William Coleman

Mr. Coleman has taught at Northfield since 2004. He has served as managing editor of Image and executive editor of nonfiction of DoubleTake. A former teaching fellow at Harvard University, his poems have been published in Poetry, The Paris Review, The New Criterion, Image, Kansas Voices, and other publications. His book and music reviews have been published in Image and The Martha’s Vineyard Times, respectively.

He is faculty advisor for Northfield's literary journal, Still Point, works with juniors and seniors on convocation speeches, and directs the annual Christmas Festival of Lessons and Carols.

Medieval Literature

This course explores Western literature from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. Readings include Anglo-Saxon poetry, The Ballad of the White Horse, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Arthurian legends, and Dante's Divine Comedy. Students regularly memorize poetry. Creative writing includes Anglo-Saxon riddle poems. Essays require textual analysis, and focus on the importance of structure and proof.

European Literature

This course explores Western literature from the Renaissance through the modern era. Readings include Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Shakespeare's Henry V and Hamlet, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, a survey of Romantic poetry, Eliot's Silas Marner, Dickens's A Christmas Carol, and Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Students regularly memorize poetry. Creative writing includes poetry that follows metrical forms, from limericks to sonnets. Essays emphasize the discovery of arguments, research, and analytical and interpretive skills.

American Literature

This course surveys American literature from the Age of Exploration through the twentieth century. Readings include Native American myths, Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity," Shakespeare's The Tempest, Irving's short stories, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Emerson, Cather's O! Pioneers, Fitzgerald's The Great Gastby, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. Creative writing includes short stories. Essays emphasize research, logic, analysis, interpretation, and critical thinking. Papers include process (how-to), compare and contrast, cause and effect, and argument. The course culminates in the writing and presentation to the school of a speech.