MLU
Seminar: Current Developments in the American Short Story - Vertiefungsmodul - Details
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General information

Course name Seminar: Current Developments in the American Short Story - Vertiefungsmodul
Course number ANG.04630.02
Semester WS 2021/22
Current number of participants 16
maximum number of participants 30
Home institute Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Courses type Seminar in category Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
First date Tuesday, 12.10.2021 13:00 - 14:30, Room: Seminarraum 3 [AKStr.35] (Angl.)
Studiengänge (für) ANG.04630.02 für Current Developments in the American Short Story
SWS 2

Module assignments

Comment/Description

Given the immense increase in the popularity of short stories since the millennium, it is curious, to say the least, that a number of critics regard the American short story as an “endangered species” (see Oates 2000, 38–41) and even as a “dead form” (see Batuman 2006, 63–64). In this course, we will challenge the critics’ practice of sounding the death knell for the genre by exploring a variety of exciting developments in the contemporary American short story: the short story cycle, revisionist historiographies, the New Sincerity movement, flash fiction / microfiction, and Afrofuturism. Our corpus of short stories includes texts from a wide range of prominent authors: the Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz, the Chinese-American author Yiyun Li, the European-American authors George Saunders and Lydia Davis, and the African American fiction writers N. K. Jemisin and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. We will examine representative examples of their writings from diverse angles, including form, language, identity, gender, class, race, and political contexts, and cover issues such as love, diaspora, ecology, zombies, science fiction, and violence.

Works Cited
Batuman, Elif. “Short Story & Novel.” n+1, Issue 4: Reconstruction (Spring 2006): 63–70.
Oates, Joyce Carol. “An Endangered Species.” New York Review of Books 29 June (2000): 38–41.

Required texts:
The course material will be made available on the ILIAS platform.

Admission settings

The course is part of admission "Beschränkte Teilnehmendenanzahl: Current Developments in the American Short Story - Vertiefungsmodul".
The following rules apply for the admission:
  • A defined number of seats will be assigned to these courses.
    The seats will be assigned in order of enrolment.
  • The enrolment is possible from 20.09.2021, 01:00 to 31.10.2021, 23:00.