Everyday Reading of Literature (EROL)

The most common activity pertaining to literature—being read by real people in everyday settings—has been the least researched when considering its sheer volume, spread and diversity of practices. As an opportunity to make up for that lack of academic research, our symposium is inviting submissions for presentations dealing with any aspect of reading literature performed by or involving specific readers in their everyday environments.

The operative term “everyday reading” here relates to any instance of physically handling and mentally processing literature by individuals or groups. Those readers could historically be presumed to be members of the literate and literary cultural elite, who have been dwarfed within the past century or so by the much larger popular audience. The contributions may therefore concentrate on both non-professional and professional readers, so long as their reading is presented in interaction with their own everyday realities.

Due to the wide-spread phenomenon under consideration, the range of topics is quite broad, but it may be usefully narrowed down to the following dozen, divided into two subgroups according to whether they are dominantly manifested in the mind (1st grouping) or in the world (2nd grouping):

- application of reading in everyday thoughts and situations
- collective, cultural, and individual memories (and forgetting) of literary texts
- emotions provoked by literature
- negative aspects of literature in everyday life (e.g., bibliotrauma)
- positive aspects of literature in everyday life (e.g., eudaimonia)
- reading notes and markings (in diaries, books, school reports, etc.)

- cultural particularities of reading practices
- historical changes and aspects of everyday reading circumstances
- locations and times of everyday reading
- multimodality of everyday reading
- personal libraries and book collections
- recommended and mandatory reading (e.g., role of teachers and librarians)

We will also consider presentations about topics not listed here, especially if they report on aspects of everyday reading previously unconsidered in relevant writings, and/or if they involve original methodology. Apart from literary scholars, we welcome contributions from a range of disciplines, including but not limited to Anthropology, Gender Studies, History, Memory Studies, Psychology, and Sociology.

Applicants are required to provide a title and short summary of their presentation (300-500 words), as well as a bibliography (5-15 references). All summaries and presentations need to be written and delivered to the symposium e-mail address (pokus@m.ffzg.hr) in English, and the ones presented at the symposium may be included into the proceedings volume.

We are also pleased to announce that the symposium will feature two distinguished keynote speakers: Astrid Erll from Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany, and Rita Felski from the University of Virginia, USA.