Bard College Berlin News
Dr. Ewa Atanassow, Dr. James Harker, and Dr. Jeffrey Champlin organize a daylong workshop on the topic of close reading
Dr. Berit Ebert presenting in the first panel
The daylong workshop, organized by Prof. Dr. Ewa Atanassow, Dr. Jeffrey Champlin, and Dr. James Harker and hosted by the Learning Commons and the European Democracy Institute, explored “the long history and diverse theories of close reading” while probing “the plurality of close reading approaches practiced by BCB faculty and students,” in light of the recent global renaissance of the practice.
The organization of the workshop provided a much-needed space for the BCB faculty to discuss the different ways in which each of them approaches the practice of close reading. “The faculty regularly review all aspects of the BCB curriculum, and last year we had a particularly intensive series of discussions about the core courses. In that process, it became very clear that people used the term ‘close reading’ in different ways. We decided to put together the workshop as a more in-depth exchange,” says Harker, the Director of Academic Services and lecturer in literature.
“One question students frequently ask is why are core courses taught so differently depending on who is teaching the section. Such differences are perfectly legitimate and, for the most part, productive as long as we understand and respect each other's approaches,” adds Atanassow, Professor of Political Thought. “The original idea for the workshop was to facilitate mutual understanding among faculty and students. But then, much to our surprise, it turned out that our core debates have a global resonance, and ‘Close Reading’ is undergoing a renaissance not only in literary studies, where the term and a certain version of the practice originated, but also in brand new fields such as cross-cultural philology.” Champlin, Director of the Learning Commons and lecturer in the humanities, highlighted the importance of new technologies powered by artificial intelligence when discussing the practice of close reading: “I thought the workshop would be a good opportunity to hear from colleagues about how they engage in the practice of close reading, especially as technology changes and there are new temptations for students regarding large language models such as ChatGPT. How can we emphasize what is unique about close reading in the classroom at BCB? What are we doing that cannot be replaced so easily by AI?”
The first panel focused on dissecting close reading as a form of an analytical method. In this interdisciplinary panel, literary scholar Dr. Luis Miguel Isava, film scholar Prof. Dr. Matthias Hurst, art historian Dr. Geoff Lehman and political scientist Dr. Berit Ebert discussed how close reading functions as a tool in the fields of literature, film, pictorial encounter, and law, respectively.
The second panel, titled “Close Reading as a Pedagogical Practice,” consisted of two members of BCB’s faculty as well as a BCB alumnus and Leuphana doctoral student in philosophy, Donovan Stewart ‘18, whose contribution to the panel was titled “The Time of Close Reading.” Atanassow spoke about what she had learned from students' efforts to closely read Plato’s Republic, a book to which BCB dedicates a core course in each fall. Dr. Martin Windmann, a faculty member in the German Studies department, discussed close reading as a tool in teaching literature in a foreign language.
The latter two panels explored close reading in connection with the liberal arts and the humanities. During the third panel, Champlin reflected on his own initial encounters with close reading while he was an undergraduate student, noting that close reading can help us “find doors into the vibrancy of the text.” Dr. Michael Weinman, formerly Professor of Philosophy at BCB, spoke of close reading in connection with esotericism, hermeneutics, and historicism - three different approaches to interpretation, each of which involves a close attention to the text. The panel ended with a presentation by Dr. James Harker, who explored the history of close reading in the 20th century. Harker pointed out that close reading emerged during the rapid expansion of access to higher education in the UK and the US–in extension schools, Mechanic’s Institutes, and in the postwar swell of former soldiers given funding to attend university. The methods of close reading focused on textual interpretation that did not require a great deal of background knowledge. While close reading became the dominant method in the postwar literature classroom in the US, it was usually combined with other approaches that looked at the historical situation and production of literary works.
The final panel looked at close reading in context of the humanities. Beer Albers discussed the challenges of translating the term “close reading” into German and into other disciplinary languages. Dr. Glenn Most contrasted different terms which we can label the practice of close reading with, such as slow reading, deep reading, and careful reading. He went on to root the foundations of close reading in Athens and Jerusalem, arguing that the popularization of close reading in the United States was in part due to the fact that the country was founded by protestant dissenters, who were of the belief that the Scriptures can save us, given that we study them closely enough.
Each one of these panels was followed by a rich discussion, in which the voices of other faculty, alumni, and attending students were heard.
Post Date: 03-25-2026