Shafquat Towheed

Abstract

Reading is at once one of the most ubiquitous and one of the most elusive of human activities. The technological, legal, cultural and above all, economic changes of the last century have transformed both the location and the practice of reading. Never in human history has so much textual matter circulated so widely to so many potential readers; from a 21st century retrospect, the 20th century may well have been the century of the 'reading revolution' par excellence. And yet never has it been more difficult to systematically assess who read what, how they read it, and how they responded to their reading. Literary theorists have often discussed the relevance of fictional representations of reading, but how might book historians, with a much stronger commitment to quantifiable methodology, interpret these depictions of reading and circulation of texts? What are the exigencies shaping our own reading practices? How do the interventions of political, legislative, economic, and moral forces shape not only what we read, but how we read? In an increasingly visual crossmedia and multimedia world, where do we look for evidences of individual or collective reading, and how do we interpret this data? What does the reader response to a given text in a specific period actually tell us about the cultural history of that time? Is the act of reading an expression of social contract, and if so, how might this be changing over time? How do the internet and the intranet shape or constrain both reading and our responses to it?

Part of this Conference or Workshop: SHARP 2008