Genre Study - Short Stories

Catalog description

Humans are a story telling animal. We seem to need them to make sense of ourselves. In this course we will read short stories from some of the world famous masters and innovators of the form (e.g. Chekhov, D.H. Lawrence, Gogol, Heinrich von Kleist, Mishima, Verga) to a sampling of contemporary writers (Lucia Berlin, Dagoberto Gilb, Junot Diaz, Aimee Bender, Gunnhild Oyehaug). The readings vary in tone, style, theme, language, and degrees of realism, surrealism, magic realism, and absurdism. Students will write carefully crafted responses to stories as well as short stories of their own.