Persistence of Reading in the Digital Age

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.