A note on reading for this upper-level English course, some instructions for deep learning.
This 1980 article by Annette Kolodny, “Dancing Through the Minefield,” is probably the most challenging text you will read this term. Here’s a secret: I do not expect you to read it linearly from beginning to end, which is true of mostly any other academic article we read in this course. (I will tell you in the rare case it’s not.) Here’s what may be another secret: no academic really does read an article word-for-word, at least not until they know if it’s going to be useful for their own work. In academic books, individual chapters may lend themselves well to reading linearly, but we often skim books in the humanities by reading their intros and conclusions and cherrypicking which chapters to read. We read recursively, mining the texts for information. There’s just too much out there to wade through otherwise.
Now, I’ve cut down on your sifting work significantly by assembling readings for you in this course that I think are important for this topic. But it still may benefit you to learn and practice reading tactically, especially if this is the first you’re hearing of this. (I felt supreme academic guilt until I got the memo.)
Please do read the article intently from pp. 1-8 with particular attention to p. 8, where Kolodny articulates the pieces of her core argument. Then please skim the rest, guided by the three numbered parts of her argument that are each set off in italics and structure the body of the article.
This is generally good practice: get a sense of where the author may be coming from, and then see where they’re going and where the key parts are. Different elements will catch your attention than others’. You may not be able to make out certain things, and that’s okay. Write down those things, ask about them, look them up. This is a process that you might execute again and again when faced with a new piece you want to read, and it’s something you’ll get better at.
Toward training your model, if you will, how else is text structured into identifiable units? Articles won’t always be quite so obvious as to set numbered sections off in italics, but be on the lookout for strategies that authors use to delimit parts of their writing or to tell you, “hey, this part’s important to understand!” Subheadings, metadiscourse (writing that draws attention to the fact it’s talking about writing, like “In this paper, I will!” or “This book is divided into three sections,” or “I argue that…”), modal verbs that communicate necessity (e.g., “must,” “should”), and direct reader addresses (e.g., “The reader may notice…”, or “Note that…”), and transitions from paragraph to paragraph are some examples.