I have King’s work in a lot of my classes, ranging from the occasional King story in a general literature class (Introduction to Literary Studies, American Literature) to semester-long single-author seminars on King’s fiction. A new(ish) approach I have taken to sharing and discussing King’s work with my students has been a focus on King’s short fiction. 

My institution (Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri) has a unique course calendar set up where, instead of the traditional 15-week semester, our students take several 12-week classes and then, in the home stretch of the semester, take one intensive 3-week class. We use this 3-week class to provide students with the opportunity to do travel study courses, take advantage of professional opportunities like internships, or do a really focused deep dive on one particular topic. Our spring 3-week starts tomorrow and I’ll be teaching a class on the short fiction of Stephen King (I taught the same course last spring). Over the next three weeks, I’ll share some of our discussions and my students’ excellent work (with their permission) here. 

I really enjoy teaching King’s short fiction for lots of reasons: first of all, we’re always doing something new. If a student doesn’t particularly care for one story, by the next class session (or even later that same day), we’re on to something completely different, whereas if we’re reading a novel they can’t get into, we’re on that for awhile. Second, because we’re able to cover so many stories, this gives us the opportunity to really explore the breadth and diversity of King’s work, from monsters and the supernatural to purely human, psychological terrors. Finally, because we’re looking at stories rather than longer works, we are able to use those shorter readings as jumping off points, allowing us to appreciate not just King’s fiction but his impact on the larger genre, including popular culture engagement with those works. For example, we read King’s excellent short story “The Crate” (originally published in Gallery in 1979), then we look both the comic and film versions Creepshow (1982), which allows us to engage not just with the story itself but also how that story is negotiated and can be presented in different ways through these distinctive mediums. Over the course of the 3-week, we’ll look at television, movies, comics, movie posters, cookbooks, board games, and more as we work through the different ways we can engage with and respond to what we read. 

Our class is organized around three key themes, which provide students with a range of critical perspectives and a great critical reading toolkit as they tackle King’s stories (and which can be easily transferred to other King fiction and literary works well beyond our class). We begin by looking at connections between contemporary horror and the classic Gothic tradition, exploring the influence of Nathaniel Hawthorne (“Young Goodman Brown” paired with King’s “The Man in the Black Suit”), Edgar Allan Poe (“The Tell-Tale Heart” with King’s “Strawberry Spring”), and H.P. Lovecraft (“The Rats in the Walls” and King’s “Jerusalem’s Lot”). This gives us an excellent, critically-informed foundation upon which to build as we move on to our unit on King’s monsters, which ranges from his negotiation of traditional horror figures like the vampire (“One for the Road,” “Popsy,” and “The Night Flier”) and the boogeyman (“The Boogeyman”) to signature King scares with “Children of the Corn,” “Rainy Season,” “You Know They’ve Got a Hell of a Band,” and “The Crate.” We finish up by looking at perspective and how who is telling the story shapes the story that gets told—and the secrets that get kept. Sometimes that perspective is one person’s view of a spatially limited and claustrophobic horror, like with “The Ledge” or “Battleground,” and other times, it’s one person’s account of the end of the world, like with “The End of the Whole Mess” (in which subjective perspective is also complicated in really fascinating ways). 

One of my favorite parts of teaching this particular class is the creative work the students develop. In addition to gaining mastery of the close reading and critical analysis skills of literary studies, over the course of the class, students also develop their own creative interpretation of one of King’s stories we’re reading and discussing. I provide them with suggestions and possibilities, as well as samples from previous classes, but they have full creative control over the project they develop. Last year’s student projects included movie posters and book covers, a “Children of the Corn”-inspired gala gown and makeup design, a Lego recreation of the hotel room from 1408, a theatrical set design for “The Boogeyman,” an original song, and a set of crocheted coasters inspired by individual stories. I am always thrilled, energized, and inspired by the work the students do in this class and I can’t wait to see what they come up with this time around!