{"id":652,"date":"2016-10-17T19:28:35","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T19:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/?p=652"},"modified":"2016-10-17T19:28:35","modified_gmt":"2016-10-17T19:28:35","slug":"hayles-reading-trask-prompt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/uncategorized\/hayles-reading-trask-prompt\/","title":{"rendered":"Hayles&#8217; Reading &#038; Trask Prompt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>What did reading mean before the internet?<\/strong><br \/>\nWe&#8217;ve had the discussion before about &#8220;no turning back&#8221;. \u00a0That still stands, but it&#8217;s not as if books have disappeared. \u00a0I just want to emphasize this &#8220;close reading&#8221;\u00a0<em>still exists\u00a0<\/em>and in most cases we are still expected to do it, at least to a degree. \u00a0I don&#8217;t want to start talking about close reading as if it has died. \u00a0We can discuss its relevancy, sure, but that&#8217;s kind of a different question, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n<p>Hayles makes sure we can define close reading, or at least she gathers other definitions for us. \u00a0After all, reading is what\u00a0<em>we do.\u00a0<\/em>When we start to acknowledge the\u00a0existence of other viable forms of reading we have to take the time to define our terms. \u00a0I want to just list some of the definitions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;The most valuable thing English ever had to offer was the very thing that made us a discipline&#8230; Close reading&#8211;learned through practice with literary texts, learned in literature classes&#8211;is a widely applicable skill, of real value to students as well as to scholars in other disciplines.&#8221; &#8211;Jane Gallop (qtd on 63)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;[Close reading] is the only teaching that can properly be called literary; anything else is history \u00a0of ideas, biography, psychology, ethics, or bad philosophy.&#8221; &#8211;Barbary Johnson (63-64)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Close reading is our contemporary term for a heterogeneous and largely unorganized set of practices and assumptions&#8221; &#8211;John Guillory (64)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Do those definitions not speak to the kind of training we&#8217;ve had in this very department? \u00a0Everyone has taken 271, right? \u00a0Or any class where you read poetry? \u00a0Close reading is taught. \u00a0In my experience, Lit teachers just define it as reading carefully, slowly, and decidedly to get the full meaning of the syntax and diction within the text. \u00a0Once we get to learn about decon-and post- structuralism we get to read\u00a0<em>other\u00a0<\/em>kinds of texts, like advertisements and posters. \u00a0This is the kind of reading that happened before the internet. \u00a0And I think it&#8217;s definitely still expected of us.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>How has that definition changed or remained the same?<\/strong><br \/>\nNow, this probably depends on who you ask, right? \u00a0I would enthusiastically declare the reading I do of quick headlines, news stories, blog posts, and excerpts of texts online reading. \u00a0Someone more traditional would say&#8230; &#8220;Eh, not quite.&#8221; \u00a0Of course you could argue people were always reading the news and\u00a0<em>parts\u00a0<\/em>of the news. \u00a0They didn&#8217;t call that reading then, why should I get to call it reading now? \u00a0Hayles wants to call it reading. \u00a0She wants to find a way to incorporate digital reading in a productive way into a lit curriculum. \u00a0Hayles says: &#8220;Deep [attention] and hyperattention each have distinctive advantages. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Deep attention is essential for coping with complex phenomena such as mathematical theorems, challenging literary works, and complex musical compositions; hyperattention is useful for its flexibility in switching between different information streams, its quick grasp of the gist of material, and its ability to move rapidly among and between different kinds of texts. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The problem, as I see it, lies not in hyperattention\/hyperreading as such, but rather in the challenges the situation presents for parents and educators to ensure that deep attention and close reading continue to be vibrant components of our reading cultures and interact synergistically with the kind of Web and hyperreading in which our young people are increasingly immersed&#8221; [72].<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think what we need is one super definition of reading. \u00a0Hayles&#8217;s approach is useful. \u00a0That approach being one of multiple categories and understanding the benefits and disadvantages of each kind of reading.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What did reading mean before the internet? We&#8217;ve had the discussion before about &#8220;no turning back&#8221;. \u00a0That still stands, but it&#8217;s not as if books have disappeared. \u00a0I just want to emphasize this &#8220;close reading&#8221;\u00a0still exists\u00a0and in most cases we are still expected to do it, at least to a degree. \u00a0I don&#8217;t want to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":683,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions\/683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}