Genre: American Short Story

American Short Story

In this course we will examine a selection of short stories in order to investigate how writers in America have used the form of the short story to explore themes arising from American life, including themes that trouble or complicate our notion of what “American life” is. We will look at short stories from varying time periods by writers from various locations and positionalities. We will consider American short stories as they emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries as well as more recent or contemporary short stories that deal with immigrant and indigenous experiences, including some short stories from Hawaiʻi. Throughout we’ll pay attention to elements like plot, narration, setting, metaphor, etc. to sharpen our skills at literary analysis and start to understand how the short story form works.

This is also a writing intensive course; you will be asked to write four papers of 4-5 pages throughout the semester that argue your own interpretation of how an author has used one or more literary elements to support the theme(s) in a short story we have read.