[Bilimsel Haber] CONF. CFP: "From Cover to Cover: Reading Readers," November 7 – 9, 2012, Hacettepe University

[Gonul Pultar]

 From Cover to Cover: Reading Readers

Hacettepe University
Department of American Culture and Literature
30th Anniversary Conference
Ankara, Turkey	
November 7 – 9, 2012


Reading has had numerous meanings for different people at different
times and places. From reading an animal’s tracks, or a street sign,
to reading Derrida, the act of reading has referred to a wide range of
activities. People have read for practical purposes (for information,
for knowledge, or for material gain), for holy ends (Quran said “Read
in the name of your Lord”), for political and social reasons (“Once
you learn to read, you will be forever free,” said Frederick
Douglass), for entertainment, etc. In the age of computers, cell
phones, and Internet, the traditional notions about the significance
of reading, its function, and value seem to be challenged in various
ways. Our conference aims to take a fresh look at the good old
practice of reading in all its denotations and connotations from all
possible quarters and perspectives provided that papers relate to the
American context.


Possible topics may include:

Reading practices across cultures: anthropology of reading.
Reading across race, gender, class, and nationality.

Historical and cultural forms of literacy and illiteracy: from
knowing the alphabet to media literacy.

Economy of reading: advertising and marketing (book fairs, book
signing, newspaper book supplements); reader as consumer 		and book as a 
commercial product; literary awards and prizes.

Reading high and low: questions of taste and preference; popular
literature; war of the genres, etc.

Reading and the institution: reading and institutional practices
(legal, medical, religious, etc.) and the issue of power.

Reading critically: role of literary criticism; theories of reading
such as Marxist, feminist, poststructuralist, etc.; particularly
reader oriented approaches, their methods and strategies; types of
readers, such as ideal reader, implied reader, informed reader etc.

Politics of reading: right to read; reading as a medium of social
change; censorship of reading; reading and ideology.

Reading, knowledge and information: libraries and archives, cultural
heritage and texts.

Reading communities such as book clubs and blogs, social networks,
interpretive communities, etc.

Representations of reading: acts of reading within the literary text
(the character as reader), in cinema, visual arts, the media, and
popular culture.

Reading to write and writing to be read, or not to be read (e.g.,
Emily Dickinson); writers as readers of their own works or others’
works; writers on reading.

Reading materials: nature (e.g., for transcendentalists), cave
writings, coffee-cups and palms, laundry lists, letters, books,
periodicals, anthologies, Internet, etc.

Comparative approaches to the entry points above.


Abstracts between 200 to 300 words and a short bio should be sent to
Dr. Ceylan Özcan at <ake2012conference at gmail.com> by June 30, 2012.

For more information about the conference, see our departmental
website: http://www.ake.hacettepe.edu.tr/Install/