LIT2024 - Fall 2025 - Wonder

This course will look at the history of the short story, starting with Chekhov, the father of the form. We will cover a brief historical view of the short story in the first half of the class and then shift our focus to the contemporary American short story for the second half. This class will look at the short story through the lens of craft, as well as historical and social contexts of the text. You will be asked to engage in discussions in each class, offering your own questions or insights into the what the story does well, what its shortcomings are, as well as considerations toward the society and time in which it was written. You will develop skills to read for craft analysis, and there will be opportunities to write fiction as a part of some class assignments, as well as your final project. There is also ample opportunity to engage in research or critical theory if that is a skill you are interested in honing. Practically speaking, we will work at the intersection of craft and literary criticism, seeking to discover how these two approaches inform each other and create friction in the literary landscape.