The Claims of Close Reading

Krista Stevens
Thu, 04 Dec 2025 20:45:51 +0000
Editor's Pick, Boston Review, close reading, education, Johanna Winant, West Virginia University

"Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical."

For Boston Review, Johanna Winant’s recalls teaching close reading at West Virginia University and delighting in watching her students gain confidence as they practiced sharing what they noticed about texts under study. This is the story of magic in the classroom and what Winant and her students lost after deep cuts affected staffing and programming.

It took a few weeks, sometimes, and it always took courage—from them more than me, but from me too—and then, one student and then another and then everyone, would point to the page in front of them. But really they would point to something in themselves: I noticed this. . . . I noticed it. And then they would suddenly lift off into an idea, climbing, striding, soaring, as in Gerald Manley Hopkins’s “The Windhover.”

Sometimes I would still say an even smaller detail, please, but increasingly as the weeks went on, I would say yes, and now tell me, how should we understand that? How would the poem be different if it were different? What work is that detail doing? Then they offered arguments—as if with a gasp like they were surfacing after holding their breath underwater, astonished at having done it.

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