Short fiction has often been identified as the genre that tells the tale of the multitude of lives and people in the United States of America. Washington Irving, one of the first practitioners of this genre in the U.S.A. claimed that short stories capture “a constant activity of thought and a nicety of execution” and that its successful execution to narrate or present complicated plots and issues requires more skills than longer genres of fiction (i.e. novellas or novels). This course attempts to capture the essence of diversity and perspectives of comparative world literature through an engagement with short fiction from around the world. We will also analyze and interact with different aspects of literary criticism through theories of the genre, feminist, gender and queer theory, postcolonial theory, affect theory, translation, etc. through our engagement with short stories using anti-oppressive and equity-based learning practices. We will read authors like: Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Kate Chopin, Mary Austin, Jhumpa Lahiri, Gabriel García Márquez, Matsuda Aoko, and so on.

Henry James remarked, “It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.” Accordingly, this course will examine 20th- and 21st-century Eastern European fiction and explore how literature not only reflects and comments on historical developments but also enacts them, focusing on representations of identity, memory, war, and exile.

Religion and myth of ancient Greece and Rome in relation to that of the ancient Mediterranean (Akkadian, Hittite, Sumerian, Egyptian). Female presence in art, literature and religion compared to treatment of women in their respective cultures. Theoretical approaches to the understanding of myth (Comparative, Jungian, Structuralist) in relation to myths as they are encoded in their specific cultures. Students may trace a myth through Medieval, Renaissance and modern transformations in art, music, poetry and film, or study myth in other cultures (e.g. Norse and Celtic). (May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement.) (Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement.) 1 unit - Dobson.