230215 American Short Stories (S) (WiSe 2024/2025)

This course covers a variety of US-American short stories from different literary periods, ranging from Gothic Literature to Postmodernism. Studying these significant narratives helps us decipher the dialogue between individual and national discourses of identity processes at work here. Furthermore, they provide useful material for those interested in the cultural and historical complexity of the United States. Therefore, students will be given the opportunity to extend and consolidate their analysis skills in literary studies through regular writing tasks, group discussions and close readings of the texts. They will practice how to appropriately work with literary/cultural theory in narrative analysis and eventually how to develop a coherent and stylistically appropriate argument in this field of studies.