We begin with the question of how to become a better reader. As you go through college at PCC and beyond, you will be asked to read harder and harder texts - to read more of them, faster, and to read them with greater precision and insight. There is NO WAY AROUND THIS. Reading is the intellectual work of a college education. It is how we become stronger thinkers. So, we need to work on building our reading skills in order to succeed in college, and (more importantly, I think) to become deeper thinkers capable of handling more complex ideas and data. So let's start by experimenting with some new reading strategies (since most of us are creatures of habit!) Read the "Reading Difficult Texts" handout (access through Module view or find under Files/Readings) and then try out a new reading strategy from Sections I, II, and III of the handout on the short text below: Selection from: Butler, J (1988).  Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.  Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec 1988) pp. 519-531. “When Simone de Beauvoir claims, “one is not born, but, rather, becomes a woman,” she is appropriating and reinterpreting this doctrine of constituting acts from the phenomenological tradition.  In this sense, gender is in no way a stale identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time – an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts.  Further, gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kind constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self.”  (Butler, 1988, p. 519) First post In your first post, do two things: 1) Write about one of the new strategies you used, and what it helped you understand about this short (but difficult!) excerpt from Judith Butler's writing. This should be about 200 words long (two paragraphs). 2) Ask a question - about the reading, or about one of the reading strategies from the handout. A fellow student (and/or the professor) will respond to your Q.