授業担当者：Taras Alexander Sak

In this class, we read and discuss several masterpieces of the short story genre by an American master, Raymond Carver, in order to help students maintain and improve their current level of English, after they return from studying overseas. Students are put in pairs or small groups and asked to read one short story every one or two weeks, answering my reading and discussion questions, while maintaining a reading notebook that contains notes on each story's setting, characters, plot, theme(s), and important passages, as well as new vocabulary words and phrases. 

I hope that students learn many new vocabulary terms, how to study independently, and how to critically approach literature in this class. We read many of the stories collected in Carver's best-known collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, as well as one or two stories from Cathedral. We also watch scenes from the movies, Short Cuts and Birdman that are connected to Carver's work, and I like to introduce the music of Bob Dylan, particularly several love songs from his album, Blood on the Tracks, which seem to me to echo Carver's work in mysterious and profound ways.