READING PRACTICES IN THE DIGITAL AGE

CALL FOR PAPERS

for an international interdisciplinary conference

READING PRACTICES IN THE DIGITAL AGE

The conference will be held on November 26, 2018 at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” in Sofia, Bulgaria

The conference Reading Practices in the Digital Age aims to explore reading across many different platforms: from book to screen, by examining the role of the medium, and of multimodality marked by the interplay between text, image, and sound.

We invite individual abstracts and panel proposals in an array of topics, discussing but not limited to the areas below:

 What has happened to reading in the age of the Internet?

 How did the “digital turn” affect the usages of free time? What is the place of reading practices in the digitized contemporary usage of free time and its market-driven hierarchies?

 How have readers’ attitudes and behaviors changed as texts migrate from page to screen, and from the print medium to the digital ones: e-books, tablets, computer screens?

 What are the changes in the reading tempo and rhythms?

 How is reader-response affected?  How are attention and concentration ability affected?

 How is comprehension and memory affected by reading on screen?

 Do the interactive features of the digital platform distract readers from the textual content or do they facilitate comprehension?

 How are digital reading practices located between the poles of “reading-for-pleasure” and “reading-for-practical-goals” (cognition, information etc.?)

 What is “the future of the book” – elegiac or optimistic?

 What are the pedagogical implications for reading on a digital screen? Proposals for twenty-minute presentations or for panels to be submitted by 1 November 2018.

The official language of the conference will be English. Please include the following in your submission:

 Name:

 Affiliation:

 Email address:

 Title of Paper or Panel Proposal:

 Abstract (250 words):

 Bio (100 words): Please address emails to: readingpractices.conference@gmail.com

CONFERENCE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

The Cultural Center of Sofia University Team led by prof. Alexander Kiossev, Department of History and Theory of Culture, Sofia University & Assoc. Prof. Alexandra Glavanakova, Department of English and American Studies, Sofia University & Executive Director of AFEAS

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Tatiani Rapatzikou, Assoc. Prof. at at the Department of American Literature and Culture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Talan Memmott, Professor of Creative Digital Media at Winona State University, USA.