How To Do a Close-Reading of a Text

Image Credit: Salon.com

Parsing the Inaugural Address: The New York Times did something very interesting today; they demonstrated, for readers, how to do a close-reading of a text -- looking for context and analysis -- and they demonstrated how internet technology can be used to enhance study and learning.

This New York Times post highlights sections of the Inaugural Address, while it plays in the background, and in a sidebar contains comments from journalists and columnists, who analyze and discuss the context of significant passages of the text. It is a kind of digitized annotated text.

This is the type of analytic and close-reading of a text that we try to achieve in the classroom.

Meanwhile, John Cassidy's column in the New Yorker, analyzes Obama's brand of liberalism, and places it in historic context. Cassidy's piece is useful to contrast and compare with the analysis of journalists from the Times, in order to get a better understanding of President Obama's vision of (and for) the United States, where he hopes to lead it, and how he proposes to lead. 

Obviously, this analysis moves beyond simply listening to the words in a speech; context and nuance are everything, and these two links (the Cassidy piece and this New York Times feature) help readers to do this.