A closer kind of reading

Abstract

Reading is an integral part of scholarly practice, though we do not often discuss how our approaches to reading differ, and how these approaches may ultimately make interpretive impact on our research. This essay considers approaches to reading in light of the concepts of proximity and orientation. Though formal close reading is a common approach to teaching reading and analyzing texts, it is possible that there are other, closer approaches to situating reader and text. Perhaps reading has been seen as dangerous and liberating because it is true that texts can draw us into their landscapes and fundamentally alter our orientations to the world, an important consideration for scholars.

Keywords:

• Reading
• close reading
• post-critical
• affect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 There is a college composition textbook called Ways of Reading (Bartholomae et al., 2010), calling attention to this concept.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elliott Kuecker

Elliott Kuecker is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.