Friday, October 30, 2009

Spring Semester 2015/ The University of Akron/ 3300: 455 The American Short Story
TTh 12:15-1:30 Schrank Hall/ Professor: Robert Pope/ rpope@uakron.edu

Texts:
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hawthorne’s Short Stories/  Vintage Classics
Stephen Crane, The Open Boat and Other Stories/ Dover Publications
Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Stories/ Signet Classics
J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories/ Back Bay Books
Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories/ Penguin Classics
Raymond Carver, Where I’m Calling From/ Vintage
Anne Beattie, The New Yorker Stories/ Scribner 

I. Part One

Part I/ Tuesday, January 13: Introduction

Thursday, 15: Hawthorne, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” “Young Goodman Brown”
Tuesday 20: “The Birthmark,” “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” “Drowne’s Wooden Image”
Thursday, 22: “Ethan Brand,” “The Wives of the Dead”

Tuesday 27: Crane, “Maggie, a Girl of the Streets”
Thursday 29: “The Open Boat”
Tuesday February 3: “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” “The Blue Hotel”

Thursday 5: Chopin, “At the ‘Cadian Ball,” “The Storm”
Tuesday 10: “La Belle Zoraide,” “The Kiss,” “Athenaise”
Thursday 12: “Desiree’s Baby,” “The Story of an Hour,” “A Pair of Silk Stockings”

Tuesday 17: Presidents’ Day Observed

Thursday 19: Exam #1



II. Part Two

Part II

Tuesday 24: Salinger, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” “Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut,” “Just Before the War with the Eskimos”
Thursday 26: “The Laughing Man,” “Down at the Dinghy”
Tuesday March 3: “For Esme—with Love and Squalor,” “Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes”
Thursday 5: “DeDaumier-Smith’s Blue Period,” “Teddy”

Tuesday 10: Barthelme, “Me and Miss Mandible,” “The Balloon,” “Game,” “Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning,” “The Dolt”
Thursday 12: “Views of My Father Weeping,” “Paraguay,” “On Angels”
Tuesday 17: “”The Phantom of the Opera’s Friend,” “City Life,” “The Policeman’s Ball,” “The Glass Mountain”
Thursday 19: “A City of Churches,” “Eugenie Grandet,” “The School,” “The Zombies”

Tuesday 24 & Tuesday 26: Spring break

Tuesday 31: Carver, “The Student’s Wife,” “They’re Not Your Husband,” “Neighbors,” “Are These Actual Miles?”
Thursday April 2: “Gazebo,” “Why Don’t You Dance?” “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love”
Tuesday April 7: “So Much Water So Close to Home,” “Vitamins,” “Where I’m Calling from,” “Chef’s House”
Thursday 9: “Feathers,” “Cathedral,” “Whoever Was Using this Bed”

Tuesday 14: Beattie, “Wolf Dreams,” “Snake’s Shoes,” “The Lawn Party,” “Shifting”
Thursday 16: “A Vintage Thunderbird,” “The Cinderella Waltz”
Tuesday 21: “Greenwich Time,” “Running Dreams,” “Heaven on a Summer Night”
Thursday 23: “In the White Night,” “Summer People,” “Janus,” “Skeletons”
Tuesday 28: “The Burning House”


Thursday 30: Exam #2

Requirements



Requirements: Attendance; eleven quizzes (lowest grade dropped); two exams; one 3-4 page paper with the group presentation on a short story from Part II of the course, due the day the story is discussed; 4-6 page paper on a story from Part II, due by the final exam period (may be the same story or writer of the first paper).  


Grading: Quizzes = 1 grade; exams = 2 grades; paper and presentation = 1 grade; final paper = 1 grade; for a total of five grades averaged for the final grade.  Final grade reduced a half step for missing two weeks of class and a half step for every class thereafter.  Quizzes cannot be made up.