Abstract
I have created and developed an interdisciplinary high school curriculum that examines themes of existential thought in selected literature. The literature examined in this curriculum represents existential thought during the post Enlightenment era, the Czarist Regime of Russia and the war stricken world of twentieth century Europe. This course is designed to engage students in deep analysis of literature in order to extract, examine and discuss the existential themes of the text. The curriculum is divided into several units and two distinct sections. The introductory section provides students with a clear depiction of existential thought as it was first introduced by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and affords students the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to identify and evaluate existential themes in literary excerpts. The second section provide an opportunity for students to read, analyze, evaluate, and critically assess four pieces of literature that contain some of the many existential themes introduced in the first section. Each piece of literature is also introduced with a general and over-arching introduction to the historical social and political context within which each author wrote. Throughout the entire course students will be asked to reflect on the literature and make distinct connections to their own lives and the role of existential thought today. As students analyze literature and the historical context of each author’s life, they will also be identifying more modern manifestations of the existential notions of anxiety, absurdity, alienation, freedom, authenticity and death. This will allow them to understand and identify the manifestation of existential thought in their own lives and assess the relevance of such deep philosophical thought in the world today.