The Persistence of Reading in the Digital Age
From Print to Screen, Germany 1800-2020
The Persistence of Reading in the Digital Age
From Print to Screen, Germany 1800-2020
Description
Taking German literature and print culture as a case study, this book explores the ongoing life of books and the fate of reading after the advent of digital culture.
A select group of scholars – all with direct links to German letters and culture – reflect on the history, practice, and effects of reading in light of changes stemming from the rise of digital media. This book offers an interdisciplinary German perspective, one with deep roots in print culture from the Gutenberg press's invention, on the international debates swirling around the theory and practice of reading over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries and into the present.
The contributors to The Persistence of Reading in the Digital Age bring German print cultures and reading practices into dialogue with screen culture. These conversations contribute to “Leseforschung,” the emergent subfield that explores reading from critical historical and theoretical perspectives, establishing reading as a historically-contingent practice shaped by material conditions and with political consequence. As such, this volume challenges both romanticized views of reading and the trope of its so-called "decline," underscoring the endurance of reading across changing media and its resistant, transformative power.
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Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Meike G. Werner, Vanderbilt University, USA
PART I. Reading and the Formation of Political Culture in the Nineteenth Century
1. Popularizing Political Literacy: Publishers and Readers in the Early Nineteenth Century
James M. Brophy, University of Delaware, USA
2. The Invention of Terrorism: Writing, Reading, and Terrorism in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Germany
Carola Dietze, Technical University Braunschweig, Germany
3. Practices of Virtuous, Vicious, and Controlled Reading - A Comment
Kirk Wetters, Yale University, USA
PART II. Reading and Visual Modernity in the Weimar Republic
4. The Weimar Reading Republic: An Experiment in Pluralism
Kerstin Barndt, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, USA
5. Reading with the Avant-Garde. Jan Tschichold's The New Typography
Patrizia C. McBride, Cornell University, USA
6. Visual Literacy: Reading Photobooks in Weimar Germany
Verena Kick, Georgetown University, USA
7. Reading as Cultural Practice in the Weimar Republic - A Comment
Lynn Wolff, Michigan State University, USA
PART III. Reading Strategies after 1945
8. Staging Self-Interpretation: F. C. Delius Reads Himself
Carol Anne Costabile-Heming, University of North Texas, USA
9. Regarding the Books of Others: Reading Scenes on Screen
Martina Kolb, Susquehanna University, USA
10. Looking into the Open: Childhood Reading as Paradigm
Stephen D. Dowden, Brandeis University, USA
11. Nevertheless, It Persisted: Self-, Meta-, and Childlike Reading - A Comment
Johannes von Moltke, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, USA
PART IV. Reading and Digital Innovation
12. Creativity in the Digital Age: How Do Readers Perceive and Evaluate Artificial-Intelligence-Written Poetry?
Vivian Emily Gunser, University of Tübingen, Germany
13. Southern Romance Reading in the Muncie Public Library, 1891-1902: A Digital Humanities-Aided Approach to Studying Reader Preference
Lynne Tatlock, Stephen Pentecost, and Douglas Knox, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
14. Ötzi's Dagger: On the Use and Disadvantage of Reading for Life
James McFarland, Vanderbilt University, USA
15. Digital Reading: Empirical and Data-Driven Research - A Comment
Matthew Handelman, Michigan State University, USA
PART V. Afterlives of Texts: Reading in the Archive
16. Reading Traces in the Archive: Writers' Libraries at the German Literature Archive Marbach
Sarah Gaber, University of Oldenburg, Germany
17. Between Manuscript and Print: Reading the Last Lines of Joseph Roth's Novel Die Flucht ohne Ende
Jan Bürger, German Literature Archive Marbach, Germany
Index
Product details
| Published | 12 Nov 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 272 |
| ISBN | 9798216443193 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 47 color illus |
| Series | New Directions in German Studies |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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