This workshop will examine methods as well as reasons for teaching one of the core analytical tools of the humanities: close reading. The workshop will explore various methods for getting your undergraduate classroom to engage with a text on its own terms, as well as how to get students to extract and extrapolate on pertinent observations from a given textual object in order to perform their own close reading analyses. We will also discuss the advantages of teaching close reading techniques to undergraduates and how making close reading a part of your course content—to be taught actively and not assumed as part of your students’ analytical toolkits—can change your students’ learning outcomes and quality of work.

All graduate students are welcome. This event grows out of concerns in the Comparative Literature department and so may be most useful to students in related fields.

Counts toward the CETLI Teaching Certificate.