Short fiction as a literary genre has a vital part in Canadian literature, and many Canadian authors have made a significant contribution to the writing of short fiction. The course will acquaint the students with a variety of short stories written in English since the Confederation (1867) to the present. Readings will include widely anthologized canonical stories and other usually neglected texts drawn from various sources. The questions to be addressed in this course include indigenous oral tales, French Canadian contes, the English Canadian sketch, and the recent prominence of multicultural stories pertaining to issues of race and ethnicity. Central to the survey is the question of Canadian national and literary identity. The course will raise such important questions as: 1) How short stories facilitate the articulation of Canadian identities; 2) How definitions of the short story as a “marginal” genre intersect with forms of difference including race, region, gender, sexuality, and class. The writers and stories to be studied throughout the semester include Alice Munro, Sinclair Ross, Margaret Atwood, Mavis Gallant, Timothy Findley, Larissa Lai, Rudy Wiebe, among others.