{"title":"When Your Job Is to Read After Work","authors":"Ben Davies, Christina Lupton","doi":"10.5325/reception.15.1.0051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/reception.15.1.0051","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article reports on a pilot study into the reading practices of students and faculty in history, philosophy, and literature in Denmark and the UK. The qualitative interviews with thirty people, each of whom kept a log of their reading activity over one term-time week in Fall 2022, suggests that most people in the study see themselves not having time to read as closely, deeply, or widely as their work ideally demands—even though on other counts they are reading all the time. This phenomenon may have less to do with changing patterns of 'work' than with the slimmer margins of time given to summers, sabbaticals, and times of rest. Ironically, the real crisis of these professions may have more to do with the extension of textual engagement into all times of life than with any measurable decline in reading practices.","PeriodicalId":40584,"journal":{"name":"Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77238252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Theory and Practice of Reception Study: Reading Race and Gender in Twain, Faulkner, Ellison, and Morrison","authors":"Matthew James Vechinski","doi":"10.5325/reception.15.1.0135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/reception.15.1.0135","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40584,"journal":{"name":"Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81836922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Madness: A Story of Book Collectors in America by Denise Gigante (review)","authors":"Sheila Liming","doi":"10.5325/reception.15.1.0148","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/reception.15.1.0148","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40584,"journal":{"name":"Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83127544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Codex is Always on Crip Time: ADHD(ness) and Reading","authors":"Laura Basten","doi":"10.5325/reception.15.1.0089","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/reception.15.1.0089","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article aims to explore motives around the topic of reading within ADHD online communities from a book studies perspective. Such reflections must account for neuro-ableism in educational institutions and resulting hermeneutical injustices, as well as decades of pathologizing research about ADHD(ers) in favor of medical models of disability. Ultimately, the article argues that a deeper knowledge of book history might be a source of empowerment, especially for ADHDers struggling with reading or picking up a book at all. For example, the invention of the codex originally gave way to discontinuous and interruptible reading practices, and the novel as a genre to be read alone, silently, and from cover to cover is in many ways a peculiarity. Furthermore, books are three-dimensional material objects and therefore an \"antilibrary\" can very well be reinterpreted as consisting of stimming or fidget tools.","PeriodicalId":40584,"journal":{"name":"Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83041744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Over Head: Notes on the River","authors":"Paul Magee, P. Collis, J. Crawford","doi":"10.5325/reception.15.1.0115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/reception.15.1.0115","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This is the first chapter of A Book That Opens, a volume containing story-based knowledge about river management by Barkindji people in outback New South Wales, Australia. Passing on vital understandings of how better to live in such environs, the book is also intended to provide a different sort of reading experience, and indeed time, by generating a form of writing that brings orality to the fore. Specifically, the book's 13 chapters are each improvised on the spot, taped, and then transcribed. But nothing is really made up on the spot. The rivers of story and pre-given phrasing from which everyday speech arises, in European and indigenous cultures alike, contour this chapter, a university seminar dialogue serving as prelude to our conversations some months later in Bourke and Brewarrina. What is more, those rivers bring us to speak of reading, the kind of reading one does when open to Country.","PeriodicalId":40584,"journal":{"name":"Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77048286","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Precious: Identity, Adaptation, and the African-American Youth Film by Katherine Whitehurst (review)","authors":"E. L. Perro","doi":"10.5325/reception.15.1.0138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/reception.15.1.0138","url":null,"abstract":"03/07/23 4:25 PM Reception_15_15_Book_Reviews.indd Page 139 03/07/23 4:25 PM reception 138 with obvious stakes for the literary standing of the works in the minds of readers. The chapter on Ellison’s Invisible Man reveals how some readers believed the novel illustrated the plight of Black men in general, and others found it only pertained to a certain subset of African Americans, whereas still others thought that certain aspects of the characters’ experience were universal. Goldstein discusses commentary on Beloved in a later chapter that interprets the novel as a literal ghost story, as opposed to the views of readers that emphasize that the reappearance of the dead was a device Morrison used to represent traumatic memories. Whether Invisible Man is merely a novel with relevance to a niche population or if Beloved should be discredited for being too fantastic are questions that stir readers’ passions—and correlate with their responses to depictions of race and gender in the fiction. I also commend Goldstein for recognizing and discussing the place of literary status in the reception process, notably the public perception of Morrison and Ellison as great writers on weighty subjects, which often compelled nonacademic readers to embrace these works despite their difficulty. I discovered through this book that Goldstein and I do not picture the same ends to reception study although we agree completely on its principles and value. But because I was always attracted to the cross-disciplinary, big tent mentality of the Reception Study Society and Reception, I am not deterred in the least. In fact, The Theory and Practice of Reception Study inspires me for keeping open meaningful debates about how reception should play a role in literary criticism. Goldstein’s book is proof that we in this society thoughtfully reexamine and regularly expand the capabilities of our field.","PeriodicalId":40584,"journal":{"name":"Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72823049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"To do a little and well\": Anne Lister's Reading Routine","authors":"Charles Matthews","doi":"10.5325/reception.15.1.0025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/reception.15.1.0025","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Bibliophiles often imagine a pre-digital golden age of undistracted reading, but recent scholarship in the history of reading has refuted the existence of this past idyll. This short article introduces the diaries of Anne Lister (1791–1840) as a useful case study for considering how historical readers managed and worried about their intellectual time, and how this process was influenced by competing social pressures. The article discusses some episodes from the diaries that suggest that reading was subject to class-based expectations about the economy of time during this period, and that Lister carefully managed their reading time to develop a modern gentlemanly persona as part of their endeavor to inherit their uncle's estate.","PeriodicalId":40584,"journal":{"name":"Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73846317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}