weigh in with your favorite short story (to read, to study, to...whatever)
In my theory class, we need to select one target text to work throughout the semester. We will produce four essays, each applying a different critical approach [formal, memetic, intertextual, and poststructural or a cultural critique, if you really want to know] to said text. Hooray that we get to choose our own, but boo because I
suck at deciding. While I have five or so texts that are floating around my brain (lest you think I'm asking you to do my work for me—I'm not!) but...have you noticed how many freaking short stories there are out there? The only requirement is that the original work is in English (no translations).
Off the table: "Benito Cereno" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" [Those are part of the target texts for the class in general.]
On the table: anything else. I reserve the right to go with something from my original list, which currently includes texts from 19th C American authors because that's what I like. I also like other things, and in fact would like to work with something unfamiliar to me.
See how this gets me out of writing a real post? My readers are nothing if not opinionated, so I'm looking forward to seeing the comments. You don't need to be one of those crazy academics on my blogroll to weigh in—people who, you know, just
read have just as much voting power here.
