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Interpreting texts is an important activity of many disciplines. Through interpretive assignments students practice critical thinking, integrative learning, and discernment.
These types of assignments provde experience with primary sources and develop habits of raising and pursuing questions.
Reading texts
For the Humanities “reading” can entail very different goals, procedures, and strategies. While the term generally encompasses acts of textual engagement, analysis, or interpretation, what we “read” in the humanities can vary widely. From poems to paintings, films to philosophical tracts. Scholarly articles and monographs will require yet another, different set of reading skills.
It can be helpful to spend time early in the semester discussing what “reading” means for your field and what kinds of reading methods and strategies will be necessary for the course. In-class or take-home activities specifically tailored to teaching critical reading will greatly help students in developing these skills. Below are a few ideas and considerations to help you in this process.
Identifying and Contextualizing the “Text”
Who created this text, when, and where? How was this text disseminated and received by its contemporaries?
How do we read a text with respect to its historical period or social context? What different views might its authors hold from us and how can we analyze them based on the historical or social situation of that text?
What formal features define the “text” we are reading as a class? For example: what defines a realist novel, a performance art piece, a documentary film, a philosophical treatise, etc.
How does this text connect to the overall theme or problems examined in this course? How does it compare to other texts in the course? Answering these questions can help students contrast the different periods, genres, and social contexts of texts.
Responding to and Analyzing Texts
What forms of engagement and analysis are typical of your discipline? These might be specific interpretive techniques like “close reading,” protocols for evaluating historical documents, or general modes of inquiry particular to your field.
How might you teach those forms to your students? Can you break those forms down into separate, smaller steps that can be learned as a sequence? How would you explain this kind of reading to a newcomer of the discipline (i.e., your students)?
For texts written in another century or language unfamiliar to them, how might you help students work through words or phrases that may be totally new to them? How will you help them grasp and absorb specialized vocabulary or concepts? Many authors, artists, philosophers, thinkers, etc., evoke terms and concepts whose meanings are assumed rather than explained because they are responding to others already within a given intellectual context. Your students will need some translation to bring them into conversation with these figures.
Assignment Ideas for Interpretive Assignments
1. Design a writing assignment that asks students to test a critic’s ideas (or an everyday assumption) against a primary text or texts.
2. Ask students to apply a theory they’ve learned in a social science class by designing an experiment to test the theory. Have them carry out the experiment and document the results.
3. Design a writing assignment that prompts students to position themselves within a scholarly or real-life debate.
4. Ask students to review a scientific paper, assessing the evidence the authors use and how they use it.
References:
The IDEA Center. (n.d.). Learning to analyze and critically evaluate ideas, arguments, and points of view. IDEA. https://www.ideaedu.org/idea-notes-on-learning/learning-to-analyze-and-critically-evaluate-ideas-arguments-and-points-of-view/
Monte-Sano, C., & Allen, A. (2019). Historical argument writing: The role of interpretive work, argument type, and classroom instruction. Reading and Writing, 32(6), 1383-1410.
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