First-Year Seminars 110TE - Teaching Stories

This course explores short fiction as brilliantly crafted exemplars of "teaching stories", stories that use the resources of short narrative fiction to probe life's deepest questions, such as: what is the meaning of our lives? how do we face our inevitable death? why is there evil and suffering? what does it mean to be human? how should we live? We'll read modern works in the larger tradition of Wisdom Literature, with readings drawn from biblical, Hassidic, classical, folk, and Asian traditions, as well as from notable practitioners of the genre (Chekhov, Tolstoy, Borges, Poe, Chopin). We'll explore how these stories work, how they engage the complexity of the world and of life, and ask what fiction can do that discursive philosophical essays can't.

Mount Holyoke first-year students only, by placement.