Notes
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 1 [0.1] It’s also important to note that the January 2009 followup report, “Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy,” has gotten virtually no media attention; while the NEA is, unsurprisingly, quick to take the increase it finds in adult literary reading as evidence of the impact of the previous reports and of the success of programs created in their wake, this followup also explicitly includes “online” literary reading in its assessment, which neither earlier report had done.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 [0.2] And this well prior to the budget slashing produced by the 2008-09 collapse of the California economy.
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 [0.3] Crewe, “Scholarly Publishing” 27.
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 [0.4] One might usefully note here the extensive media scholarship on the figure of the zombie, particularly as a stand-in for the narcotized subject of capitalism, including Sarah Juliet Lauro and Karen Embry’s “A Zombie Manifesto,” Meghan Sutherland’s “Rigor/Mortis,” and Peter Dendle’s “The Zombie as Barometer of Cultural Anxiety,” to cite only a few recent titles. In that regard, it’s perhaps worth noting the recent uptick in broad cultural interest in zombies, perhaps exemplified by the Spring 2009 release of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. If there is a relationship between the zombie and the subject of late capitalism, the cultural anxiety that figure marks is currently, with reason, off the charts.
¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 [0.5] On the afterlives of media, see Lisa Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines and Always Already New; Paul Levinson, The Soft Edge; Jeffrey Sconce, Haunted Media.
¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 [0.6] See, e.g., Crewe.
¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 [0.7] See Liu, et al, and Montfort and Wardrip-Fruin.
¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 [0.8] Calls for moving away from the scholarly monograph, given its apparent status as an artifact no one reads anymore, have been on the rise of late; see, for instance, Mark Bauerlein’s report for the American Enterprise Institute, “Professors on the Production Line, Students on Their Own,” as well as Inside Higher Ed‘s story about the report, “Unread Monographs, Uninspired Undergrads.”
Barbara Fister
Olivia Gutjahr
It’s also interesting that the report says reading is on the rise in its title, but in fact the stats show that reading of books is not on the rise; the reading of fiction as a percentage of the books read is on the rise, but reading in aggregate is not. The most interesting thing about these reports is the way they frame anxiety about reading. The data are not particularly useful because the definition of reading is peculiarly limited to reading not done in connection with any particular purpose (college students who read enormous amounts for courses are “non-readers” by this definition) and because “literature” is defined by form: fiction, poetry, and plays.