Syllabus ENG 255

Catalog Description
ENG 255 The American Short Story 3 credits
This course focuses on reading and analyzing selected short stories of renowned American writers. Students participate in class discussions and write papers to demonstrate close reading skills, to express individual interpretation, and to understand the common themes and unique literary characteristics of the genre. Students view films based on the literary selections to enlarge their perceptions of themes, characters, and settings. The course also covers cultural and historical contexts that influenced the authors.
Prerequisite: ENG 102. F/SU

Text

Hitchcock, Bert, et al. American Short Stories. 8th Edition. New York: Longman, 2008.
ISBN 0-321-48489-4
Some required stories are available online; titles are linked in the course outline.

Resources

Course Objectives

Course Requirements

Academic Honesty and Plagiarism (College Policy)

Our purpose in the classroom is to seek the truth; this work requires trust and honesty between teacher and student. If we are not honest about what we know and don't know, our learning will always be impaired. Because our teaching and learning depends on this honest communication, we expect all students to understand what plagiarism is and why it is unacceptable.

Plagiarism means taking someone else's ideas or words and presenting them as one’s own. The offense can take many forms including cheating on a test, passing in a paper taken from the Internet or from another student, or failing to properly use and credit sources in an essay. Sometimes the issue is subtle, involving getting too much help on an assignment from someone else. In every instance, plagiarism means cheating both oneself and the owner of the source. Since the cheating sabotages a student’s learning experience, consequences range from no credit for the assignment to failure for the course and possible expulsion from the college.

Any student considering plagiarism should recognize the consequences and consider alternatives. Students uncertain about what constitutes plagiarism may request help from faculty or from appropriate college services. For information on using sources in writing, see the Academic Honesty section of the English Department web site: http://www.qcc.mass.edu/english

Criteria for evaluation

1. applying reading skills to understand and compare themes in the works studied