Led by Stephen Westich, PhD student in Art History, Rice University
The short story, as a serious literary form, is frequently held up as an important American contribution to world literature. Writers such as Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne transformed and honed this art form in the spirit of the intellectual movement known as American Romanticism. This reading group will not focus on the history or development of the short story as a genre; instead, it will focus on the craft of voice-making that various authors have used to reveal aspects of human experience. Voices spring up on every side in our everyday life, and their variety constitutes an essential part of our world as meaningful. We will discuss how an author attempts to translate these varieties of voice into the written form by reading closely and attending to the rhythms and nuances of written speech.
Meets Tuesdays, 6:15-7:30pm
Duncan Hall 3076
1/15 – Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment”
1/22 – Kate Chopin, “At the ‘Cadian Ball”
1/29 – Willa Cather, “A Wagner Matinee”
2/19 – Jane Bowles, “Plain Pleasures”
3/05 – Raymond Carver, “The Calm”**
**Meeting at McMurtry PDR
