Guides
Every section we cover, with the explainers that go with it.
Books and reading
Model
- How do literary prizes work? Literary prizes work through publisher submissions, jury deliberation, and a shortlist that drives sales and reissues, functioning as a parallel mechanism of canon formation.
- How do you read a novel closely? Read a novel closely by attending to voice, structure, motif, and the material evidence of how a text was actually read, from annotations to edition history.
- How does translation shape a book? Literary translation shapes a book through the translator's choices about equivalence, visibility, and paratext, a process theorised by Lawrence Venuti as domestication or foreignisation.
- What is an unreliable narrator? An unreliable narrator is a speaker whose account the reader comes to doubt, a concept named by Wayne C. Booth in 1961, identified through textual gaps and contradictions.
- What is literary modernism? Literary modernism is a period and set of techniques whose variation among writers resists any checklist, and whose canon is shaped by reissue history.
Criticism and institutions
Model
- How do London and New York cultural institutions differ? London fixes cultural infrastructure through Acts of Parliament and protected sightlines; New York converts private buildings into public objects through Landmarks Preservation Commission hearings.
- How do you write an art review? An art review moves from direct encounter through formal description and contextual analysis to a supported judgement, consulting the exhibition catalogue as the permanent record.
- What do archives preserve? Archives preserve through selection, and every selection is an argument about value. Cataloguing backlogs, closed stacks, and binding durability all shape what survives.
- What is a cultural canon? A cultural canon is formed by institutional decisions about acquisition, display, and reissue, with the Criterion Collection spine-number system as a de facto permanent canon.
- What makes cultural criticism useful? Useful cultural criticism makes a sustained argument supported by evidence, situated in a disclosed context, and distinguishable from mere opinion by its transparency.
Design literacy
Model
- How do typography choices change meaning? Typography choices about hierarchy, voice, and legibility change meaning before a word is read, from Criterion spines to Persephone grey jackets.
- How do you critique a design? Critique a design by examining its purpose, the evidence of how it is used, the trade-offs it made, and the alternatives it foreclosed.
- What is a design movement? A design movement is a label that groups objects by shared arguments about form and use, not a checklist every object must conform to.
- What is sustainable design? Sustainable design means evaluating materials, durability, and systems by verified impact over decades, not by claims about a building material's honesty.
- What makes a design functional? Functional design is measured by criteria like shelf adjacency logic, binding durability, and spine legibility—not by whether something looks good in a photograph.
Film and moving image
Model
- How do you read a film scene? Read a film scene by analysing framing, blocking, sound, and cutting together, and note whether the projection format is a 35mm print or a digital restoration.
- How does film editing create meaning? Film editing creates meaning through continuity, montage juxtaposition, rhythm, and time manipulation, with the Kuleshov effect as a foundational demonstration.
- What does cinematography include? Cinematography includes the director of photography's choices about camera, lens, light, and movement, and the viewing format affects how those choices are perceived.
- What is production design? Production design is the department that builds a film's visual world through sets, locations, props, and costume, a choice between built and found environments.
- What makes a documentary different? Documentary form is defined by an indexical bond to actual events, structured through six modes that negotiate evidence, ethics, and audience expectation differently.
Understanding art
Model
- How do museums decide what to display? Museums display 2–8% of their holdings at any time due to space, conservation limits, and curatorial decisions, not because the rest is unimportant.
- How do you describe composition? Describing composition in art means naming how balance, hierarchy, rhythm, scale, and space organise what you see on the canvas or in the room.
- How do you look at a work of art? A repeatable method for looking at art starts with describing what you see before consulting the label, then introduces context without letting it override observation.
- What is abstraction in art? Abstraction in art ranges from semi-abstract to non-objective, with aims including expressive, spiritual, and formalist, and no single origin story.
- What is the difference between modern and contemporary art? Modern art is a historical period ending around the 1970s; contemporary art is institutionally defined as the art of the present, not a style.