This semester, I am teaching four different courses, with four different preps. When thinking about these courses, I wanted to make sure that I had a firm grounding in the majority of the material to make it a little easier on myself when it came to class prep. So, for two of these courses I decided to construct the courses around texts and themes that students would find interesting and that would allow me to use my time wisely over the course of the semester. As a result, I chose to frame my Literature and Composition course around short stories and my World Literature from the Renaissance course (which I will discuss next post) around graphic novels. With the short story course, I also wanted to ground it in the region where I teach, Appalachia and Georgia. With that in mind, every text, apart from Ernest Gaines’ collection, is set in Georgia or Appalachia. Below, you will find my syllabus for this course. I am looking forward to this course, especially teaching Yerby’s short stories for the first time.

Overview Overview:

What makes a short story a short story? Is it, as Anton Chekhov argued, merely a “slice of life” without a beginning or an end? Or, does a short follow a specific form, as William Somerset Maugham and Hugh Walpole argued? As Walpole put it, “A short story should be a story; a record of things happening full of incidents, swift movements, unexpected development, leading through suspense to a climax and a satisfying denouement.” William Faulkner called the short story “the most demanding form after poetry.”

Due to their length, short stories provide a concise encapsulation of a “slice of life,” an event, a theme, or more. Short stories are not confined to specific forms, as Maugham and Walpole put it, or to an exact period. They are encapsulations of a myriad of things, notably they exist as an illumination of the author and the community. As Dorothy Allison puts it, “I wrote to give back to others who had given to me — sometimes reflexively.” Ernest Gaines, in a little flip notebook, summarized why he writes. He said, “Write because I must. Because there’s something out there that’s need [sic] to be said. If I [sic] don’t say it-nobody ‘else might not say it either. By this, I mean, who will write about my part of the country? who will talk about write about the way my people talk, the way they sing, the way they feel about God, the way they work; their superstitions. There are so many things that be said about this particular area.”

While we have an extensive collection of Faulkner’s short stories, we do not have as much from other prolific writers of the twentieth century such as Georgia’s Frank Yerby. Yerby started out writing poetry and short stories in his school and university newspapers, even winning the O’Henry Award in 1944 for his short story “Health Card”; however, he did not see a viable, monetary future in being a short story writer so he shifted to novels. However, his work as a short story writer is important, as Veronica Watson notes when she points out that through his exploration of different forms and styles in his short fiction Yerby “grappled with the impact of race and racism on black and white Americans, the possibility of love as a redemptive force, the meaning of manhood and the performances of masculinity open to men of differing racial and ethnic backgrounds, and the role of fate and supernatural forces in human life.”

In this course, we will read short story collections by Frank Yerby, Ernest Gaines, Crystal Wilkinson, Ron Rash, and Dorothy Allison, focusing, in the latter three collections, on Appalachia. We will examine themes, style, character, and more as we read these collections. Some collections, like Gaines’ Bloodline, are short story cycles, a collection of stories linked together by themes, setting, or characters. Others, such as Yerby’s stories, are not linked together in these ways. Yerby’s collection is a compiled collection that highlights the myriad form and styles that Yerby worked with in his writing. Others, such as Wilkinson’s Blackberries, Blackberries, draw from the Wilkinson’s experiences in Indian Creek, Kentucky. She writes, “These stores come from the ordinary and the extraordinary. From black, country women with curious lives. From struggle, from fear, from love, from life, from the gut, from the heart. Black and juicy, just like a blackberry.”

Over the course of this semester, you will read short stories by various authors, examining them stylistically and thematically. You will conduct research and write about the stories we read during the course, and you will conclude the course by writing your own introduction to a collection of short stories that we read over the course of the semester.

Primary Texts:

Allison, Dorothy. Trash.
Gaines, Ernest. Bloodline.
Rash, Ron. Burning Bright.
Wilkinson, Crystal. Blackberries, Blackberries.
Yerby, Frank. The Short Stories of Frank Yerby.

Assignments — Throughout the semester, we will have both in-class and online assignments. These will include posting topics online, answering questions, or other such activities. There will be small group discussions during classes and other activities that will be part of this grade

Conferences — We will have conferences for each paper. These will be mandatory because they allow us to discuss your essays in a smaller setting, giving us more time to work through your questions.

Essays — The essays will each be between 750–1000 words. They will highlight your engagement with the course material through your use of argument, sources, and critical thinking. For each, you must have a succinct argument and support the argument with examples from both primary and secondary texts.

Anthology Paper and Introduction/Presentation — For this assignment, you will choose five short stories we read in class and create a critical introduction essay for them as if you were creating a collection or anthology of short stories. The critical introduction will be 500–1000 words. Along with this, you will write an essay describing why you chose the stories you chose and how you wrote the critical introduction. We will present the introductions during the finals period.

What are your thoughts? As always, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Bluesky @silaslapham.