A Century of Stories by Women Writers
Coordinator: Bob Martin (Rmartin50@cox.net)
Summersession 2020
Nearly all of the stories in our syllabus are available on the Web. The coordinator has made PDF file copies of each story, so you don’t need to scour the Web. All readings will be emailed to the class at least one week before the date of discussion.
For more information about how this class will be conducted, please read the details provided further down in this document after the syllabus.
Readings for Class 1 - July 10
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935). Introduced by Carol Hoppe
- Gilman The-Yellow-Wall-Paper
- Optional: gilman wisteria
Kate Chopin (1850-1904). Introduced by Susan Guralnik
- Chopin.-Desirees-Baby (1894) 4 pp.
- Chopin.-The-Story-of-An-Hour (1894) 2 pp.
- Chopin.-A-Shameful-Affair (1892) 5 pp.
Readings for Class 2 - July 17
Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
- wharton roman fever (1932) 11 pp.
- Wharton. The Reckoning (1902) 17 pp.
Readings for Class 3 - July 24
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923)
- Mansfield The Garden Party (1922) 14 pp.
- Mansfield The Daughters of the Late Colonel (1921) 19 pp.
- Optional: Mansfield Bliss (1918) 12 pp.
Readings for Class 4 - July 31
Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)
- porter flowering-judas (1930) 6 pp.
- Porter Holiday (1962) 20 pp.
Readings for Class 5 - August 7
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)
- hurston sweat (1926) 9 pp.
- hurston the gilded six bits (1933) 12 pp.
Carson McCullers (1917-1967)
- mccullers the ballad of the sad café and other stories (1951) 28 pp.
Readings for Class 6 - August 14
Clarice Lispector (1920-1977)
- lispector the smallest woman in the world (1960) 8 pp.
Ursula LeGuin (1929-2018)
- le guin. the ones who walk away from omelas (1973) 4 pp.
Readings for Class 7 - August 21
Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964)
- o'connor a good man is hard to findl (1955) 13 pp.
- O'Connor. Everything That Rises Must Converge (1961) 10 pp.
Readings for Class 8 - August 28
Alice Munro (1931 - )
- Munro Queenie (1998) 24 pp.
- Munro Boys And Girls (1968) 11 pp.
Margaret Atwood (1939- ). Introduced by Helen Hawkins
- Atwood Happy endings (1983) 3 pp.
- Atwood True Stories by Margaret Atwood (1961) 1 page
About This Course
A Century of Stories by Women Writers is meant to introduce you to a variety of women who have been famous for their short stories over the past 100 years or more. In some cases, their fame has unjustifiably been diminished over the years. Almost without exception, these writers have had fascinating lives as well as successful writing careers. We’ll therefore spend time discussing their lives as well as their stories.This will be a discussion group, as opposed to a typical class. For each writer’s one-hour class session, a class volunteer will introduce the story or stories assigned with a brief set of questions for discussion. From there we will see where the ideas of the class take us! Each session will last 50 minutes, and we will take a 10 or 15 minute break at the end of each session, just as we would do at Temple Beth-El.