These responses are designed to offer you a way into the reading that ensures careful thinking, active learning, and original, creative intellectual engagement with the texts.
Unless otherwise indicated, reading responses will take the form of a close reading of a passage from one of the texts we assigned for that day. Please be careful to follow all assigned homework requirements.
PREPARATION
- Choose a passage from the reading seems worth some more attention. It may be a passage you find puzzling, or rich with symbolism, or which pisses you off, sizzles, or is notable in some way, or connects with a theme, or seems extraneous, etc., etc.
- If you choose a passage longer than a paragraph, you probably won’t have time to go into adequate detail.
- Read your passage, several times, silently and aloud, and then free-write some notes/ideas about anything you see—go crazy, be creative!
- Once you have notes, see if you can write down, in no more than two sentences, your overall claim about the passage.
FORMAT
- Title Your Document: Last, First WK _ (ex. 2, 3, etc.)
- PAGE ONE
- Include your name and the date
- Then center the passage and its citation, and under the passage
- Include your revised overall claim about the passage (one to two sentences)
- PAGE TWO-THREE
- Do a two page close reading of the passage (minimum of two pages, a maximum of two and a half)
- Here is a helpful refresher on close reading
- Here is a list of poetic devices that you might come across during your readings in this class
WILD romantics 