primary sources, such as Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists, this course spans the Renaissance period and considers developments in philosophy, science, commerce, government, and industry. Students explore Renaissance cultural history by reading excerpts from works of literary masters such as Shakespeare and studying pieces by artists such as Giotto, Dürer, Brueghel, and Michelangelo, comparing experiences described in literature with those depicted in art. Students complete both individual and group projects, which may include researching and writing a report on discoveries in astronomy, interpreting and performing scenes from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and designing and constructing a model of Florence’s Duomo. Field trips to local museums or dramatic productions complement topics covered in class. Sample texts: Italian Renaissance, Roberts; Reformation and Counter-Reformation, White; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare; The Lives of the Artists, Vasari. Field Trip Fee: $65 Students must have completed grades: 5 or 6 Session 1: Palo Alto
Session 2: Bethlehem Top
Model United Nations and Advanced Geography
Whether countries are trying to stop global warming, track the spread of a deadly disease such as HIV/AIDS, or care for refugees, they often present their concerns to the United Nations to facilitate international cooperation. How the UN achieves its goals is sometimes controversial; nevertheless, understanding the UN and how it works is essential to the study of international relations. In this course, students learn how the UN addresses global concerns. They study the structure, authority, and processes of the UN through readings, discussions, research, and short lectures. In addition, they examine how physical, economic, cultural, and political geography influence and inform policymakers’ decisions. Students hone their writing, speaking, and critical thinking skills and also gain a working knowledge of international relations and geography. Students assume the role of ambassadors for a model United Nations simulation. Each student researches a particular country and determines where this country would stand on issues before the UN. As novice diplomats learning the art of compromise, students negotiate resolutions, learn parliamentary procedure, and build coalitions to represent their countries’ best interests. Students draft position papers and refine resolutions which are presented to a mock meeting of the General Assembly, Security Council, or another UN entity. Sample texts: World Cultures: A Global Mosaic, Ahmad; Basic Facts About the UN; The New York Times; an atlas chosen by the instructor. Students must have completed grades: 5 or 6 Session 1: All residential sites, Brooklandville, Sandy Spring
Session 2: Chestertown, Palo Alto, South Hadley, Thousand Oaks, Alexandria, Sandy Spring Top
Chinese COURSE CANCELED
In three weeks, this course covers material comparable to a year of Chinese in an upper elementary school setting. Students with little or no knowledge of the language are introduced to everyday spoken Chinese and simplified forms of Chinese characters. Language skills are reinforced through lively activities involving listening, speaking, reading, and writing. By the end of this course, students have been introduced to most of the important grammatical structures of spoken Chinese and to a vocabulary of approximately 700 lexical items. Prior knowledge of Chinese is not required or assumed. Sample text: New course. Students must have completed grades: 5 or 6 Session 1: Not offered
Session 2: Not offered Top
French This course covers an extensive amount of material comparable to the first year of a traditional high school French course. By using French as the primary means of communication from the first hour, students make rapid progress in acquiring basic language skills and speaking with a natural accent. Role-playing and dialogues supplement written and oral drills and exercises. Instruction is conducted in French as often as possible, but prior knowledge of French is not required or assumed. Students are expected to memorize a large amount of material in a short time. Sample text: New course. Students must have completed grades: 5 or 6 Session 1: Chestertown
Session 2: Not offered Top
Spanish COURSE CANCELED This course covers an extensive amount of material comparable to the first year of a traditional high school Spanish course. By using Spanish as the primary means of communication from the first hour, students make rapid progress in acquiring basic language skills and speaking with a natural accent. Role-playing and dialogues supplement written and oral drills and exercises. Students also learn about the Spanish culture and the course culminates in a fiesta for which they research native food and traditions. Instruction is conducted in Spanish as often as possible, but prior knowledge of Spanish is not required or assumed. Students are expected to memorize a large amount of material in a short time. Sample text: New course. Students must have completed grades: 5 or 6 Session 1: Not offered
Session 2: Not offered Top
Journeys and Explorations
From Shoshone interpreter Sacajewea’s pivotal role in the Lewis and Clark expedition to Ibn Battuta’s thirty-year journey through Africa, Asia, and Europe, people have always been compelled to travel and explore. Such extensive journeys seldom leave travelers or the places they visit unchanged. Encounters with other places and people alter not only how we view the world around us, but also how we view ourselves. In this course, students follow famous explorers and examine the impact of their expeditions. For example, they may sail with Marco Polo in search of silk and spices or follow the Ming dynasty admiral Zheng He on his military expeditions to Africa and India. They may consider the response of Aztec leader Montezuma to invasion by Hernand Cortés. Inspired by what they learn, students plan and conduct their own explorations, which entail researching a specific region’s culture, politics, history, and environment. One student might choose to visit Lake Tanganyika and its chimpanzees with Jane Goodall, while another might explore the Amazon River Basin aboard the Calypso with Jacques Cousteau. Based on their explorations, students develop the skills necessary to appreciate the diversity and commonalities of places and people around the world. Sample texts: Encounter, Yolen; Journey of Lewis and Clark, Blumberg; Traveling Man: The Journey of Ibn Battuta, Rumford; an atlas chosen by the instructor. Students must have completed grades: 2 or 3 Session 1: Brooklandville, Windward
Session 2: Alexandria, Sandy Spring Top
Stories and Poems
The proverb “variety is the spice of life” captures the approach to reading and writing in this course. Exploring a rich array of stories and poems from different cultures, countries, and generations, students learn to identify literary devices and incorporate them into their own writing. For example, students might read Verna Aardema’s Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears: A West African Tale and then write their own pourquoi tales to explain a natural phenomena. They could incorporate comparison into their descriptions after observing how Marie Louise Allen effectively uses simile in her poem “First Snow,” or they could examine how Gary Soto’s short stories evoke the people and places of his childhood and base their own stories on the people and places they know best. Class sessions are designed to allow students to experience the rich interplay of reading, writing, and conversation. For example, a morning may find students moving seamlessly from discussing an assigned story in small groups to writing reflective paragraphs to participating in independent reading of works they choose themselves. Or students could be asked to draft poems, share their poems with classmates, and participate in readers’ theater. Students leave the course with an appreciation for diverse genres and voices, as well as a sense of the many opportunities open to them as readers and writers. Sample texts: Baseball in April and Other Stories, Soto; The Cow of No Color: Riddle Stories and Justice Tales from Around the World, Jaffe, Zeitlin, and Sherman; A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetry Forms, Raschka and Janeczko; materials compiled by the instructor. Students must have completed grades: 2 or 3 Session 1: Pasadena, Sandy Spring
Session 2: Not offered Top
The Ancient World
The period from 2000 BCE to 300 CE saw complex and fascinating cultures flourish all around the world. In this course, students learn about daily life, social structures, governments, economics, and religions in the ancient world, and consider how traces of these civilizations live on today. In addition to reading historical accounts of ancient societies, students explore their myths, legends, and arts. For instance, students may examine the images on Grecian urns to reconstruct a typical meal—its food and the rituals surrounding it. By discovering which mummified animals have been found in pharaohs’ tombs, students may discern Egyptians’ beliefs about the world and the afterlife. Similarly, they may analyze the meaning of dragon images on the garments of Chinese emperors and generals, or consider how Indian oral traditions reflected in the 2,000-year-old epic poem Ramayana shaped the politics, religion, and art of modern South Asia. In addition to group work, students complete individual research on topics of their choosing. They acquire critical thinking and research skills in addition to developing an appreciation for the richness and diversity of ancient cultures. Field trips to museums complement classroom work. Sample texts: Ancient Rome, Connolly; The Ancient Greeks, Rees; India: Exploring Ancient Civilizations, Barr; Eyewitness: Ancient China, Cotterell; The Kingfisher Book of the Ancient World, Martell; City, Macauley; Ancient Egypt, Hart. Field Trip Fee: $65 Students must have completed grades: 3 or 4 Session 1: Pasadena, Sandy Spring, Windward
Session 2: Alexandria, Brooklandville, Pasadena, Sandy Spring Top
Writing and Reading Workshop
Gathering together a community of young writers and readers, this course helps students develop the vocabulary and critical thinking skills necessary to discuss writing and reading in sophisticated ways. Students explore a range of reading and writing assignments, some of which they choose themselves with the instructor’s guidance. Approximately half of each day is devoted to writing and half to reading. Writing is taught by having students do what professional writers d gather material, decide on topics, confer with peers, draft, workshop, and revise. Daily lessons and one-on-one conferences address writing skills from sentence construction to the use of imagery. In reading workshops, students choose texts to read and respond to in their journals; they may also read short stories and novels to discuss as a class. Working with the instructor, students develop close reading skills and an appreciation for authors and genres that are new to them. Cooperative learning and constructive criticism are emphasized, and detailed responses from the instructor and peers play an essential role in each student’s growth as a reader and writer. Note: As part of their homework, students in this course may be expected to borrow books from their neighborhood libraries. Sample texts: Independent reading assignments supplemented by instructor-selected short stories and novels; America Street: A Multicultural Anthology of Stories, Mazer; Esperanza Rising, Ryan; Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Taylor. Students must have completed grades: 3 or 4 Session 1: Brooklandville, La Jolla, Pasadena, Sandy Spring
Session 2: Alexandria, Pasadena, Sandy Spring, Windward Top
Writing Workshop: Modern Fantasy
Novelist Caroline Gordon once said, “A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.” Readers of modern fantasy are transported into magical worlds where people, places, and things are often not what they appear to be. Animals speak, toys come to life, and eccentric characters perform seemingly impossible feats. Worlds are turned upside down, and the familiar becomes the unknown. In this course, students learn to identify the traits that characterize modern fantasy. They venture into extraordinary places such as Narnia in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and witness battles between good and evil like those that take place in Susan Cooper’s Over Sea, Under Stone. Students may read Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart and experience what might take place if characters could come alive from the pages of a book. The course’s workshop approach affords many opportunities to engage in close reading, participate in informed discussion, and reflect upon what these fantastic worlds tell us about our own. In addition, students respond to modern fantasy texts in a variety of written assignments, including literary analysis and reflective writing. Armed with their newly developed understanding of the genre and an appreciation for its nuances, students then craft original pieces of fantasy. Sample texts: The Black Cauldron, Alexander; The Golden Compass, Pullman; Redwall, Jacques; materials compiled by the instructor. Students must have completed grade: 4 or 5 Session 1: Brooklandville, La Jolla, Sandy Spring, Windward
Session 2: Alexandria, Windward Top
Pirates: History and Culture
Pirate culture first developed during ancient times for political, economic, and military reasons, and acts of piracy have been documented in seas all over the world. Julius Caesar was captured and held for ransom by Cilician pirates; the Alawi sultans worked with pirates based along the Barbary Coast to bring riches to Morocco; Sir Francis Drake, commissioned by none other than Queen Elizabeth I, raided harbors and attacked the Spanish Armada in the Caribbean Sea; and Japanese pirates called Wakō established a forceful presence along the Chinese and Korean coasts between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Pirates are still active in the world today, especially off the coast of Africa, the Pacific Coast of Latin America, and the Straits of Malacca in Southeast Asia. Students in this course research the formation of pirate fleets and study the profiles of famous privateers and pirates like William Kidd, Edward Teach (“Blackbeard”), and Ching Shih, the woman pirate who took over her husband’s fleets off the coast of China after he died. They examine how and why the varieties of pirate culture and laws developed over time and in different parts of the world. Students analyze the socioeconomic and political forces that has led to the rise of piracy and the reactions of governments to this threat on the high seas. Using pirates as a lens through which to study world history and geography, students acquire a greater understanding of the historical forces of trade, colonialism, ethnicity, nationalism, politics, and even art and literature. Sample texts: Eyewitness: Pirate, Platt; Pirates and Smugglers, Butterfield; Treasure Island, Stevenson. Students must have completed grades: 4 or 5 Session 1: Brooklandville, Windward
Session 2: Alexandria, Brooklandville Top | 
