The Short Story in The United States

Provide a text analysis, relying on close reading, and focussed on the literary and cultural aspects that you find more relevant. Write in every other line and no more than 3 pages.  Suggested topics : theme(s) and structure; importance of the text within the context of the author’s work and time; subject of the enunciation; point of view and effect upon the reader/addressee; rhetoric and linguistic devices and language tropes (descriptive or lyric manner, figures of speech, symbolism, innovation / surprising markers, deictics, collocations, or pattern traces within the author’s work); intertextuality with texts studied in this class or others. Model, based on "Slavery's Pleasant Homes"  from “The Fatal Hour” to “bretheren of the South” This excerpt from Lydia Maria Child’s “Slavery Pleasant Homes” presents us with the conclusion of the short story, where the myth of the “peculiar institituion” of slavery as extended family is de...

1925 - Anthology The New Negro (ed. Alain Locke), with Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston. consecrates the Harlem Renaissance . 1929 -  Wall Street Crash 1930s -  Dustbowl (the dirty thrities)  1933-1937  - New Deal (Frank D. Roosevelt): Relief, Recovery and Reform;  Roosevelt's New Deal  "Farm Security Administration"  (FSA) project and documentary photography 1939  - Radio Corporation of America demonstrantes television at New York Wrold's Fair John Steinbeck,  The Grapes of Wrath 1939-1945  - 2nd World War 1941 - US enters World War II (Pearl Harbour) 1950s - intensification of Cold War and McCarthysm 1955- The Montgomery Bus Boycott begins on December 5 after Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on the bus. 1957- The Southern Christian Leadership Conference establishes and adopts nonviolent mass action as its cornerstone strategy to gain civil rights and opportunities fo...

Who has the right to tell whose story? In “Slavery’s Pleasant Homes,” Lydia Maria Child creates black characters and develops her short story based on their experiences, despite being a white woman; in Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man” he creates white characters and develops his story based on their experiences. Is this artistic decision justified? If so, what is the point? Baldwin represents the sexuality of white men as being defined in contrast to the oversexualization of black men. In what ways is Jesse’s masculinity based on his dominance over African American men? What are some moments that highlight this?` What is the purpose of the flashback to the lynching?

Eudora Welty, "Chopping Cotton in the Field", 1935 GROTTO I don’t want anything bright or Hellenic. I prefer commercial airplane turbines, their domestic soot to the alabaster sail of Ulysses’ ship on the high seas. I prefer an eclipse to Calypso. I don’t want anything truly white. I dismiss the herons’ delta wing, its aero-dynamic flight, I swap it for the scurrying of sewage rats, their Chinese rush, their post-traumatic stress: I’m proud of such clean creatures. I also refuse the white page: I undertake its disfiguration with black blood, as a white man is disfigured in Harlem. I will not start to imagine how slaves might have felt in the cotton fields. Daniel Jonas, 2008

In “The Whole World Knows” by Eudora Welty, the experience of a man in a small town is displayed after his wife has an affair with a close friend. This story embraces figurative language at unique levels and utilizes it to tie into various themes. This, alongside the narrative progression of the story, can often times make it difficult to discern imagination from reality. Below are some questions that can help you sort out some of the deeper meanings within the text: How does Welty’s depiction of gender in the “The Whole World Knows” contribute to the overall meaning of the text? How does the way women are represented in “The Whole World Knows” compare to the way they are represented in stories in Winesburg, Ohio ? Explain the significance of the mother’s interjections at different points in the “The Whole World Knows.” Identify how various symbols throughout the text contribute to the themes in the “The Whole World Knows.” RPG, Untitled (1976)

Here is a link that I think overall is helpful for your final essay: http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/eng256/support/litcompare.htm Aditions: 1) you can either compare two short stories or one short story and an artistic object pertaining to other media (visual, musical). If you have repeated in your literary review the story you chose for your oral presentation, you cannot work on that short story again. 2) focus on grounds of comparison/contrast: don't forget this is a literature class.  As such try to substantiate at least one of your grounds for comparison with a "reading" of a short excerpt or image detail. Close, careful and critical reading is essential in order for you to develop nuanced readings and interpretations, to bring out similarities and differences between the texts (even if visual or musical texts) you are comparing, and to demonstrate your awareness of the forms, patterns, textures, resonances and ideological purposes of language. This might n...

Until November 9 you should decide on your final writing assignment, sending an email with your topic and the type of essay to mid33@georgetown.edu. T On November 21 you are required to deliver a  2-page max. plan for research paper with an annotated bibliography, that we will then discuss on the class of November 28 . In your plan you should include your thesis statement, at least 3 (sub)topics with reference to evidence, and what your expected findings are. What does an annotated bibliography look like? An annotated bibliography starts with the bibliographic details of a source (the citation) followed by a brief annotation. As with a normal reference list or bibliography, an annotated bibliography is usually arranged alphabetically according to the author’s last name. An annotated bibliography summary for each entry should not be more than 80 words. Summary should inlude an evaluation (why the work is useful) and/or an explanation of value (relevance of the citation for t...

" Hammett took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley (...)  All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech. Hammett’s style at its worst was almost as formalized as a page of Marius the Epicurean; at its best it could say almost anything. I believe this style, which does not belong to Hammett or to anybody, but is the American language (and not even exclusively that any more), can say things he did not know how to say or feel the need of saying. In his hands it had no overtones, left no echo, evoked no image beyond a distant hill. He is said to have lacked heart, yet the story he thought most of himself is the record of a man’s devotion to a friend. He was spare, frugal, hardboiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before " ( Raymond Chand...

Answer one of the following questions: Compare the style and use of dialogue in “The House on Turk Street” and “The Killers”.  How are they similar/different? What is learned through dialogue in these stories? Consider the roles of the characters. Who is in charge or calling the shots? Much of the story is uncertain, including the reliability of the narrator. What evidence is present that shows whether or not the narrator is reliable? Is the narrator biased? How is this a coming of age story? What is the reality that the youth fails to realize?

- Filippinos have been in the US since he 16th century -  1790 : Naturalization Act: only "free white persons" could be citizens. - Chinese, Korean and Japanese Immigrants arrived to the Hawai in the 19th century - Chinese immigrants arrived on the West Coast in the mid-19th century. Forming part of the  California gold rush , these early Chinese immigrants participated intensively in the mining business and later in the construction of the  transcontinental railroad. - 1848:  first North-American Chinatown in San Francisco. - Although the absolute numbers of Asian immigrants were small compared to that of immigrants from other regions, much of it was concentrated in the West, and the increase of wealth among the Chinese community (while earning lower wages) caused some nativist sentiment known as the " yellow peril". - C ongress passed   restrictive legislation  prohibiting nearly all Chinese immigration in the 1880s - 1898: Spanish-Am...

You might also be interested in Raymond Chandler's Ten Commandments for Writing a Detective Story A U.S. reaction to the British murder mysteries (prodigal in the subgenre of "closet mystery") was the American hard-boiled school of crime writing (certain works in the field are also referred to as noir fiction). Writers like Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961), Raymond Chandler (1888–1959), Jonathan Latimer (1906–1983), Mickey Spillane (1918–2006), and many others decided on an altogether different, innovative approach to crime fiction. The protagonist is an investigator that does not really have lawful legitimacy (the private eye), tough and morose, involved with  the sleazy / urban side of life in the U.S.A. Below is the text Precisão e Bom Senso written by Rui Zink, who was a guest in this class in 2013 to discuss crime fiction Precision. Precision and a realism more real than real than reality — et voilá what the American detective novel taught me.  No sugar-co...