ENGL 071D. The Short Story in the U.S.

Reading assignments will primarily be short stories, but will also include selected other relevant materials. The course will begin in the early 19^th century with masters whose daring and innovative work gave the short story new prominence in literary history: Poe, Irving, Hawthorne, and Melville. The syllabus will include significant late 19^th- and early 20^th-century authors who built on this legacy (such as James, Chopin, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Hurston, and Faulkner, among others). After vacation break we’ll turn to later authors such as Eudora Welty, Ray Bradbury, Toni Cade Bambara, Thomas Pynchon, George Saunders, Sandra Cisneros, Jennifer Egan, Edwidge Danticat, and many others. Our syllabus will also feature published work by recent Swarthmore graduates who have gone on to become published fiction writers.
This is a Gateway English Literature course, suitable for anyone’s first or second English literature course. Majors and minors are also welcome. For majors and minors, this course can count either as an 18th/19th or as a 20th/21st century course, depending on the topic of the final research paper.
GATEWAY English Literature.
Fall 2025. Staff.

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