This week, we’ll be looking at humanities criticism in non-traditional genres. By this, I mean humanities writing that isn’t meant for publication in either academic journals or newspapers/magazines. Instead, we’ll look at Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube. Click here for an overview of the entire unit. 

Things We Did Last Week

• Made a list together of genre features of the genre of “resume” based on your research while creating your own imaginary resumes
• Learned about and practiced close reading and annotation of humanities texts (many people chose poems)
• Read some examples of reviews to get a sense for the genre
• Wrote your own reviews of a piece of media of your choice

Goals For This Week

Probably most of you have never written a formal review of something until last week, but you probably have talked about movies/music/TV shows/etc. with family, friends, or with people on the internet. Ever argued with someone about a piece of media in the comments on something? You’ve already done humanities criticism in a non-traditional genre!

• Study some of the ways people do humanities criticism in non-traditional genres.
• Think about the similarities and differences between “reviews” and “criticism” (I personally think it’s pretty hard to define the difference, but that doesn’t mean it’s not useful to consider!)
• Create your own humanities criticism in a non-traditional genre

Things Due Before Class on Tuesday (2/16):

Reading/Watching:

• Read Twitter threads on Shrek and Shrek 2
• Read this Twitter thread about classical art in Hercules
• Watch this TikTok about the symbolism of werewolves in Harry Potter
• Read this Twitter thread about The Grinch Who Stole Christmas
• Watch Willems, “How Greta Gerwig Revolutionized Little Women”

Assignments: None

The intros and outros of Willems’s videos are part of a long comedy storyline about him and his roommates that stretches across many videos, so if you find them confusing, don’t worry about it.

What We’ll Do In Class (2/16):

• Discuss anything that came up for you while writing your reviews
• Discuss your initial thoughts on the readings/videos for today
• Watch two more short examples of humanities criticism on YouTube
• Discuss the difference between “reviews” and “criticism” based on the things we’ve looked at so far this semester
• Optional: Reflect in small groups

Due After Class (Structure & Accountability Option): Write a reflection of at least 1 page about the materials we looked at for today, class discussion, and anything it made you think about. Feel free to also discuss anything else about writing, genre, media, etc.

Things To Do on Async Thursday (2/18)

Readings: I’ll find some more OPTIONAL examples for you to look at. And if you happen across any examples that you think are good/interesting while you’re scrolling through your feeds, please send them to me and I can add them!

Assignments Due (EVERYONE):

Create Your Own Humanities Criticism in a Non-Traditional Genre

1. For this assignment, you can write/create for any platform you want— Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or anything else. 100% your choice.
2. You can write about the same thing you wrote your review on, or you can choose a new thing.
3. Please use a platform that you are already comfortable with. The point isn’t to make you learn a new platform, it’s just to practice this kind of writing. If you choose a platform you’re already comfortable with, you likely already have a gut sense of the genre norms for writing/creating on this platform.  Your goal is to think about how to adapt the content of humanities criticism to what’s appropriate for the writing environment you’ve chosen.
   (For example, it would be weird if I tweeted about Shrek in the same style that I would use to write an academic essay. On Twitter, the goal is to say what you want to say in short, concise pieces. On Instagram, you already know that your audience will only see one square of content at a time, whether that’s on your story or in a post with multiple images.)
4. Think about what makes something “criticism” instead of “merely a review.” Remember to use specific evidence to support your interpretations.
5. In addition to your creation, please also write me a few sentences explaining how your creation matches the genre norms of your platform. This can be included in your creation or sent to me separately.

How to Submit:

You CAN post your creation on your real account and send me/us a link. But you DO NOT HAVE TO. 

Here are some other options:

• Last semester, some people wrote out a Facebook post, took a screenshot, and then deleted it without actually posting. Then they turned in the screenshot.
• You could also just write in a word doc or google doc, but pretend you’re writing on the platform of your choosing and use the same style you would there. For example, writing in tweet-length paragraphs, using hashtags/gifs/emojis/anything else you would normally use on Twitter.
• Sites like Canva offer you free templates for designing things like Instagram posts (this is useful for people who want to do more complex design work than Instagram’s built-in editor allows). You could design something there, download it, and then send it to me.

If you can think of another way that lets you complete this assignment while still maintaining your privacy comfort level, that’s totally fine too.

Grading

0 points– you did not turn anything in
2 points– your social media criticism only analyzes one piece of evidence, or makes general claims without referring to specific evidence from the piece you are analyzing
4 points– you analyze multiple pieces of evidence and present your analysis in a form appropriate for the platform you have chosen
5 points– you did everything for #4 and included a couple sentences explaining how your creation meets genre norms for the platform, and have no or very few typos or other small errors (spelling, etc.)

Preparing For Next Class (Tuesday 2/23)

Assignments Due: None

Readings: 

Since early 2018, I’ve been working on converting my thoughts about Shrek into an academic essay. It’s not finished yet (and I haven’t made progress in quite some time), but I would like you to read a couple paragraphs of what I have so far. I have left my own annotations on the paragraphs to talk through my writing choices with you. This is a first draft!

Click here to view the PDF of my comments. Or here if you need a .docx file.

Then, please read at least one of the following articles and skim the other two.

The first article is by a graduate student studying psychology, the second is by a graduate student studying anthropology, and the third is by an undergraduate student studying film and new media. Even though psychology and anthropology are considered social science instead of humanities, people from all majors can do humanities criticism!

1. “A Case Study of of Transgender Representation in Video Games: Mass Effect’s Hainly Abrams”
2. “Making Sense of Memes: Where They Come From and Why We Keep Clicking Them” (there are two pages, so when you reach the end of the first page make sure to click through)
3. “The Feminine Threat: Reconsidering the Damsel in Distress in Early Disney Films”

Another thing I want you to notice is how the titles of most academic essays are structured. They very often follow this pattern: “Short Fun Phrase: Longer More Descriptive Phrase”

The review/criticism of a piece of media is due by the end of the day on Thursday, 2/11. You are welcome to turn it in late for no penalty.

Instructions

1. Choose any piece of media. It can be something you like, or something you think is terrible, or somewhere in the middle. It can be a book, a movie, a TV episode, a TV show, a song, an album, or some other thing not listed here.
2. Using what you learned from “Writing About the Arts” and the examples you read/skimmed, write your own review of this piece of media.

Grading

0 points– you didn’t turn in anything
2 points– you turned in something, even if it is incomplete
3 points– you turned in something that clearly resembles a review/criticism, but it is missing some features of the genre
5 points — you turned in a review/criticism of a piece of media that follows most or all of the genre features

Welcome to our second week of class, and our first week of our Humanities Criticism unit. Click here for an overview of the entire unit. 

Things We Did Last Week

• Got to know each other a little, got set up on the CUNY Commons, reviewed the plan and policies for the semester
• Learned a little bit of Genre Theory– what is genre? What are literary genres vs. “everyday genres”? What genres do we use in our daily lives?

Things Due Before Class on Tuesday (2/9)

Readings:

• Annotating Video 1
• Annotating Video 2
• Close Reading Video

And here’s a TikTok of an intentionally bad close reading just for fun.

Assignments for Everyone:

• Imaginary resume, posted to site or turned in on Blackboard

Assignments for Structure and Accountability Plan Folks:

• Have an example of humanities content (poem, song, section from a book, clip from a TV show, etc.) ready for us to practice close reading on in class

What We’ll Do in Class on Tuesday (2/9)

• Discuss what you learned from the genre readings
• Do one close reading together
• Breakout rooms to practice close reading in smaller groups using the examples you brought to class
• Annotation notes (due by end of day for Structure and Accountability Option folks)

Things to Do on Async Thursday (2/11)

Readings:

Zinsser, “Writing About the Arts: Critics and Columnists” (PDF)
Review of “Soul” (Movie)
Review of “The Grammarians” (Book)
Review of “Gentleman Jack” (TV Show)

Assignments Due for Everyone:

Review of a Piece of Media (1-2 pages)

Assignments For S/A Grading Plan Folks:

Notes/annotations on the 3 examples of reviews. What do you notice as essential features/norms of the genre of Reviews? If you had to teach someone else how to write a review, just based on these examples and your own prior knowledge, what would you tell them to do?

Preparing for Next Class (2/16)

• Read Twitter threads on Shrek and Shrek 2
• Read this Twitter thread about classical art in Hercules
• Watch this TikTok about the symbolism of werewolves in Harry Potter
• Read this Twitter thread about The Grinch Who Stole Christmas
• Watch Willems, “How Greta Gerwig Revolutionized Little Women”

Welcome to Unit 1: Humanities Criticism! We will spend three weeks on this unit, bringing us to the beginning of March.

What is/are “humanities”?

As a very general definition, the “humanities” are all of the academic disciplines that study things that humans create or ideas that humans think about, such as language, literature, religion, art, media, culture, philosophy, ethics, history, etc. In modern universities, this is set apart from the sciences (both natural science and social science) and “professional studies” (business, law, marketing, criminal justice, education, nursing, and anything else that is basically training for a specific kind of job).  But, the term comes from the Renaissance, when students at universities either studied “humanities” (human stuff) or “divinity” (training to be a priest) or medicine.

What is “humanities criticism”?

In academic situations, “criticism” doesn’t  have to mean complaining about or critiquing something, like the word “criticize” generally means. All it means is that we’re going to think deeply and analytically about humanities topics. Sometimes that will mean criticizing stuff. Sometimes it will mean analyzing both the good things and the bad things, or just trying to discover layers of meaning. It is extremely likely that you have all done humanities criticism before, such as if you’ve ever had to write an essay about a piece of literature in English class.

Essentially, “humanities criticism” is its own unit because most kinds of humanities writing require similar skills (such as close reading) compared to other areas of study. There are still differences in writing expectations for each area of the humanities (essays you write for philosophy class and essays you write for English class are going to have different expectations), and there are many different genres of humanities writing. In this unit, we’ll be studying reviews, criticism in a non-traditional genre, and academic criticism.

Writing For This Unit

There is no single “unit project” for this unit. Instead, you will be writing three different pieces of humanities criticism spread out across the unit.

These are:

1. A review of a piece of media of your choosing (book, movie, TV episode or TV show, album, or something else)
2. A critical analysis of a humanities artifact of your choosing (book, movie, song, video, etc.), written in a non-traditional genre (you can write it like a Twitter thread, a TikTok video, an Instagram story, a YouTube video, or as you would for another social media platform)
3. The same content as #2, but written as academic-style paragraphs.

Grading/Checklist for This Unit

The Humanities Criticism unit as a whole is worth 20% of your overall grade, regardless of which grading option you chose.

Maximum Flexibility Option Required Assignments/Grading:

1. Review of a Piece of Media (due 2/11) – 5pts, see rubric
2. Criticism in a non-traditional genre (due 2/18) – 5 pts, see rubric
3. Academic-style criticism (due 2/25)  5 pts, see rubric
4. Unit 1 Reflection (due 3/2) 5 pts, completion and thoroughness

Total: 20 pts. Each point is 1% of your final grade.

Structure and Accountability Option Required Assignments/Grading:

Here is a list of all graded activities for the unit and their point values:

1. Close Reading Practice (done in class 2/9) – 2 pts, completion
2. Annotations on Examples of Reviews (due 2/11)- 2 pts, completion
3. Review of a Piece of Media (due 2/11) — 5pts, see rubric
4. After-Class Reflection 1 (due 2/16) – 2pts, completion
5. Criticism in a non-traditional genre (due 2/18)- 5 pts, see rubric
6. After-Class Reflection 2 (due 2/23)- 2pts, completion
7. Academic-style criticism (due 2/25) – 5 pts, see rubric
8. Unit 1 Reflection (due 3/2)- 5 pts, completion and thoroughness

Total: 28 pts. Each point is .7% of your final grade.

**I will input all the math into Blackboard so you don’t have to worry about calculating what this means for you**