Tips for critical reading in humanities

[Taurus]

Hi excellent readers out there!

I'd like some advice on how to do critical reading effectively for humanities. Should you still use skimming when reading a dense, difficult text? I try to come up with discussion points and interesting ideas. But sometimes when I get to class, the way that the professor frames the reading or asks questions makes me feel like my reading wasn't critical or thorough enough. I genuinely want to improve the way I read both for effectiveness and efficiency (without spending way too much time on reading that I steal time for other work). Thanks!

[rising_star]

Have you tried reading book reviews or scholarly criticism of the work that you're assigned?

[Taurus]

Thanks. I think that's the contextual background definitely useful for reading books. But there's also a lot of reading for dense articles--both theoretical and empirical research-based.

[rising_star]

For the theoretical articles, I would try skimming articles which cite and use that theory to get a better sense of how it fits in the scholarly discourse. It would help if you said more about what you're struggling with for the empirical research articles though, since those are usually a bit more straightforward, especially if you understand the methodologies used. In general though, the more you read in a particular area, the more other things in that area will make sense to you. Keep plugging away!