LIT 2024 - FALL 2026 - Ezeano

This course introduces students to the foundational literary genre of the short story. This course is an introduction to the history and variety of the short story as a form, including selections from the Western canon, and teaches students to understand, analyze and think critically about the formal aspects of the short story (including point of view, narration, tone, characterization, and theme) that are essential to all literary study.

The course also investigates how affective forces engineer a short story. In lieu of treating feelings as mere tempers, we will interrogate the possibilities of emotions: how they dictate narrative structure, how they push characters to extremities, and how they engineer visceral responses in the reader.