Intro to Close Reading
Learn close reading, the core skill of literary analysis, and develop techniques for a richer personal reading practice and critical discussion.
What does it mean to be a good reader? Most of us read daily—you’re doing it right now—but, as literacy rates have risen, so has anxiety about our ability to read well. Reading, some critics have posited, is both a skill and an art: as with painting or playing the piano, the most sophisticated performances may have an ineffable quality, but they also involve the application of practical techniques. In this workshop we will learn to close read, the most essential such technique for interpreting literature.
Close reading is the practice of analyzing a text through fine attention to its small components. It is the fundamental technique of literary studies; as such, it’s taught primarily in academic settings and oriented toward the production of literary criticism. This workshop adapts close reading’s methods for the public, and is oriented instead toward the development of a fulfilling personal reading practice and the social exchange of ideas.
Close reading gets us beyond the surface of our initial emotional response to a text. It facilitates richer engagement with a work of art, enabling the reader to wring out infinitely more meaning from a complex piece of literature. It equips us to think deeply; it is predicated on the suspicion that thinking hard is intrinsically valuable, and that it’s fun. Eventually, it enables us to read, and even to enjoy, challenging, unfamiliar, and experimental work. It directs us not just to come up with sharp takes but to persuasively—perhaps beautifully—relay them to others. And though applying formal technique to leisure reading can sound punishing, good close reading achieves the opposite effect: it multiplies readerly pleasure.
Through in-class exercises, demo, lecture, and discussion, this workshop will offer an overview of close reading for the common reader. To aid our close readings, we will also discuss how novels in particular are constructed and can be broken down to their anatomical parts. The group will learn to identify the formal choices that amount to authorial style and will develop a vocabulary for discussing literature. Sample readings will gesture at the range, scope, and significance of the concepts we can interrogate when we engage with literary works. Finally, we’ll touch on the limits of technique, and on other possible methods for reading fiction.
Class will concentrate on the literary arts, but discerning close readers will find benefits elsewhere. For one, close reading is fundamentally a communication practice, teaching us how to better formulate and articulate our ideas in general. And because language is the primary medium of human interaction—not only the stuff of books but also of political messaging, advertising, workplace comms, emails, texts, and everyday speech—close reading skills help us parse the wider world.
Program
We’ll start the workshop with a discussion of what close reading is, why we’d want to do it, and how it differs from other styles of reading. We’ll look at the anatomy of literature—the formal choices that add up to a text’s style—and read passages that illustrate these concepts. Demonstration and sample readings will illuminate the steps involved in performing a close reading. Through exercises and guided discussion, participants will then try the procedure themselves. After we’ve thoroughly integrated these techniques, a final prompt will investigate what happens when we reject technique—when we try, so to speak, to be “bad readers.” Participants will leave with guidance on how to apply close reading skills to their own reading practice and texts of choice.
Learning Outcomes
Define, recognize, and begin to practice close reading as a technique of literary analysis
Develop interpretative, argumentative, and critical thinking skills applicable to the study and discussion of culture, history, and beyond
Gain familiarity with the formal elements of literature that close reading analyzes
Learn to connect a text‘s content and form in order to interpret its meaning
Facilitator
Grace Perri Barnes is a literary editor, as well as an occasional researcher and critic, with over a decade of experience working across the book publishing industry. Authors with whom she’s worked have received the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, PEN/Faulkner Award, and numerous other recognitions. Grace studied English at Tulane University, where her curriculum emphasized Southern literature. In 2027, she will facilitate a course on Faulkner at Index. She previously developed and led Blood Meridian: Close-Reading the Anti-Western.
Refund Policy
We get that things come up, but we rely on headcounts to make our programs viable. If you request a refund...
More than 4 weeks before the program begins → 100% refund
More than 2 weeks before the program begins → 50% refund
Fewer than 2 weeks before the program begins → No refund
Thanks for understanding and for supporting our ability to provide cool offerings through your purchase.
Media Release Clause
By attending this event, you consent to being photographed, filmed, or recorded, and grant Index Space permission to use this content for promotional or informational purposes.