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In addition to exploring the formal and thematic variety of the genre of the short story, this course will examine its utility in conveying the life experiences and insights of 20th-century American women writers. We will read their works in light of historical events and feminism’s evolution in the United States, explore how their writings address gender and depict domestic lives and familial relations, and consider their respective use of the short story’s hallmark brevity and concision in rendering the experiences of everyday life. (Consider Lydia Davis’s story, “Example of the Continuing Past Tense in a Hotel Room”, as an example of such brevity. Its single sentence reads: “Your housekeeper has been Shelly.”) Authors studied include: Zora Neale Hurston, Dorothy Parker, Grace Paley, Lucia Berlin, Lydia Davis, Jhumpa Lahiri, Catherine Lacey, and Ayşe Papatya Bucak.