instructor access pearson art history 18th to 21st century

The role of text in religious rituals is illustrative. The act of reading is always embedded in an activity, some purposeful act that makes a particular set of demands on the reader. Readers must construct responsible readings (Rosenblatt, 1978/1994) that take account of the text, the reader’s assessment of the author’s intentions, the reader’s background knowledge and experience, the sociocultural context, and the activity of which reading is always a part. This does not mean, however, that readers can simply make up meanings without regard to the author’s intentions. Even a simple word like dog is interpreted through the lens of personal experience which, in turn, is filtered through cultural representations of dogs and other animals.

Contrary to popular conceptions of the act of reading, readers do not merely “decode” or “unlock” meanings encoded by authors. Reading is a sociocultural activity in which readers construct meaning from text through the lenses of culture and personal experience (Barton, 2007 Gutierrez, 2008 Perry, 2012).

Instructor access pearson art history 18th to 21st century