Introducing a Text for Reading Group (Blog post)

As the Laureate Program holds reading groups with our collaborators, we have developed a guide to introducing the text in a reading group format.

The guide has been developed to help members with the task of introducing texts in our reading groups. You may wish to adapt this guide for your own reading groups or events where a text is to be introduced and read together.

Using the guide to structure their comments, one member of the group introduces the text we are all reading that week, and others in the group then share their thoughts about the reading. The guide is predicated on an ethos of reading closely, productively and generously. It is meant to be adaptable enough to allow reading group members of different levels of experience and prior knowledge to participate in the task of introducing a text. The primary aim is to stay with the text, rather than jumping immediately to critique. These questions are a guide. The person introducing the text is not meant to work through them one by one but make a selection depending on their own decisions about the introduction. They can play around with the order. It’s a guide, not a template.

• Introduce the Author

Who is the author? What is their discipline? When did they write the text? Can you share anything about the context in which they wrote the text? If you know the field well, can you locate the text in the field a little? If you know the author’s work well, can you locate this text in their overall body of work?

• Central purpose or argument of text

Can you give a succinct summation of the central argument of the text? If that’s too hard, what do you think the author’s central concern is? What are they trying to do?

• Approach to the text

  • This is descriptive rather than critical in the first instance. These questions are examples of the kinds of questions which can help. Sharing your questions with the other members of the group helps people know what to make of your introduction too:

  • What questions is the Author asking?

  • What is at stake for the Author in their question?

  • What is their starting point?

  • What is their method?

  • What is at stake for the reader in the way the Author has chosen to ask the question/present the argument?

  • What is the Author’s account of what they are doing, and why and how?

• Questions to ask of the text (examples – not an exhaustive list or template! But asking the law question is pretty useful...)

  • - What is the Author’s account of law?

  • - Specifically, how do they see the relationship between law and the ‘world’ or the ‘real’ and fictions, techniques and artifice?

  • - What is their account of the corporation?

  • - What is their account of the relationship between company and state? How does this interact with their account of law?

  • - What is their account of law and responsibility?

  • - What is the Author’s register, location and training? What is the underlying jurisprudence of the text?

  • - Who does the Author see as actors in/of law? Officials, communities, scholars, states etc.

  • - Does the author stabilise key concepts of law, the state or the corporation by how they tell their story? For instance, sovereignty, territory, authority, governance etc.

A PDF Version of the guide is available here.