Show Notes
In this episode, I’m joined by Drs. Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winant, editors of the new publication Close Reading for the 21st Century. While close reading is a foundational practice in literary studies, it’s also one that remains notoriously difficult to define. Dan and Johanna explain how they set out to do the “impossible” task of defining the term, ultimately framing it as the practice of paying attention to a passage of text to account for its meaning and argue how it works.
Key Concepts from the Episode:
The Five-Step Method: Dan and Johanna emphasize the distinction between close reading as a verb (the messy, non-linear process of thinking) and close reading as a noun (the polished genre of writing). To help students master the “noun,” they anatomize the practice into five movements:
Scene Setting: A strategic summary that invites the reader in, choosing only the parts of the text necessary to follow the argument.
Noticing: Stopping on a concrete, “finger-sized” detail that feels strange, unusual, or evocative.
Local Claiming: Sitting with that detail to make a specific interpretation of how it works within its immediate surroundings.
Regional Argumentation: Identifying patterns across the entire poem, story, or play to build a cohesive argument.
Global Theorizing: The final, “wild” moment where the critic connects their argument to broader historical periods, genres, or universal themes.
Disciplinary Disjuncture: One of the most striking parts of our conversation is the unfortunate gap between how close reading is practiced by professional critics and how it is taught in schools dominated by standardized tests and AP curricula. While the discipline shifted toward historicism and theory in the 1980s, its high school counterpart often remains stuck in a zombified version of New Criticism. This skill-ified simulacrum of close reading is often treated as a rigid, objective search for “hidden meanings” to satisfy testing requirements or demonstrate compliance, rather than as an invitation to take up methodological tools and practices used by scholars today. By identifying this gap, we have the opportunity to not only better prepare students to succeed in college English courses, but to invite them to meaningfully participate in literary studies—and personally reconnect with the discipline we love.
Close Reading as a Democratic Practice: Rather than a solitary exercise in theme parroting or symbol hunting, close reading is reimagined as a dialogue between authors, theorists, and critics that unfolds across time and space. When presented this way, close reading functions as a practice that students can use to both appreciate and argue about aesthetic objects in community with others. This approach to close reading attunes them to both the form and ideological function of texts they interact with every day. Better still, it allows them to join an intellectual tradition that can provide humanistic insight and tools for critique that can be deployed to interpret everything from Hamlet to Hitchcock to Hortense Spillers. This democratic impulse lies at the heart of their conception of close reading and make its political utility for our current moment abundantly clear.
Practical Implications
This conversation offers a vital bridge for educators looking to move beyond rote analysis. By framing close reading as a discernable dance with specific steps, teachers can provide a scaffold that doesn’t sacrifice the flair and beauty of interpretive work. The five-step method allows students to move from simple observation to global theorizing without making specious leaps. Ultimately, Dan and Johanna remind us that when we ask students to close read, we are asking them to perform a feat of intellectual elegance. By reintroducing the beauty of the genre and treating students as active participants in a scholarly conversation, we can transform the English classroom into a place where students don’t just “do school,” but participate in intellectual and scholarly communities able to to read the word and the world.
Check out Dan and Johanna’s work:
Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century
The Claims of Close Reading (Boston Review)
