E-reading: an Interdisciplinary Symposium

E-reading: an Interdisciplinary Symposium
31 March 2012, Massey College, University of Toronto

This symposium, a collaboration between the University of Toronto graduate program in Book History and Print Culture, and a new, online publication, The Toronto Review of Books, will feature papers that consider the practice of e-reading, both as an activity and an idea. E-reading tends to provoke either dismay or enthusiasm from its critics, but this symposium aims for clear-eyed assessments that address both the potential gains and losses of a practice that is rapidly growing in popularity around the world.

With an interdisciplinary and cross-period scope, this symposium seeks to give e-reading a history that accounts for the continuities and discontinuities the practice shares with the ancient tradition of reading a wide a variety of materials, including paper, papyrus, parchment, and other media. Scholars working on periods both before and after the rise of virtual media have been encouraged to submit proposals that address what might be called the "long history" of e-reading. Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

-    Digital reading in humanities scholarship: materials, methods, and critics
-    The profits of e-reading, financial and intellectual
-    Economies of e-reading: the corporate ownership of e-texts, copyright and the cost of e-books
-    Pedagogy and e-reading: the fate of bibliographic skills
-    Online literacies: attention span, short form, bots, and e-readingemail, texting, e-reading, and the history of correspondence
-    From Socrates to WikiLeaks: memorization, data, and electronic memory
-    Scanning: fast reading and slow reading
-    eReaders: the materiality of e-reading
-    Screens and reading
-    eDesign
-    The long history of mobile reading and travel
-    Precursors to virtual reading: visions and reading
-    Marginalia, reading out loud, and blog comments: the long history of private reading in public
-    Facebook and reading
-    Digital literacies in developing countries
-    Animation, interaction, and reading: illustrated e-books
-    Internet/book/e-book: the fate of bookwork in e-landscapes
-    E-books, e-readers, and fashion
-    Time and e-reading

Contact: Alan Galey, Assistant Professor
University of Toronto
individual.utoronto.ca/alangaley/