To read critically in the humanities, you will need to pose questions and construct hypotheses as you read. You may ask, for instance, why a writer might make some points or develop some examples but omit others. Rather than finding meaning only in the surface information that texts or artifacts convey, you should use your own questions and hypotheses to create fuller meanings—to construct the significance of what you read.

To successfully engage texts, you must recognize that you are not a neutral observer, not an empty cup into which the meaning of a work is poured. If such were the case, writing would have exactly the same meanings for all of us, and reading would be a fairly boring affair. If you have ever gone to see a movie with a friend and each come away with a completely different understanding or response, you already have ample evidence that a text never has just one meaning.

Nevertheless, you may in the past have been willing to accept the first meaning to occur to you—to take a text at face value. Most humanities courses, however, will expect you to exercise your interpretive powers. The Quick Help: Guidelines for reading texts in the humanities can help you build your strengths as a close reader of humanities texts.