Introduction to Short Fiction

Comparative Literature 135

Professor Karen Elizabeth Bishop

Rutgers | Summer Session I, 2025
Tuesday, 27 May – Friday, 4 July
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A book ought to be an icepick to break up the frozen

sea within us. – Franz Kafka

Course Overview
Buckle up! You’re going to spend six weeks of your summer reading some of the best fiction of your life! It’s going to
be exhilirating, exciting, and it’s going to fly by. And when it’s over, you’ll wish it weren’t. We’re going to go from long
to short, and see just how short a story can get. We’ll start with a couple of the best novellas ever written, move on to
the short story, and end with flash fiction and microfiction. We’re going to read short fiction from around the world,
read writers talk about the craft of writing, and learn how to closely read how fiction is built. We’ll ask what makes for
good storytelling in a short amount of space, investigate what kind of fictional worlds authors create in a condensed
format, and practice writing about how fiction works. You’ll leave the class having read some of your favourite new
stories, studied our major modern literary movements, and with a demonstrable knowledge of how to study literature
and literary worlds up close.

You need to purchase two books for this class, both for our first week together: The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy
Casares (ISBN 1590170571) and Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez (ISBN 140003471X).
The rest of the readings are published on Canvas as pdfs. I highly recommend you print them all out before the class
begins, take them to Staples or akin, and have them bound (this costs about $1.50). Then you'll have all the course
readings in one handy packet.

Please note: this is an asynchronous remote class that will be supplemented with periodic, optional synchronous
meetings via Zoom. This is a highly compressed summer course that covers the material of a traditional fourteen-
week semester in six weeks. Students need to be prepared for a fast-paced course that requires daily engagement
with readings, assignments or exams from 27 May-4 July 2025. If you cannot commit to that daily engagement, you
should rethink your choice to take this class in this format at this time.

Objectives of Core Curriculum, Arts & Humanities

This course fulfills the following AHp requirements of the Rutgers Core Curriculum.
AHp: Students will be able to analyze arts and/or literatures in themselves and in relation to
specific histories, values, languages, cultures, and technologies.

Course Learning Goals

students in this course will:
§ become familiar with some of the key works of modern Western literature and learn to situate them within their
corresponding aesthetic and historical contexts;
§ develop and defend their own opinions about how stories are crafted and work within a compressed space, and
to what persuasive, imaginative, and socio-political effect;
§ be introduced to and hone their skills at close textual analysis, including the identification, purpose, and
significance of literary and rhetorical devices. These skills are immediately transferable to other courses.

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Required Texts
Please purchase the noted editions of the novellas; the rest of the works will be available on Canvas.

Novellas
Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel (Argentina, 1940) New York: NYRB, 2003.
ISBN: 1590170571
Gabriel García Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Colombia; 1981) New York: Vintage Press, 2003.
ISBN: 140003471X

Short Stories
Guy de Maupassant, “The Necklace” (France; 1884)
Ambrose Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (US; 1890)
Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour” (US; 1894)
Franz Kafka, “In the Penal Colony” (Germany; 1919)
Virginia Woolf, “A Haunted House” (UK; 1921)
William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily” (US; 1930)
Ernest Hemingway, “A Very Short Story” (1924) and “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” (1933) (US)
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths” (1941) and “Death and the Compass” (1944) (Argentina)
Julio Cortázar, “Continuity of Parks” and “Axolotl” (Argentina; 1956)
Tillie Olson, “O Yes” (US; 1961)
Flannery O’Connor, “Everything that Rises Must Converge” (US; 1965)
Gabriel García Márquez, “One of These Days” (1962) and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”
(1968) (Colombia)
Bharati Mukherjee, “The Management of Grief” (India/US; 1988)
Junot Díaz, “Drown” and “Edison, New Jersey” (US; 1996)
Jhumpa Lahiri, “Sexy” (India/US; 1998)
ZZ Packer, “Brownies” and “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” (US; 2003)
George Saunders, “The Semplica-Girl Diaries” (US; 2012)

Flash & Microfiction

Carolyn Forde, “Sashimi Cashmere”; Alison Townsend, “The Barbie Birthday”; Hannah Bottomy, “Currents”; Kim
Church, “Bullet”; John Biguenet, “Rose”; Leigh Allison Wilson, “Bullhead”; John Updike, “Oliver’s Evolution”; Dan
Kaplan, “Bill”; Tom Hazuka, “I Didn’t Do That”; Pamela Painter, “Toasters”; Molly Giles, “The Poet’s Husband”;
Beauvais McCaddon, “At the Point”; Michael McFee, “The Halo”; Laurie Berry, “Mockingbird”; Amy Hempel,
“Housewife”; Padgett Powell, “A Gentleman’s C”; John Holman, “Of Exposure”

On the Craft of Fiction

Edgar Allan Poe,” The Importance of the Single Effect in a Prose Tale” (1842)
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846)
Edith Wharton, “Every Subject Must Contain within Itself Its Own Dimensions” (1925)
William Faulkner, “An Interview” (1959)
Flannery O’Connor, “The Nature and Aim of Fiction” (1969)

Course Requirements and Grading Weight

close reading 1 (week 2) :: 15%
close reading 2 (week 4) :: 20%
cumulative exam (week 5) :: 35%
weekly discussion posts :: 20%
oral presentation, wow+ (week 6) :: 10%
extra credit assignment: an original work of flash fiction (750 words or less)

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Grade Breakdown
Each student will be evaluated individually based on the integrity and merit of his or her work; this course will not be
graded on a curve. The assignment of grades will conform to the following schema:

90-100 = A 87-89 = B+ 80-86 = B 77-79 = C+ 70-76 = C

67-69 = D+ 60-66 = D ≤ 59 = F

Considerations :: Assignments
§ weekly lectures: I will publish video, audio or powerpoint lectures three times weekly, on Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays by 3 p.m. EST. You should plan to complete the reading for each day before
engaging with the lecture material, as you would do for a face-to-face class. This will ensure that you get the
most out of the material. You will need to listen to, watch, or otherwise engage the lectures in full; they will vary
in length and complexity. Please note that I track each student’s engagement with the course lectures.
§ on the readings: The number of works you’ll read each week will vary. We’ll begin with two novellas the first
week of class and end with very short fiction in our last short week together. For the majority of our class, we’ll
be reading about 5-7 short stories per week; you should plan to read about one short story per day, seven days
a week. The week’s lectures will discuss some stories and not others, but you are responsible for knowing all the
works on the syllabus. All of our works will enter into our exams. Being responsible for knowing some of our
course material on your own will prepare you particularly well for your oral presentation and for the reading you
will do on your own after our class has ended.
§ close readings: you will complete two 1,000-word close readings for this class. The second (20%) is weighted
more heavily than the first (15%) to allow you to improve your skills between the assignments. Close readings
ask you to work with the language authors use to make meaning in a text; they require, and should make use of,
no outside information or research.
§ online discussion forums: I have divided the class into three discussion groups in order to facilitate intimate
and useful discussion; these groups are subject to periodic rearrangement throughout the class in order to allow
you to work with as many different people as possible. No later than Friday of each week, you will post five brief
questions in response to the week’s readings, and then offer up a 300-word response to one of these questions.
These responses should be well thought out and product of serious intellectual inquiry, but can be open-ended.
That is to say, you might offer up possibilities instead of definitive answers; work out a train of thought instead of
come to a conclusion; challenge the text instead of accept it at face value. Your response might focus on
language, a particular turn of phrase, a turn of event in the text; you don’t need to bring in any outside
information to your analysis. By Sunday of each week, you will offer up two 150-word responses to two of the
questions posed by your colleagues. I will read through your responses and offer up comments and questions
for further reflection either individually or to each group as a whole with a particular eye to preparing you for our
exams or the close reading assignments. I highly recommend you craft these responses in Word and cut and
paste them into Canvas; this way you will have a consolidated record of your thinking that will help you prepare
for our exams. Please note that the discussion posts and replies for week 6 will be due on Friday, 4 July, our last
day of class and the day oral presentations are due.
§ oral presentation: in addition to reading short fiction, we will read brief reflections by some of the world’s best
authors on the craft of fiction. These works are marked on the syllabus as wow, writers on writing. Each student
will prepare a brief oral presentation that reads one of the work’s we’ve read in our class by way of one of our
craft essays. More detailed guidelines to follow. Oral presentations are due on the last day of class, Friday, 4
July, but you should begin working on them well in advance of this deadline.
§ exam: This course’s exam will be on Sunday, 29 June, from 3-4.20. You need to clear your schedule to be
available to take the exam at this time. It will not be offered outside of this allocated hour. The exam is worth
35% of your final grade.
§ the extra credit assignment: students may choose to write an original work of flash fiction, a story limited to
750 words. We’ll read student work on the last day of class. Students whose work evidences a serious effort at
attempting a well-crafted story will raise their final grade by 1%. Alongside the story, I’ll ask for a brief paragraph

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 that describes the writing process you undertook. Work submitted that is not clearly thought out and crafted will
not earn the extra credit. The extra credit assignment is due on Wednesday, 2 July.
§ the timely submission of work and attendance for exam: all work is due on Canvas by 11.59 p.m. EST on
the date specified on the calendar of reading and assignments. Late work will not be accepted except in cases
of documentable illness or emergency accompanied by a student’s earnest effort to get in touch with me before
the work is due. Missed exams will not be repeated.
§ format for written work: all work should be typed, double-spaced, in size 12 Times New Roman font, and
submitted in Word (doc or docx). Papers should make use of 1-inch margins all around. All work should be titled,
paginated, and boast the author’s name and date; the name of the course; and a word count on a separate
cover page. *All Rutgers students can download Word for free via the software portal.
§ on the use of artifical intelligence: in the absence of a university-wide policy on the use of artifical intelligence
in the classroom, each instructor at Rutgers is tasked with setting their own guidelines that make the most sense
for each course. This accounts for the variability in which classes allow or not for the use, say, of ChatGPT,
across schools and courses at Rutgers. This class strictly prohibits the use of artificial intelligence in the
preparation, production, and execution of all written work, including discussion posts and our close readings; our
exams; and our oral presentation. Use of artificial intelligence in the completion of our class assignments will be
considered plagiarism and treated as such. I will be monitoring and cross-checking the production of single-
author and original work throughout the course, and will pursue any instances of to the contrary as serious
infringements of university academic integrity.
§ return of grades: I will, barring unforeseen circumstances, return grades within one week of submission of
work.
§ accommodations: if you are a student with a disability, please speak with me at the beginning of the semester
about any accommodations you may need and I will gladly work to provide them.

Considerations :: Online Course Policies and Expectations

§ on student success in course: this is a highly compressed summer course that covers the material of a
traditional fourteen-week semester in six weeks. Students need to be prepared for a fast-paced course that
requires daily engagement with readings, assignments or exams from 27 May-4 July 2025. If you cannot commit
to that daily engagement, you should rethink your choice to take this class in this format.
§ student participation expectations: because this is an online course, a large part of your grade is based on
your online activity and participation. You should be logging in to the course multiple times a week in order to
access the readings, view the video or powerpoint lectures, publish your weekly discussion posts, and respond
to your colleagues’ posts. You will likely not do well in the class if you have a situation that causes you to miss
an entire week of class; please discuss any possible conflicts with me as soon as possible.
§ discussion and communication guidelines: both in publishing your weekly posts and responding to your
peers’ work, please cultivate a respectful and thoughtful voice. Your posts and responses need not be formal,
but they do need to be evidence of serious reflection and void of sarcasm or humour that might not translate well
in an online setting. Please write in complete and well-crafted sentences. Both in your online communication, as
well as in email messages to the instructor and your colleagues, you should write in thoughtful and complete
sentences, and avoid producing anything that resembles a text message. An email should look like a letter,
complete with address and closure; you’re not sending a text.

Office Hours and Contact Information

I will hold office hours by Zoom on Thursdays, from 1-2 p.m., as well as by previous appointment. You can reach me
by email at [email protected]. I’ll respond to longer queries or conversations in face-to-face meetings on Zoom.

Here the invite link to my weekly office hours:

https://rutgers.zoom.us/j/95861255688?pwd=b4pmfoN9U2IMaOb6JFUT0NqNQ7NZWx.1

Course Website
This course will be held on Canvas, and should appear in your course feed.

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Useful Links
§ the website of the Comparative Literature Program at Rutgers: http://complit.rutgers.edu/
§ on MLA formatting: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/

ACADEMIC ETHICS

The consequences of academic dishonesty are very serious. Please see above note on use of artificial intelligence in
this class. Please also review the Rutgers’ academic integrity policy. Academic integrity means, among other things,
that you:

- develop and write all of your own assignments without assistance from AI;

- take your own tests without outside assistance from another human or computer;

- do not fabricate information or citations in your work;

- do not facilitate academic dishonesty for another student by allowing your own work to be submitted by others.

Plagiarism and cheating in any form will not be tolerated, and will be immediately subject to university disciplinary
action. We will discuss in class what constitutes proper citation format, but the burden to learn and practice this
ultimately falls to the student. Please take this responsibility seriously and make every effort to cultivate ethical and
intelligent citation practices. If you are in doubt about any issue related to plagiarism or scholastic dishonesty, please
discuss it with me. Other sources of information to which you can refer include:

- Rutgers’ Academic Integrity website

- Code of Student Conduct
- Eight Cardinal Rules of Academic Integrity

STUDENT ACADEMIC & WELLNESS SUPPORT SERVICES

ACADEMIC SUPPORT SERVICES

Student Success
Rutgers has a variety of resources for academic support. For more information, check the Student Success website.
Learning Center
Rutgers has Learning Centers on each campus where any student can obtain tutoring and other help. Check the
Learning Center website.
Writing Center
Rutgers also has a Writing Center where students can obtain help with writing skills and assignments. Learn more
at the Writing Center website.
Library
Many library resources are available online. Assistance is available through phone, email, and live chat. For
information, check the Rutgers Libraries website.

STUDENT WELLNESS SERVICES

Counseling, ADAP & Psychiatric Services (CAPS)

(848) 932-7884 / 17 Senior Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
http://health.rutgers.edu/medical-counseling-services/counseling/

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CAPS is a University mental health support service that includes counseling, alcohol and other drug assistance, and
psychiatric services staffed by a team of professionals within Rutgers Health services to support students’ efforts to
succeed at Rutgers University. CAPS offers a variety of services that include: individual therapy, group therapy and
workshops, crisis intervention, referral to specialists in the community, and consultation and collaboration with
campus partners.

Crisis Intervention
If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, please reach out asap for intervention services.
http://health.rutgers.edu/medical-counseling-services/counseling/crisis-intervention/

Violence Prevention & Victim Assistance (VPVA)

(848) 932-1181 / 3 Bartlett Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
www.vpva.rutgers.edu/
The Office for Violence Prevention and Victim Assistance provides confidential crisis intervention, counseling and
advocacy for victims of sexual and relationship violence and stalking to students, staff and faculty. To reach staff
during office hours when the university is open or to reach an advocate after hours, call 848-932-1181.

Disability Services
(848) 445-6800 / Lucy Stone Hall, Suite A145, Livingston Campus, 54 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854
https://ods.rutgers.edu/
Rutgers University welcomes students with disabilities into all of the University's educational programs. In order to
receive consideration for reasonable accommodations, a student with a disability must contact the appropriate
disability services office at the campus where you are officially enrolled, participate in an intake interview, and provide
documentation: https://ods.rutgers.edu/students/documentation-guidelines. If the documentation supports your
request for reasonable accommodations, your campus’s disability services office will provide you with a Letter of
Accommodations. Please share this letter with your instructors and discuss the accommodations with them as early
in your courses as possible. To begin this process, please complete the Registration form on the ODS web site at:
https://ods.rutgers.edu/students/registration-form.

Report a Bias Incident

Bias is defined by the University as an act, verbal, written, physical, psychological, that threatens, or harms a person
or group on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national
origin, ancestry, disability, marital status, civil union status, domestic partnership status, atypical heredity or cellular
blood trait, military service or veteran status. If you experience or witness an act of bias or hate, report it to someone
in authority. You may file a report online and you will be contacted within 24 hours. The bias reporting page is here.

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Calendar of Readings and Assignments
week 1 :: 27 may — 1 june
Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel (1940)
Gabriel García Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981)
discussion post 1

week 2 :: 2 june — 8 june

Guy de Maupassant, “The Necklace” (1884)
Ambrose Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890)
Robert Enrico, dir., “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1961); Twilight Zone, Season 5, Episode 23; access here
Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour” (1894)
Virginia Woolf, “A Haunted House” (1921)
Franz Kafka, “In the Penal Colony” (1919)
wow: Edgar Allan Poe,” The Importance of the Single Effect in a Prose Tale” (1842) and “The Philosophy of
Composition” (1846)
discussion post 2
close reading 1 :: due sunday, 8 june

week 3 :: 9 june — 15 june

Ernest Hemingway, “A Very Short Story” (1924) and “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” (1933)
William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily” (1930)
Virginia Woolf, “Kew Gardens” (1943)
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths” (1941) and “Death and the Compass” (1944)
wow: Edith Wharton, “Every Subject Must Contain within Itself Its Own Dimensions” (1925)
William Faulkner, “An Interview” with Faulkner (1959)
discussion post 3

week 4 :: 16 june — 22 june

Julio Cortázar, “Continuity of Parks” and “Axolotl” (1956)
Tillie Olson, “O Yes” (1961)
Flannery O’Connor, “Everything that Rises Must Converge” (1965)
Gabriel García Márquez, “One of These Days” (1962) and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” (1968)
Bharati Mukherjee,” The Management of Grief” (1988)
wow: Flannery O’Connor, “The Nature and Aim of Fiction” (1969)
discussion post 4
close reading 2 :: due sunday, 22 june

week 5 :: 23 june — 29 june

Jhumpa Lahiri, “Sexy” (1998)
Junot Díaz, “Drown” and “Edison, New Jersey” (1996)
ZZ Packer, “Brownies” and “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” (2003)
George Saunders, “The Semplica-Girl Diaries” (2012)
discussion post 5
exam :: sunday, 29 june, 3-4.20 p.m.

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week 6 :: 30 june — 4 july
flash fiction
Carolyn Forde, “Sashimi Cashmere”; Alison Townsend, “The Barbie Birthday”; Hannah Bottomy, “Currents”; Kim
Church, “Bullet”; John Biguenet, “Rose”; Leigh Allison Wilson, “Bullhead”; John Updike, “Oliver’s Evolution”; Dan
Kaplan, “Bill”; Tom Hazuka, “I Didn’t Do That”; Pamela Painter, “Toasters”
microfiction
Molly Giles, “The Poet’s Husband”; Beauvais McCaddon, “At the Point”; Michael McFee, “The Halo”; Laurie Berry,
“Mockingbird”; Amy Hempel, “Housewife”; Padgett Powell, “A Gentleman’s C”; John Holman, “Of Exposure”; student
stories
wow: from The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, ed. Tara L. Masih:
Jayne Anne Phillips, “’Cheers,’ (or How I Taught Myself to Write)”
Robert Shapard, “Staying True to the Image”
Robert Olen Butler, “A Short Short Theory”
discussion post 6
oral presentation :: due friday, 4 july

this syllabus is provisional and subject to revision