The American Short Story

ENGLISH 90AS Subject & Catalog Number

Description

This seminar will explore the American short story with a special focus on writers of the nineteenth century who were critical to establishing the short story as a genre. We will begin by examining the tales and stories of Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe in relation to the rise of magazine publishing and Poe's theory of the short story. We will then compare the short story with serialized fiction; delve into regional fiction; and visit the Charlotte Perkins Gilman collection at Schlesinger Library. The last third of the class will shift to the twentieth century and consider more recent short stories in conversation with earlier works, including writings by Sherwood Anderson, James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, William Faulkner, Ken Liu, Flannery O'Connor, Leslie Marmon Silko, Helena María Viramontes, and Hisaye Yamamoto.