Critical Digital Studies
For essay 2 you will be writing an essay in which you think of yourself as a critic as you reflect on the schools of criticism and theory we have discussed over the semester. This essay’s purpose is to switch you over from just reading others as critics and begin to think of yourself as one. The purpose of this assignment is also for you to think about and establish some theoretical commitments as you move forward as critical thinkers in many fields. For the essay follow these tasks: Task 1: Review all the schools of criticism and theory, go back over your summaries of the reading, and do some further research online about the schools. Task 2: Really think about which school or schools you identified with or whose methodology made the most sense to you for doing literary criticism. Task 3: Pick a text–novel, poem, film, essay–that you will use in your essay to give examples of why you are committed to a certain school. Task 4: Evaluate the value and downfalls of the particular school you have chosen and why you see your critical commitments within that school. Task 5: Write an essay in which you explain: 1. Why you think a certain school of criticism makes sense to you. 2. What situations it works in and which it does not. 3. Your chosen school’s value and downfalls–its strengths and weaknesses. 4. How the school can be applied to the text you have chosen with ample textual evidence from the text. Requirements: 2000-2500 Words Five sources used–including the text you have chosen to analyze MLA citations and works cited schools of criticism : Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction (~360 BC-present) Formalism, New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelian Criticism (1930s-present) Psychoanalytic Criticism, Jungian Criticism(1930s-present) Marxist Criticism (1930s-present) Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present) Structuralism/Semiotics (1920s-present) Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction (1966-present) New Historicism/Cultural Studies (1980s-present) Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present) Feminist Criticism (1960s-present) Gender/Queer Studies (1970s-present) Critical Race Theory (1970s-present) Critical Disability Studies (1990s-present)
