Critical Reading Across the Curriculum

Powerful strategies, tools, and techniques for educators teaching students critical reading skills in the humanities.

Every educator understands the importance of teaching students how to read critically. Even the best teachers, however, find it challenging to translate their own learned critical reading practices into explicit strategies for their students. Critical Reading Across the Curriculum: Humanities, Volume 1 presents exceptional insight into what educators require to facilitate critical and creative thinking skills.

Written by scholar-educators from across the humanities, each of the thirteen essays in this volume describes strategies educators have successfully executed to develop critical reading skills in students studying the humanities. These include ways to help students:

• focus
• actively re-read and reflect, to re-think, and re-consider
• understand the close relationship between reading and writing
• become cognizant of the critical importance of context in critical reading and of making contextual connections
• learn to ask the right questions in critical reading and reasoning
• appreciate reading as dialogue, debate, and engaged conversation

In addition, teachers will find an abundance of innovative exercises and activities encouraging students to practice their critical reading skills. These can easily be adapted for and applied across many disciplines and course curricula in the humanities.

The lifelong benefits of strong critical reading skills are undeniable. Students with properly developed critical reading skills are confident learners with an enriched understanding of the world around them. They advance academically and are prepared for college success. This book arms educators (librarians, high school teachers, university lecturers, and beyond) with the tools to teach a most paramount lesson.

Robert DiYanni is an adjunct professor of humanities and an instructional consultant at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching at New York University. In these capacities he teaches courses on critical thinking, interdisciplinary humanities, commerce and culture, and business and its publics, and conducts workshops and consultations with faculty throughout the university on aspects of pedagogical practice. Before coming to NYU, Dr. DiYanni taught at Queens College and Pace University and as a visiting professor at Harvard. He also served, for ten years, as Director of International Services at The College Board.

Notes on Contributors ix

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xvii

Part I Frameworks and Approaches 1

1 Reading Responsively, Reading Responsibly: An Approach to Critical Reading 3
Robert DiYanni

Being Critical 4

Responsible Reading, Responsive Reading 6

A Framework for Critical Reading 7

Demonstration – E. B. White on the Moonwalk 12

Application – Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address 17

Reflective Reading – Reading and Living 21

References 23

2 Reciprocal Acts: Reading andWriting 24
Pat C. Hoy II

A Story ofNecessity 24

Acts of Conception 25

Working from Images 26

Remembering Spontaneity 31

Getting More Systematic 34

Merging What and How 41

Writing as Representation,Writing as Composition 47

References 48

3 A Shared Horizon: Critical Reading and Digital Natives 49
Anton Borst

Critically Reading the Digital Native 51

Responding to the Digital Native 53

A Shared Horizon 55

Devices, Screens, and Digital Native Reading Practices 56

Conclusion 59

References 60

Part II Critical Reading in the Disciplines 63

4 Critical Reading and Thinking: Rhetoric and Reality 65
Lawrence Scanlon

Rhetorical Challenges 67

Ways of Reading 70

Logos, Ethos, Pathos 70

Demonstration: Annotating a Speech 71

Everything’s an Argument: No It’s Not! Yes It Is! 74

A Suite of Exercises 77

Conclusion 81

Notes 82

References 82

5 The Community of Literature: Teaching Critical Reading and Creative Reflection 85
Adrian Barlow

Ways of Reading 85

Textual Conversations – Critical Dialogue 88

Re-reading and Creative Reflection 91

Demonstration – Hardy’s “In a Museum” 93

Broadening Context 95

Application – Middlemarch, Chapter XXIX 96

Contemporary Contexts 99

Notes 102

References 102

6 Approaching Intellectual Emancipation: Critical Reading in Art, Art History, and Wikipedia 104
Amy K. Hamlin

ReconsideringWikipedia 104

Reading Art:The Visual Analysis 109

Reading Art History: The Annotated Bibliography 113

ReadingWikipedia:The Comparative Analysis 119

Chain Reactions 121

Notes 121

References 122

7 Teaching Critical Reading of Historical Texts 123
Michael Hogan

BasicMatters 123

Challenges for Teachers 124

Three Kinds of Reading 125

Selecting Historical Documents for Analysis 126

Marking and Preparing Historical Documents 128

Reading Abraham Lincoln’s House Resolutions December 22, 1847 131

Reading Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Speech Opposing the VietnamWar 136

Conclusion 138

Some Useful Sources for Critical Reading in History 139

References 140

8 Philosophy and the Practice of Questioning 141
Matt Statler

Questioning Toward Truth 141

How DoWe Come to Know Anything at All? 142

Toward PracticalWisdom 149

So What?The Effects of Reading Philosophy Critically 155

Notes 156

References 157

9 Engaging Religious Texts 158
Thomas Petriano

“Pay Attention!” 158

Reading as an Embodied and Dialogic Act 159

Insights from the Religions 161

The ThreeWorlds of Religious Texts 166

Practices for Engaging Religious and Theological Texts 168

Conclusion 171

References 172

10 Gender Studies as a Model for Critical Reading 174
Pamela Burger

Gender Studies and Critical Reading 175

Deconstructing Gender 177

Documentary Project 178

Staging the Documentary Project 180

Aesthetic Distance and Ironic Images of Gender 183

Melanie Pullen’s High Fashion Crime Scenes and Cindy Sherman’s Centerfolds, 1981 185

References 189

11 Reading and Teaching Films 190
William V. Costanzo

Personal Response 191

Analyzing Story 192

Basic Film Terms 194

Formal Analysis 197

Genre Analysis 199

Cultural Analysis 201

Historical Analysis 203

Representation in Film 205

Film Theory 205

Exercises 206

References 209

12 Thinking Through Drama 210
Louis Scheeder

Drama and Argument 210

The Classical Studio 214

The Structure of Verse 215

Following the Verse 217

Exercises 220

Conclusion 221

References 222

13 Approaches to Reading and Teaching Pop Songs 223
Thomas M. Kitts

PopularMusic and Its Contexts 223

Reading a Pop Song 224

Writing about Music 228

Critical Reading: Theodor Adorno’s Criticism of Pop Music 231

Socially Conscious Music 232

Additional Writing Assignments 235

Conclusion 236

References 237

Index 239

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