Reading Responses. Rock Hudson’s Body. Literature & Language Essay

Follow the observation table requirement, the table requires three columns which means need three examples from the reading.

Observation Table Reading Response (Copy and paste this document into your own, and replace my red writing with yours.) Name: Date: Citation: EXAMPLE: Barthes, Roland. “Preface,” and “Wine and Milk,” in The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Annette Lavers, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972). 1. Observation Table Observation Location Interpretation List an idea in the text that seemed particularly interesting, relevant, or provocative to you. You should be an “active reader,” alert to your unique position as a critical reader, and your response to specific ideas or claims within a given reading. Brief quotation that shows exactly where you found this idea in the assigned reading, along with specific page number, so that you can use this information to generate an accurate and properly formatted footnote or reference later on. Your analysis of this idea -- what do you think it means or implies? What WORK is it doing for the essay? You should offer a critical interpretation of the idea that attracted your attention, rather than simply paraphrasing it. Example: Barthes wants to “read” the world with the same deconstructive lens he might use to read literature. “Myth is a language. So that while concerning myself with phenomena apparently most unlike literature (a wrestling-match, an elaborate dish, a plastics exhibition), I did not feel I was leaving the field of this general semiology of our bourgeois world, the literary aspect of which I had begun to study in earlier essays.” (11) “Myths” as Barthes describes, have become our way of understanding the world, and communicating about the world. They’re a language because of the way we participate with them, and use them. We feel isolated if we are unfamiliar with them, just like when we don’t understand a language. (For example: “knowing how to drink.”) Knowing a myth is like knowing how to use a particular word, and knowing its appropriate connotations. 2. Write-up: Use the “raw” material -- or research -- in your Research Table to write one or two analytical paragraphs about the ideas in the reading that have attracted your attention. These paragraphs should include all of the information in the Observation Table, as well as properly formatted page numbers, whether you are using direct quotes from the readings, or choosing to paraphrase the material from your “Location” column. Do not merely repeat what you have written in the table, but use the table to synthesize your notes into a cohesive write-up. This will help you to practice your research and citation skills, while simultaneously developing your critical reading and writing. 3. Discussion Question(s): These should be open ended, and grounded in genuine curiosity. Examples: How is myth a language? If myth is subjective, is language also subjective? How are words also social constructs? What is the dif erence between reading a text, and “reading” an image? NOT: Where is Barthes from? (Instead, try something like: “Why is it significant that Barthes is writing about mythologies in FRANCE as opposed to somewhere else?”) *Your Reading Response MUST be typed and will be collected at the end of every class; it will be graded with a “check plus,” “check,” or “check minus.” Observation Table Reading Response Name: Date: Citation: EXAMPLE: Barthes, Roland. “Preface,” and “Wine and Milk,” in The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Annette Lavers, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972). 1. Observation Table Observation Location Interpretation List an idea in the text that seemed particularly interesting, relevant, or provocative to you. You should be an “active reader,” alert to your unique position as a critical reader, and your response to specific ideas or claims within a given reading. Brief quotation that shows exactly where you found this idea in the assigned reading, along with specific page number, so that you can use this information to generate an accurate and properly formatted footnote or reference later on. Your analysis of this idea -- what do you think it means or implies? What WORK is it doing for the essay? You should offer a critical interpretation of the idea that attracted your attention, rather than simply paraphrasing it. Example: Barthes wants to “read” the world with the same deconstructive lens he might use to read literature. “Myth is a language. So that while concerning myself with phenomena apparently most unlike literature (a wrestling-match, an elaborate dish, a plastics exhibition), I did not feel I was leaving the field of this general semiology of our bourgeois world, the literary aspect of which I had begun to study in earlier essays.” (11) “Myths” as Barthes describes, have become our way of understanding the world, and communicating about the world. They’re a language because of the way we participate with them, and use them. We feel isolated if we are unfamiliar with them, just like when we don’t understand a language. (For example: “knowing how to drink.”) Knowing a myth is like knowing how to use a particular word, and knowing its appropriate connotations. 3. Write-up: Use the “raw” material -- or research -- in your Research Table to write one or two analytical paragraphs about the ideas in the reading that have attracted your attention. These paragraphs should include all of the information in the Observation Table, as well as properly formatted page numbers, whether you are using direct quotes from the readings, or choosing to paraphrase the material from your “Location” column. Do not merely repeat what you have written in the table, but use the table to synthesize your notes into a cohesive write-up. This will help you to practice your research and citation skills, while simultaneously developing your critical reading and writing. 3. Discussion Question(s): These should be open ended, and grounded in genuine curiosity. Examples: How is myth a language? If myth is subjective, is language also subjective? How are words also social constructs? What is the dif erence between reading a text, and “reading” an image? NOT: Where is Barthes from? (Instead, try something like: “Why is it significant that Barthes is writing about mythologies in FRANCE as opposed to somewhere else?”) *Your Reading Response MUST be typed and will be collected at the end of every class; it will be graded with a “check plus,” “check,” or “check minus.” Look See Think