Week One: Creative Reading
All of the essays in The New Humanities Reader
are challenging. Some use specialized
language; others address unfamiliar topics. None
of the essays offers a reassuringly simple resolution to the complex
situations presented.
Instead, each essay is an exploration of an
idea, event, or critical debate. As
explorations, the essays represent multiple perspectives about a single
subject. A writer may propose
an idea, criticize it in the next paragraph, offer another idea a few
pages later, and then return to her initial concept at the end of the
essay. By offering multiple paths of investigation, each writer engages
in the creative process of making connections between other ways of
thinking about and seeing the world. We believe that it is essential
that the readers of these essays see themselves as engaged in a similarly
creative process--creative reading.
At first, it might seem a little crazy to talk about
reading as a creative process. After all, the reader's job is
usually understood to involve the a more predictable and manageable
set of skills: the ability to accurately represent the argument in the
assigned reading; the ability to see the strengths and weaknesses in
the assigned reading; and, more often than not, the ability to admire
the finer points in the assigned reading. Thus, far from seeming a creative,
reading at least as it is carried out in school, is primarily seen as
a way to take in the ideas of others and accurately reproduce those
ideas.
While we do think the ability to accurately represent
the ideas of other writers is of central importance, we also think that
reading is not just a way to better comprehend the ideas of others;
reading can also be a creative process for developing and then better
understanding your own ideas as they relate to the ideas of others.
Creative readers make sure that they know what the author is saying
while, at the same time, devoting their energies to actively constructing
otherwise implicit relationships between ideas, events, and contexts. That is, creative reading involves imagining how and why different
positions represented in the texts might be made to relate to each other.
The connections that are made through the process of creative
reading are not made explicitly by the writers; creative readers create
these connections. So, when we ask you to read creatively, we are asking
you to go beyond reading what the author has said and to focus your
energies on thinking about the implications of what the author
has said. There are many ways to do this kind of reading: you can consider
connections between the author's ideas and your own experiences; you
can think about how the author's ideas might work in another context;
you can establish connections between a number of authors as a way of
developing your own position. When you read and respond to what you
have read in these ways, you turn the work of reading into a creative,
self-directed process that helps you develop new ways of thinking about,
responding to, and understanding the world.
Creative reading within the text
Creatively reading a single essay involves making connections
between the various pieces of that essay. For example, in Jonathan Boyarin's
"Waiting for a Jew," you need to imagine the connections among Boyarin's
experiences as a child growing up in New Jersey, as a young anthropologist
in Paris, and as a mature adult at a New York City synagogue.
A creative reading requires you to speculate about why
Boyarin chose to share these different life events and to consider what
these events have to do with the "marginal redemption" he
mentions only in the title to his essay. By asking and answering questions
about why the author presents certain ideas in support of his
or her argument, and by questioning and testing the logic of those connections,
you begin to establish your own ideas in relation to the text.
Creative reading between texts/between text and
context
All of the essays we've included in The New Humanities
Reader raise issues that are a part of larger debates within the
public sphere about how best to understand the past and how best to
prepare for the future. Thus, for creative
readers, essays that at first seem unrelated can often be shown
to be centrally concerned with similar issues. For example, at first, it might appear that
Karen Armstrong's essay on the caves at Lascaux and their relationship to human religious history has
nothing whatsoever to do with Daniel Gilbert's essay on the ways that people predict and process happiness. For the creative reader, though, this is the
challenge: how are we to make sense of these two essays when read alongside
one another?
To make a connection between these essays you need
to imagine what both essays have in common. While they seem quite unrelated
initially, after some thought it becomes possible to see that both Armstrong and Gilbert are concerned, in their own ways, with human nature and human happiness. That they have very different ways of thinking about these issues
is clear, but that, too, is a connection worth exploring. Why is it
that they think about humanity in such different ways? What is it that
counts as evidence for them? In creative reading, one connection leads to
the next and larger questions emerge. This is what happens when the
imagination is allowed to participate in the intellectual work of making
sense of the world.
Creative reading also means using your own experience
and knowledge of the world to critically examine the ideas presented
in the essay. For example, how
does your own experience in your education compare to
Deborah Tannen's account of common education practices in "The Roots of Debate in Education and the Hope of Dialogue"? Does that experience make you consider Twenge's
ideas from a different perspective?
Does your experience raise any questions that Twenge does not
address? By considering an author's
ideas in a new context, you can find your own ways to develop your own
contribution to the public debate in which these readings engage.
OK, that's how we define creative reading,
but how do you actually go about doing creative reading?
To find out, continue on to the next page.
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>> Creative Reading: The Key to Success
