This week, your post will serve as prewriting for Essay 2, asking you to practice argumentation by applying a critical perspective to a new text.  Here’s the prompt:

Do the critical approaches we’ve studied so far provide insight into contemporary culture as well as literary texts?

And here are the specifics:
1) In your post, share a very brief, contemporary text:  an image, short film clip, newspaper headline, notice of an event, etcetera. Be sure to choose a text that can be analyzed from one or more of the critical approaches we’ve discussed so far.

2) Add a concise (200 word max) analysis of the text.  Your analysis must use close reading skills (e.g. focus very specifically on your text); it must also draw explicitly on the insights of one of the critical perspectives we’ve studied so far this semester. At the end of your analysis, comment on what this perspective allowed you to see–or, conversely, what it prevented you from discussing.

3) Take the prompt seriously (e.g. don’t choose an advertisement that does not include images of gender, apply a feminist film studies perspective, and then conclude that “the gaze” is a useless critical concept). But also feel free to analyze the weaknesses of the critical method you chose.
Possible perspectives:
Humanist
Formalist (close reading of text only)
Structuralist  (e.g. apply Propp to identify the plot moves that underly anime, etc.)
Feminist, gender, and queer studies
Psychoanalysis

Open week again, with a twist: this time, find and post to your blog any artwork inspired by fairy tales (you may interpret “artwork” as loosely as you like: drawing, painting, photograph, song, film clip . . . anything you consider artistic. You are also very welcome to create and post your own art).

Add your own brief (300 word max) commentary on the piece you chose.  Frame your comments by connecting this art to our course in some way: texts, critical perspectives, discussions, whatever catches your imagination. The body of the post can focus on whatever you like: analysis of the art, synthesis of intriguing context, your personal interpretation of the piece, your reason for choosing it . . . anything at all.

Somewhere in your post, practice citation skills by giving the necessary information on the artwork (artist, medium, date, and citation/source for the image).

Goals:

• Practice adding media to a WordPress post.
• Practice citation of non-textual sources.
• Be creative and have fun!

Be sure that every week’s set of comments includes each item on this specs checklist:

• Meet weekly deadline
• Include two comments per week (for each two-week average; may also write four comments in alternate weeks)
• Leave comments for different classmates each week
• Include one positive: what did you love about this post, whether in its content, tone, style, techniques, etc.? What did it inspire you to think about? What connections did you make? Let your classmate know that their post made a difference in your day.
• Beginning with our third post, include one specific, constructive bit of advice to help the author hone their writing and improve for next time: what was less clear to you, whether in theme, specific passage, word choice, etc? What might have helped you, as a reader, to stay fully within this piece or understand it more clearly, e.g. did you love most of it but feel jarred or lost in one specific section?

A reminder: How to write constructive and helpful comments

• Avoid subjective or very general feedback,  e.g. “this piece is too flowery” or “this is too negative” or “use more irony,” because generalities or personal reactions are not usually helpful for writers.
• Instead, be as specific and objective as possible, e.g. “on lines 3-6, I appreciate all of the sensory details you use. I notice the details are all negative, though. Is this intentional, do you want readers to be repelled or disgusted by your narrator’s experience?”