Monuments and Memorials of the Marginalized “Off the Beaten Path”

Eboné Lockett, English, CATO Middle College HS

Curriculum Unit (pdf)

Synopsis

This curriculum unit serves as a precursor for key contexts and experiences throughout American History. As a Grade 11 Honors and Advanced Placement English Language Arts Educator, our curriculum pacing guide follows a skeletal, chronological core of the canon of American Literature. Additionally, students need to understand and connect key people, periods and problems in history to see how text imitates life and thus applies to their own lives. Contrary to most American Literature and American History pacing guides, this unit will focus on experiences, as narrated via memorials and monuments, of three important “groups” of people whose voices have often been muted, suppressed or ignored by the dominant narratives of American texts, American culture, and subsequently, American identity. These groups are the Native-Americans, the African-Americans, and the Immigrant-Americans. The unit also provides extension activities that give voice to other “marginalized” groups in the landscape of the American narrative. All material covered satisfies the North Carolina Standard Course of Study and the National Common Core Standards.