A Framework for Teaching Close Reading

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Charon
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Temporal Complexity ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Framework For Teaching

This chapter describes one framework for teaching close reading to groups of learners. It proposes that learners focus on one narrative feature at a time—for example, time, space, voice, and metaphor—over the course of a seminar. For each feature, students read and discuss seminal conceptual writings to situate them in the classical and contemporary critical discourse. The chapter provides capsule summaries of these four narrative features that guide students in their own close reading of texts. The discussion of temporality, for example, includes theological, philosophical, scientific, and literary/narratological writings and the close reading of literary, visual arts, and musical texts that display temporal complexity. In the chapter are described particular teaching sessions in a variety of settings where learners read and respond in writing to short texts that highlight a particular narrative feature. The teaching texts and those written by students are reproduced in the chapter.

scholarly journals A WELL-TOLD STORY… WILL COVID-19 TEACH US TO LISTEN TO A CITY?

Muzealnictwo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 163-172
Author(s):  
Michał Niezabitowski
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Direct Contact ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Prose Poems ◽  
Strong Bond ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Programme ◽  
At Home

As a result of the pandemic, in March 2020, world museology was cut off from the direct contact with their public. Owing to the introduced regulations, Polish museums were closed down on three occasions (14 March – 4 May 2020, 15 Oct 2020 – 31 Jan 2021, and 20 March – 4 May 2021). When searching for new forms of activity, in 2020, museums made an enormous technological progress, and mastered numerous new competences allowing them to move in cyberspace with ease. The pace at which they introduced various ‘online’ formats is worthy of appreciation. Presently, the time has come to ask whether the effectiveness in reaching the public via such means truly contributed to consolidating a strong bond with them. In order to get the answer to this, it is necessary to critically assess the museum efforts, which will not be possible without researching into the Polish public over that period. Wishing to voice my opinion in the critical discourse on the museums’ activity during the pandemic, I have decided to share my experience from a selected activity of the Museum of Krakow: I have presented the effects of the social Programme titled ‘Stay at Home and Tell Krakow’ (#zostanwdomuiopowiedzkrakow). The Museum created this programme convinced that a city dweller, exposed to the oppression of the pandemic will feel the urge to share his or her experience. Apparently, the appeal made by the Museum of Krakow was eagerly responded to. The Museum received ‘stories’ about the pandemic in different formats: prose, poems, diaries, visual arts, and even musical pieces and artifacts. The results of the ‘Stay at Home and Tell Krakow’ Programme are currently hard to sum up, however, what seems a valuable and worth analysing experience is the focus of residents’ attention on the Museum which they considered an institution trustworthy enough to entrust it their private, often intimate reflections on living through that challenging period.

Appraising the Poetic Power of Children's Video Games

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Reay
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Children's Media ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Open Dialogue ◽  
The Aesthetic

To date, most studies of video games by children's literature scholars have been ‘child-oriented’ rather than ‘text-oriented’, focusing on the needs and capabilities of child-players rather than on the literary and artistic potential of the games themselves. This essay proposes that in-depth textual analyses of children's video games will not only illuminate the aesthetic value of specific texts, but also refashion and redirect scholarly debate about the medium itself. What is more, an open dialogue between games scholarship and children's literature scholarship is likely to yield the kind of rich, flexible and nuanced critical discourse necessary to navigate a rapidly evolving, increasingly diverse children's media ecology. Here the case is made for both a strong interdisciplinary alliance between children's literature scholarship and games scholarship, and for modelling a style of close reading that attends specifically to the visual, auditory, tactile and performative elements of children's video games. This method of close reading is called ‘critical ekphrasis’, where ‘ekphrasis’ denotes the careful and creative transcription of the supralinguistic, non-verbal signifiers of video games for the purpose of critical analysis. Critical ekphrasis is offered as a bridge between disciplines that enables children's literature scholars to bring their unique expertise to bear on the complex, varied and exciting body of texts that constitutes ‘children's video games’.

scholarly journals SHAKESPEARES AS YOU LIKE IT: A POSTMODERN STUDY OF GENDER

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 352-357
Author(s):  
Most. Farhana Jannat ◽  
◽  
Prokity Ahmed ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
As You Like It ◽  
The Difference

William Shakespeare in As You Like It highlights the gender roles in the society. Gender is developed by society. It is not natural.The society assigns roles to distinct gender. This study investigated the gender roles present in As You Like It and deconstructs the specific gender roles through the postmodern study of gender. This study focuses on the distinctive roles associated with the dressing style and language of man and woman. This study also investigates the presence of homosexuality. Besides, this study explores the shifting nature of identity and androgyny. This is a qualitative study which is explorative in nature. Analytical and close- reading method have been used to conduct the research. Besides, critical discourse analysis has been applied. William Shakespeare reveals the difference in the roles performed by gender through the disguise of Rosalind. The dressing style of man gives Rosalind the power to act as a man. The discourse differs in case of man and woman. The acts like homosexuality which are not approved by the society cannot be performed freely. Besides, the disguise of Rosalind and her subsequent actions portray the presence of androgyny and the idea that gender is not fixed. Shakespeare subverts the stereotypical performances of gender through Rosalind.

scholarly journals Fan fiction as feminist citation: Lesbian (para)textuality in chainofclovers's "Done with the Compass, Done with the Chart" (2017)

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Margaret Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Female Desire ◽  
Compulsory Heterosexuality

A close reading of an exemplar femslash fan fic, chainofclover's "Done with the Compass, Done with the Chart" (2017), demonstrates that the language of desire it narrates for canonically heterosexual female characters is anchored by a lesbian (para)textuality. Chainofclovers takes a line from Emily Dickinson’s poem "Wild nights—Wild nights!" for the title of her fan fic for the Grace and Frankie (2015–) TV series. The author enters literary critical discourse and demonstrates feminist models of citation. The use of Dickinson, paired with similar references to the Mojave lesbian poet Natalie Diaz in the chapter epigraphs, provides a new map for the characters to follow, allowing them to travel beyond the canonical confines of compulsory heterosexuality. Just as the canonical characters Grace and Frankie refuse the requirement to cite the men in their lives, instead choosing to cite each other, chainofclovers cites lesbian poetry to imagine a narrative of female desire that is not defined by men. The story thus reflects the feminist citational model that both fan fiction and fan studies can enact, challenging traditional networks of property and ownership by producing a work founded on sustenance and gratitude.

scholarly journals Organizing bell hooks’ Frameworks for Interrogating Representations

Plaridel ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hazel Biana
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Cultural Criticism ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Bell Hooks

The feminist bell hooks is a staunch critic of sexist, racist, and classist media representations. Despite this, hooks has been called out for being unscholarly and disorganized in her cultural criticism. Through a close reading of hooks’ works, this paper attempts to make sense of and organize her cultural criticism frameworks toward a possible system for a critical discourse analysis. Hooks’ works are taken apart to examine how the parts fit together to understand the order, interventions, and intellectual motivations of her methods. Certain processes by which these frameworks may be used by scholars and critics for interrogating sex, race, class, and other intersectional representations are also discussed.

ProtAnt

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Anthony ◽  
Paul Baker
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Effect Size ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Selection Procedure ◽  
Software Tool ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Ranked List

Corpus-based researchers and traditional qualitative researchers, such as those interested in critical discourse analysis, are often required to select prototypical texts for close reading that include the language features of interest that are present in a much larger corpus. Traditional approaches to this selection procedure have been largely ad hoc. In this paper, we offer a more principled way of selecting texts for close reading based on a ranking of texts in terms of the number of keywords they contain. To facilitate this analysis, we have developed a multiplatform, freeware software tool called ProtAnt that analyses the texts, generates a ranked list of keywords based on statistical significance and effect size, and then orders the texts by the number of keywords in them. We describe various experiments that demonstrate the ProtAnt analysis is effective not only at identifying prototypical texts, but also identifying outlier texts that may need to be removed from a target corpus.

When Did Close Reading Acquire a Bad Name?

2020 ◽  
pp. 113-130
Author(s):  
Jean-Michel Rabaté
Keyword(s):  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Disciplinary History ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
French Theory ◽  
Modernist Studies ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Theoretical Reflection

This chapter combines theoretical reflection and disciplinary history to consider the impact of critical discourse inspired by Continental philosophy on the evolution of close reading, against the backdrop of modernist studies’ own fluctuating relationship with high theory. Can one blame French theory for a reluctance to engage with the minute stylistic details of a text? The chapter argues that the renewal of modernist studies was brought about by the combination of two factors: a wish to take into account contemporary theory, and a wish to historicize the corpus systematically. As the chapter reveals, the perceived clash between myopic close reading that postpones asking broad questions and the ample sweep of philosophical investigations had already taken place within canonical French theory. The chapter examines the historical and conceptual implications of theory’s relation to close reading for modernist studies today.

Police and Image Maintenance

2021 ◽  
pp. 169-195
Author(s):  
Mary Angela Bock
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Police Accountability ◽  
Lip Sync

Video evidence of use-of-force incidents has changed the conversation about policing in the United States and undermined faith in law enforcement. This chapter presents a critical discourse analysis of police efforts to maintain a positive public image. First, the chapter identifies three rhetorical strategies used by law enforcement in pursuit of image repair. When they cannot control the original creation and framing of an image through embodied gatekeeping, officials negotiate its recontextualization by controlling the narrative, explaining procedures, or appealing to the public’s respect for authority. Many departments are also crafting their own visual messaging, with social media accounts that highlight good deeds caught on badge cams or with lighthearted in-house video productions such as the 2018 Lip Sync Challenge. A close reading of the Lip Sync Challenge finds that its productions tended to reify, rather than dispute, the white, militaristic, hypermasculine culture that police accountability activists condemn.

scholarly journals Chronotypology: A Comparative Method for Analyzing Game Time

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (7) ◽  
pp. 809-824
Author(s):  
Darshana Jayemanne
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Efficient Set ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Temporal Experience ◽  
Temporal Complexity

This article presents a methodology called “chronotypology” which aims to facilitate literary studies approaches to video games by conceptualizing game temporality. The method develops a comparative approach to how video games structure temporal experience, yielding an efficient set of terms—“diachrony,” “synchrony,” and “unstable signifier”—through which to analyze gaming’s “heterochronia” or temporal complexity. This method also yields an approach to the contentious topic of video game narrative which may particularly recommend it to literary scholars with an interest in the form. Along with some examples from conventional games, a close reading of the “reality-inspired” game Bury Me, My Love will serve to demonstrate the use of a chronotypological approach.

The Soil of Radonezh and the Artists of Abramtsevo

Experiment ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Inge Wierda
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Fertile Ground

Abstract This article examines the historical and spiritual significance of Radonezh soil and its impact on the artistic practice of the Abramtsevo circle. Through a close reading of three paintings—Viktor Vasnetsov’s Saint Sergius of Radonezh (1881) and Alenushka (1881), and Elena Polenova’s Pokrov Mother of God (1883)—it analyzes how the Abramtsevo artists negotiated Saint Sergius’s legacy alongside their own experiences of the sacred sites in this area and especially the Pokrovskii churches. These artworks demonstrate how, in line with the prevalent nineteenth-century Slavophile interests, Radonezh soil provided a fertile ground for articulating a distinct Russian Orthodox identity in the visual arts of the 1880s and continues to inspire artists to this day.

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