English 327-011
The Development of the Short Story
Instr: Hamilton, Kristie
Office: CRT 478; 229-5959
e-mail: kgh2@uwm.edu
Office hours: TBA
Course Information: MTR; 10:00-12:13pm; CRT 124 (5/29-7/7)
Course Description
In this course, we will study many of the finest nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers of short fiction from the U.S. and around the world. We will focus primarily on twentieth-century short stories. Studying short works by skilled crafters of the form will allow us to refine our understanding of the major elements of narrative and of the literary modes that have emerged within the history of the development of the genre-such as the gothic, the sentimental, realism, naturalism, psychological realism, and, more recently, flash fiction. We will read a diverse range of authors such as Hawthorne and Poe, Kate Chopin, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Grace Paley, Flannery O'Connor, Chinua Achebe, Alice Walker, Sandra Cisneros, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Gish Gen, Louise Erdrich, Jamaica Kincaid, Alice Munro, and William Faulkner. We will discover the intellectual pleasures and power of refining our skills at close reading and collective analysis while broadening our familiarity with writers from among the best in modern literary history.
Course Requirements:
Short weekly quizzes in lieu of a comprehensive final exam, two brief discussion questions twice in six weeks, three 3-page papers (topics provided), regular attendance and class participation.
Required Text:
Fiction: A Pocket Anthology, edited by R.S. Gwynn (Penguin Academics)
