How To Organize Your World Literature Class

So, you’ve just been told you’ll be teaching a high school World Literature class. Congratulations! But now you’re looking at a year of blank lesson plans and don’t know where to begin….

Don’t worry! In this post, I’m going to talk about three ways you can organize your World Literature class effectively.

(If this all still sounds daunting, you can save yourself the trouble and grab my Year-long World Literature Bundle!)

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Organize Your World Literature Class Method #1: By Geographic Location

This method is probably the most obvious: organize your World Literature class by grouping texts based on geographic regions.

So, during the course of a year, you might focus on four different parts of the world (one for each quarter). Then, for each region, you’d read works by authors from that region.

Here’s an example:

Africa: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, short stories from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
Asia: The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Europe: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, The Inferno by Dante Alighieri, The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman
The Americas: Poems by Pablo Neruda, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

This ensures that your World Literature class is achieving its foremost goal of exposing students to diverse and global literature.

Breaking your class into regional units also helps students make connections between the literature and the historical or cultural contexts that shaped them. Undoubtedly, your students will end up learning a lot about world history in addition to literature.

It also emphasizes the value of diverse perspectives and encourages students to reflect on how the worldviews of other cultures differ from their own.

My own World Literature Class is organized in this way although my focus was on organizational method #3. I chose engaging texts that were accessible to students who might not have high school-level reading and writing skills despite being in high school classes.

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Organize Your World Literature Class Method #2: Thematically

Another way to group your texts for World Literature is by theme. Focus on themes that resonate across many cultures. This approach allows students to see how different authors from various backgrounds explore similar topics like love, power, identity, or conflict.

Popular Themes for World Literature Courses:

The Hero’s Journey: Works like The Odyssey by Homer, The Epic of Gilgamesh, or The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Love and Betrayal: Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Colonialism and Power: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Identity and Belonging: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

This thematic organization encourages students to compare and contrast literary works from different cultures, identifying universal human experiences and unique cultural perspectives. It also facilitates rich discussions and critical thinking exercises around the chosen themes.

Organize Your World Literature Class Method #3: By Skill Focus

I taught at a Title I school where most of my students were years behind in skill level; thus, prioritizing skills was always my focus.

That was true when I designed my World Literature Class as well. Each included unit focuses on a different skill with each skill building on previous ones. This approach ensures students are building essential reading, writing, and analytical abilities while engaging with global texts.

There are an infinite number of possibilities and skills on which you could choose to focus. Here are the skills I worked on and scaffolded across my own World Literature Class:

Writing Claim, Evidence, Reasoning: Students write short C-E-R style responses to Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Essay Writing: Students write a thematic essay on Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
Research Skills: Students researched a world genocide as they read The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman
Writing a Research Essay: Students researched their own “Personal Legend” while reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Choose skills that you know are difficult for your students. The skills I chose are largely writing-based, but maybe your students need more work on analysis or literary skills.

This structure not only ensures students develop essential academic skills but also helps them connect their learning across multiple works, making it a highly practical way to approach world literature.

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Conclusion

There is no one “right” way to organize a world literature class—it all depends on your goals for your students. Whether you divide the course by geographic location, theme, or skill focus, the most important thing is to design a course that encourages students to engage with global perspectives and think critically about the world around them.

(If you need some World Literature activities for any class, check out this post here!)

Whichever structure you choose, world literature offers a powerful platform for students to explore diverse cultures and develop their analytical skills. Experiment with different methods, or even combine them, to create a course that works best for you and your students!

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