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    Critical Reading Guidance

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    shirine
    This document provides guidance for students on how to critically read texts and write critical reading assignments. It outlines a 3 part structure for writing submissions: 1) Briefly define the text, 2) Outline the structure and argument, 3) Respond to and critique the text. The response section should be the longest and assess the text's reliability, biases, achievement of aims, usefulness and limitations. A brief conclusion is also recommended. 10 example texts written between 1845-1988 are provided that students can choose from for the assignments.

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    Critical Reading Guidance

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    shirine
    16 views2 pages
    This document provides guidance for students on how to critically read texts and write critical reading assignments. It outlines a 3 part structure for writing submissions: 1) Briefly define the text, 2) Outline the structure and argument, 3) Respond to and critique the text. The response section should be the longest and assess the text's reliability, biases, achievement of aims, usefulness and limitations. A brief conclusion is also recommended. 10 example texts written between 1845-1988 are provided that students can choose from for the assignments.

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    This document provides guidance for students on how to critically read texts and write critical reading assignments. It outlines a 3 part structure for writing submissions: 1) Briefly define the text, 2) Outline the structure and argument, 3) Respond to and critique the text. The response section should be the longest and assess the text's reliability, biases, achievement of aims, usefulness and limitations. A brief conclusion is also recommended. 10 example texts written between 1845-1988 are provided that students can choose from for the assignments.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    16 views2 pages

    Critical Reading Guidance

    Uploaded by

    shirine
    This document provides guidance for students on how to critically read texts and write critical reading assignments. It outlines a 3 part structure for writing submissions: 1) Briefly define the text, 2) Outline the structure and argument, 3) Respond to and critique the text. The response section should be the longest and assess the text's reliability, biases, achievement of aims, usefulness and limitations. A brief conclusion is also recommended. 10 example texts written between 1845-1988 are provided that students can choose from for the assignments.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
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    Department of Fine Arts and Art History Joseph Hammond

    American University of Beirut 14 March 2020

    Critical Reading Guidance


    With practice this will help you get more out of your reading, understand arguments and develop your
    own arguments and position, and understand the debates. Accurately represent the arguments,
    assess their success, identify their limitations and respond.
    Meaning can be found in all texts. All texts have uses, but not all texts are appropriate for all uses.
    Not all texts are equally useful, and everything has limitations. To know how to use them appropriately
    we must first understand them, and to do that we must read them closely:

    Choose a text from the “Reading” folder on Moodle, ask if you want to use other texts. Use the
    Chicago referencing system (see handout on Moodle).

    HOW TO READ
    Skim the intro and conclusion. Identify the theses and think about what you need to know about
    these issues—this focuses the mind on what you want to get out of the text (be open to discovering
    other useful approaches). Read it carefully and slowly. Annotate it, highlighting thesis statements,
    definitions, key arguments, major sections, and significant reoccurring words. The arguments are much
    more important than the facts.

    ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TEXT, AND WRITE THEM IN THE MARGINS OR IN YOUR NOTES.

    WHAT TO WRITE & SUBMIT


    1. Quickly define what sort of text it is; often it’s an article or a chapter, but it could be a catalogue or
    encyclopaedia entry, or a letter etc. Where, when and why was it published? Identify the theses and
    other purposes. This section should be the shortest.

    2. Briefly outline the structure and argument putting it into a ‘standard form’: including its most
    important points (the evidence and arguments) and its organisation into sections. Note important
    definitions. State any causal relationships and how the parts build up to the theses and conclusions. This
    section should be short.

    3. Respond: Say how this issue is related to the writer or wider context. Outline the interpretive
    models, explanatory frameworks, theories etc that are used and assess why these theories are used. All
    arguments make assumptions about accepted truths and methods, you should identify those and say
    whether they are reasonable. Explore its contradictions, inconsistencies, flaws and especially omissions.
    Assess its reliability and any problems in the evidence and arguments. Examine any biases in the text or
    its production. Apply any relevant interpretative paradigm that might be useful. Dispute definitions
    used or assumed. Assess whether it has achieved its stated aims. Determine if other un-stated
    purposes or effects are achieved or likely. Determine what we should use it for, and how useful is
    it. Explain limitations to its usefulness. Consider your view, and how or why the issue may look
    different today. Provide your opinion in response. This section should be long.
    Have a very brief, one to two sentences, conclusion. Summing up your balanced findings.

    We should choose the best texts we can find, but accept that nothing is perfect and reconcile ourselves
    to critique. To critique is to celebrate complexity, explore contradictions and respect its seriousness.
    Critique is how we improve, to critique something implies that it is worth our time and is high praise
    (not to critique implies indifference and irrelevance). With critique you can improve your mind, and our
    discourse can be improved with it. Critique is different from criticism and blame.

    Maximum word count: 100 level course = 750 words. 200 level course = 1000 words.

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    Department of Fine Arts and Art History Joseph Hammond


    Faculty of Arts and Sciences PDFs for Critical Readings
    American University of Beirut Tuesday, 14 September 2021

    PDFs for the Critical Reading Assignments


    The PDFs with their Chicago-style citation. Authors often respond to earlier authors so
    these have been listed in order of publication. Most of them have been re-published and
    retranslated many times. The approximate date of original writing is in square brackets at
    the end of each entry, conventional bibliographies don’t include this information.
    Conventional bibliographies should also be in alphabetical order by authors’ family names.
    There is no need to number the items in a normal bibliography for your essays.

    Any one article in the following anthology/compilation book:


    Preziosi, Donald, ed. The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology. Oxford: Oxford University
    Press, 2009.

    OR any one of the following

    1. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. ‘The Ruling Class and The Ruling Ideas. How the
    Hegelian Conception of the Domination of The Spirit in History Arose’. In Karl
    Marx, Frederick Engels Collected Works, translated by Richard Dixon, Vol. 5. New York:
    International Publishers, 1976. [1845]
    2. Gramsci, Antonio. ‘History of the Subaltern Classes: Methodological Criteria [and] The
    Concept of “Ideology”’. In Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci,
    edited by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, 52–58, 375–77. New York:
    International Publishers, 1971. And ‘Cultural Themes: Ideological Material’. In
    Selections from Cultural Writings, edited by David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith,
    translated by William Boelhower, 389–90. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985.
    [1929-35]
    3. Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W Adorno. ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as
    Mass Deception.’ In Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Edited by
    Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
    University Press, 2002. pp. 94-136. [1947]
    4. Barthes, Roland. ‘Operation Margarine’ and ‘Myth Today’. In Mythologies, translated by
    Annette Lavers, 40–42, 151–60. New York: The Noonday Press, 1972. [1957]
    5. Habermas, Jürgen. ‘The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964)’. New German
    Critique, no. 3 (Autumn 1974): 49–55. [1964]
    6. McLuhan, Marshall. ‘The Medium Is the Message’ and ‘Media as Translators’. In
    Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 7–21, 56–61. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT
    Press, 1994. [1964]
    7. Althusser, Louis. ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an
    Investigation)(January-April 1969)’. In Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, translated
    by Ben Brewster, 127–86. New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1971.
    [1970]
    8. Nochlin, Linda. ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ ARTnews 69, no. 9
    (January 1971): 22–39.
    9. Williams, Raymond. ‘Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory’. New Left
    Review, 1st series, no. 82 (December 1973): 3–16.
    10. Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. ‘A Propaganda Model’. In Manufacturing
    Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, 1–35. New York: Pantheon Books,
    1988.

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