ClassInfo

This course is divided into three units: I. Origins and definitions of the short story. II. Elements of Narrative. III. Additional genres of the short story

We will read approx. 4-5 short stories a week (some quite short), save for the last two weeks, during which we'll read an author collection by sf/f writer Ted Chiang.

Our short stories will contain a mix of classics of 19th-c and 20th-c American fiction (Poe, Twain, Anderson, Melville, Hawthorne, Du Bois, Hemingway, etc.); classics from early 20th-century world literature by Franz Kafka, Anton Chekhov, Jorge Luis Borges, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez; and an assortment of 20th-century fiction by celebrated authors working in a wide range of genres, modes, and locations (Ursula K. Le Guin, Angela Carter, Tanith Lee,Toni Cade Bambara, Lorrie Moore, Kelly Link, Sherman Alexie, Chinua Achebe, Sandra Cisneros, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, George R. R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Haruki Murakami, Luisa Valenzuela, Nalo Hopkinson, and others).

Presentation: Collaborative Class Story

Textbooks (Required)

1. Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang, ISBN: 9781101972120

2. The Short Story: An Introduction, by Paul March-Russell, ISBN: 978-0-7486-2774-5

3. The Story and Its Writer, ed. Ann Charters, 8th edition, ISBN: 9780312596231 (or the 9th edition, if necessary)

I've tried to keep the cost of textbooks below $50. All of the texts above are currently available on Amazon or other online booksellers as used books for less than $10 each. All textbooks will also be available at the bookstore.

Anyone drawn to the short story as a genre or to the study of fiction, in general. Majors and non-majors welcome. No prerequisites required.

ENGL 1031 satisfies the Literature Core requirement.

I. ANALYTICAL SKILLS: This course will use the short story to teach you about the importance of a liberal education by engaging with three major issues: (1) the development of arguments that use reason and evidence to come to a conclusion; (2) the acquisition of analytical skills that will allow you to respond to stories written in a variety of cultural contexts; and (3) the ability to recognize more and less valid modes of approaching literary analysis.

II. WRITING SKILLS: Most of the assignments, including the presentation, involve writing (analytical, argumentative, expository, and a limited amount of creative writing). We will also spend one week on "reading and writing about literature" during which our non-fiction readings will introduce you to strategies and insights that will assist you in writing a literary analysis for a literature course.

III. LITERARY HISTORY AND TERMINOLOGY: Students will learn the key elements of narrative and will examine classic texts from several major literary periods through class discussions, handouts, and targeted non-fiction readings.

In this course, we will read literary texts from diverse backgrounds written in the nineteenth-century and after. While works written by American or British authors are not entirely excluded, our focus is with authors of other national origins and their engagement with English and literatures written in English. This course will cover texts originally written in English as well as texts that gained currency within the Anglophone world through translation. As we read a text in the broad light of imperialism and postcolonialism, we will examine issues of race, gender, and class at work in the text within specific historical and political contexts.

In this class, we will study British Literature that spans roughly 1000 years of British history, from the Anglo-Saxon invasion through the eighteenth century. As we move through the centuries, we will encounter a variety of texts and genres, and we will study them with a careful eye toward their historical, social, and political contexts. How do literary representations of violence, war, and betrayal respond to, mirror, or distort real world events? How do texts represent men and women in ways that both reify and challenge the expectations of their time? How does the form of a text affect our interpretation of its meaning? We will study literature across many genres - from epic poetry to drama to short stories to social pamphlets - and students should leave this class armed with an interpretative toolset underwritten by newfound knowledge of historical periods, literary methodology and cultural criticism.

In this class, we will study British Literature that spans roughly 1000 years of British history, from the Anglo-Saxon invasion through the eighteenth century. As we move through the centuries, we will encounter a variety of texts and genres, and we will study them with a careful eye toward their historical, social, and political contexts. How do literary representations of violence, war, and betrayal respond to, mirror, or distort real world events? How do texts represent men and women in ways that both reify and challenge the expectations of their time? How does the form of a text affect our interpretation of its meaning? We will study literature across many genres - from epic poetry to drama to short stories to social pamphlets - and students should leave this class armed with an interpretative toolset underwritten by newfound knowledge of historical periods, literary methodology and cultural criticism.

This course will survey American literature from the arrival of settlers to the Civil War. Course topics will include the Puritan theology that cast such a long shadow over the American cultural imagination; the literary construction in the Revolutionary era of a national identity under the influence of such Enlightenment ideals as reason, civility, cosmopolitanism, and sympathy; the rise in the mid-nineteenth century of a radical intellectual and social movement in Transcendentalism; the antebellum ideological struggles over slavery, industrialism, women's rights, and Native American rights; and the self-conscious cultivation of a national literary aesthetic in the Romantic prose and poetry of the period later critics would come (controversially) to call "the American Renaissance."

Likely authors: Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Benjamin Franklin, Phillis Wheatley, Hannah Webster Foster, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and more.

This course will survey American literature from the arrival of settlers to the Civil War. Course topics will include the Puritan theology that cast such a long shadow over the American cultural imagination; the literary construction in the Revolutionary era of a national identity under the influence of such Enlightenment ideals as reason, civility, cosmopolitanism, and sympathy; the rise in the mid-nineteenth century of a radical intellectual and social movement in Transcendentalism; the antebellum ideological struggles over slavery, industrialism, women's rights, and Native American rights; and the self-conscious cultivation of a national literary aesthetic in the Romantic prose and poetry of the period later critics would come (controversially) to call "the American Renaissance."

Likely authors: Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Benjamin Franklin, Phillis Wheatley, Hannah Webster Foster, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and more.

Details

Our course is an 8-week summer session course that begins on June 12 and concludes on August 4, 2017. This is a 4-credit, writing intensive course that fulfills the writing requirement, the literature core requirement, and the diversity and social justice in the US requirement. We meet three times a week for roughly three hours every session. *** NOTE: Room change *** We will meet in Mechanical Engineering, Room 102 (the building next to Lind Hall). Mechanical Engineering is quite close to the Coffman train/bus stop, is fully accessible with elevators, and has central air-conditioning.

Due to the accelerated pace of this course, time will be provided in-class to work on projects such as the group presentation, and there will be at least one in-class work day in which students will be able to use class time to work on papers or get ahead on readings.

Overview

Our course will include representative works by American Indian, African American, Asian American, Chicano/Chicana, and Jewish American writers, chiefly from the 20th century, ranging from Nobel- and Pulitzer prize-winning masters to upcoming genre authors and debut authors. In reading these works, we will discuss social and cultural factors informing America's literary past and present. As these authors honor identity, celebrate community, and deal with the complexities of the modern age, they also explore America's shared and problematic past--"how history works itself out in the living," as author Louise Erdrich has phrased it. In the course of our discussions, we will engage with contemporary genres/modes of writing, including traditional literary fiction, poetry, plays, spy and detective fiction, speculative fiction, and the graphic novel.

You will be required to read four novels (three shorter novels and one longer novel), one play, and one graphic novel outside of class. During class time, we will read short stories and poems, as well as watch three films and several interviews. Class sessions will also include lectures, discussion, quizzes, freewriting, and other short writing assignments. Weather permitting, we may take a field trip to a local museum or conduct class outside occasionally.

Assignments

10% Participation (class discussion, workshops, conferences)

10% Attendance (arriving late will lower your grade; see attendance policy)

In-person on East Bank campus three times a week for three hours.

In this course, we will read literary texts from diverse backgrounds written in the nineteenth-century and after. While works written by American or British authors are not entirely excluded, our focus is with authors of other national origins and their engagement with English and literatures written in English. This course will cover texts originally written in English as well as texts that gained currency within the Anglophone world through translation. As we read a text in the broad light of imperialism and postcolonialism, we will examine issues of race, gender, and class at work in the text within specific historical and political contexts.