What It Means to Read (and to Teach) in the 21st Century: Digital Social Reading and Participatory Culture
Location
Janet Ayers Academic Center, JAAC 4094
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
21-9-2016 7:00 PM
Description
E-reading devices such as the Kindle as well as websites such as Genius.com allow people to read the same text, annotate the text and to share their annotations with the world. The resulting practice is referred to as digital social reading. This new literacy practice violates many humanists’ expectations of what it means to read based on a shared “print culture.” This talk frames digital social reading in terms of a new “participatory culture” in which interpretive practices long associated with the individual become a group activity. The impact of digital social reading has stirred much academic controversy. On the one hand, literature specialists claim that it jeopardizes close reading skills long associated with traditional forms of academic literacy. On the other hand, digital humanists argue that the real problem comes from equating reading with a narrowly defined and historically situated practice—the close reading of a printed text. Proponents of digital literacies note that the question is no longer how to teach reading but rather, which kind of reading to teach. Close reading of printed, literary texts? Hyperreading of digital texts? Or machine reading of databases? Or, put differently, how should humanists teach the multiple practices now associated with reading in the digital age?
Recommended Citation
Blyth, Carl S., "What It Means to Read (and to Teach) in the 21st Century: Digital Social Reading and Participatory Culture" (2016). Humanities Symposium. 15.
https://repository.belmont.edu/humanities_symposium/2016/2016/15
What It Means to Read (and to Teach) in the 21st Century: Digital Social Reading and Participatory Culture
Janet Ayers Academic Center, JAAC 4094
E-reading devices such as the Kindle as well as websites such as Genius.com allow people to read the same text, annotate the text and to share their annotations with the world. The resulting practice is referred to as digital social reading. This new literacy practice violates many humanists’ expectations of what it means to read based on a shared “print culture.” This talk frames digital social reading in terms of a new “participatory culture” in which interpretive practices long associated with the individual become a group activity. The impact of digital social reading has stirred much academic controversy. On the one hand, literature specialists claim that it jeopardizes close reading skills long associated with traditional forms of academic literacy. On the other hand, digital humanists argue that the real problem comes from equating reading with a narrowly defined and historically situated practice—the close reading of a printed text. Proponents of digital literacies note that the question is no longer how to teach reading but rather, which kind of reading to teach. Close reading of printed, literary texts? Hyperreading of digital texts? Or machine reading of databases? Or, put differently, how should humanists teach the multiple practices now associated with reading in the digital age?
Comments
Featured Speaker
Convocation Credit: Global Citizenship, Leadership, Diversity and the Professions