A tutorial designed to explore the interpretive difficulties and possibilities posed by child narrators in contemporary American fiction. Tobias Wolff has said that, "Except for very small children, everyone is responsible in some way for the situation in which he finds himself." If we let children off the hook in terms of individual responsibility, what becomes of the notion of agency in a narrative with a child at the helm? What are the particular problems involved in constructing and negotiating a child narrator's voice? What are the implications of presenting the complexities of an emotional life through a limited vocabulary Children, according to Americans, inhabit the land of innocence and possibility But childhood is, by definition, also a place of mystery, a place potentially without lucid or ordered notions of possibility. How do contemporary American authors represent that mystery, and its attendant anxieties, in clarifying ways? Course readings may include Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright by Steven Millhauser, Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, Jim the Boy by Tony Earley and short fiction by Junot Diaz, Sherman Alexie, Mary Robison, A.M. Homes, Gish Jen, among others. Format: tutorial. Requirements: students will meet in pairs with the instructor once a week; one student will present a short analytical paper on the texts covered that week, and the other will write a response paper and join the instructor in a discussion of both papers. Evaluation will be based on the quality of written work, discussions and oral presentations. Prerequisites: a 100-level English course, except for 150. Enrollment limit: 10 (expected: 10). Preference given to sophomores. (Post-1900)