June 30 - July 21, 2013
Mission
The mission of the Hotchkiss Summer Portals American Literature and Theater Program is to help students deepen their appreciation of American literature and strengthen their confidence to read, write and speak English in a classroom, on a stage, and all around a school’s campus.
The Program
With great joy, the Hotchkiss Summer Portals Program welcomes you – the talented students from around the world! We hope you are ready for three weeks of an immersion experience that offers you all the challenges and rewards of a high-caliber American literature class and theater program.
Whether it’s analyzing a classic of American literature (Hemingway or Cather, perhaps?) around a discussion table, writing a critical essay, preparing for a poetry recitation, or mastering the delivery of a speech from a play, you will be living and breathing English all day long! Your mornings will most likely be spent in a classroom where you’ll be studying literature. The classes are small (fewer than a dozen students), so be ready to talk! Share with the group your impressions of the reading, your interpretations, and your questions. Find those quotations that support your points. Mark up the margins of your books – such marginalia will serve as the basis for our discussions. We’ll also spend a lot of time writing, critiquing, and revising assignments which will range from personal narratives to critical essays.
Later in the day you’ll be off to the one of the School’s theater spaces, where you’ll practice public speaking and explore all the intricacies associated with delivering lines on a stage. Matters of tone, inflection, accent, and pacing will challenge your voice while matters of blocking, gestures, and body language will challenge your muscles.
Portals is also big on sharing with the community what you’re learning, so be ready to go public! By showcasing your writings and adding recitations, readings, debates, and publications to your agenda, we’ll have lots of chances to show everyone what you have accomplished. Performances are not just for the musicians!
The rest of your time will be spent speaking English – and only English as we’re an immersion program after all! – to people from all around the world. In the dorms it’s English; in the dining hall it’s English; during afternoon activities and trips into town it’s English. We hope you’ll return to your home country speaking English as comfortably as any American teenager, just without all the “likes”! Seriously, the word “like” is driving us crazy.
Everyone at the Hotchkiss Summer Portals is eager to meet you and share our love of English and literature.
Costs
American Literature and Theater program: $5,550