Reading the Short Story

This course invites students to explore the pleasurable challenges of close reading within the context of a compressed form, the modern short story. Select works from the nineteenth century on wards—many of them masterpieces, some hidden gems from around the world—will help us question what we think they mean and how we know this. We will develop practices and techniques for articulating such quandaries even as we observe how sociocultural themes, theories of interpretation, and literary movements intertwine with expressions of the self and the politics of identity. No prerequisites. Open to all undergraduates.