Reading Literature Today (Roundtable - NeMLA 2022)

Karl Manis Announcement
Location
Maryland, United States
Subject Fields
Communication, Digital Humanities, Humanities, Literature, Art, Art History & Visual Studies

 

Description

"Reading Literature Today": A Roundtable at the 53rd Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association

Baltimore, MD, USA, March 10-13, 2022

We welcome proposals for short presentations that address the entangled notions of literature and reading. Topics may include changing scholarly/pedagogical approaches to reading, reading in the context of multiple media, and the politics of defining “literature.” We welcome focused contributions from a variety of approaches, disciplines, and historical periods.

Submit abstracts by September 30, 2021https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/19346

Chairs: Danyse Golick and Karl Manis (University of Toronto)

 

Abstract

What does it mean to read literature today? Recent approaches like post critique, new formalisms, and surface reading have provided new ways of reading literary texts while also rethinking what is “literary” about these texts. At the same time, scholars of comics, book history, and new media have asked for decades how the category of literature might be expanded to include alternate and emerging forms of reading, looking, and engaging with texts. In fact, N. Katherine Hayles and Jessica Pressman have recently outlined a “comparative textual media studies” approach intended to help humanities disciplines adapt to an increasingly post-print world. How do these changing notions of reading affect how we teach and study texts today? Are there specific practices that define literary reading, and how are these practices being reimagined? Is literature a genre, a methodology, or both?

We welcome proposals for short (5-7 minute) presentations that address the entangled notions of literature and reading. Topics may include:

· changing pedagogical and/or critical approaches to reading

· field-specific understandings of reading

· academic vs. non-academic forms of reading

· reading in changing media contexts

· reading printed texts versus other texts (e.g., images, video, sounds, data, etc.)

· the politics of defining “literature”

· genre and the question of (literary) reading

· rationales for rethinking what counts as reading (e.g., accessibility, equity, disability studies)

· unusual or untraditional sites for literary analysis

In this roundtable format, we hope participants will share generative research questions, provocations, case studies, alternative reading methods, and/or teaching experiences that will lead to productive discussion about the future of reading. We welcome focused contributions from a variety of approaches, disciplines, and historical periods.

Contact Information

Karl Manis: karl.manis@mail.utoronto.ca

Danyse Golick: danyse.golick@mail.utoronto.ca